304
CAKUS.
like Aurelian, but he was extremely beloved, as we see from
the coins of the time, on which we read not only invicto im-
peratori nostro, but bono imperatori Probo. However he became
estranged from the soldiers, who had before loved and admired
him, because he not only demanded of them the discharge of
their military duties, but compelled them to perform other ser-
vices also, which were indeed beneficial to the provinces and
the empire in general, but were too much for the soldiers,
whose yoke became intolerably heavy. We cannot, therefore,
censure them for what they did. Probus, like Aurelian and
Decius, was born in the country of the limes Illyricus, and was
therefore anxious to restore agriculture in the neighbourhood
of Sirmium, and to drain the marshes, which spoiled the
otherwise excellent and fruitful country of Pannonia. For
this purpose he compelled the soldiers to make canals and
drains. It is not impossible that fever and other diseases may
have begun to rage among them while they were engaged in
those marshy districts; but in short, they were driven to des-
pair: they murdered their emperor, A.D. 282, and afterwards
lamented his death.
The legions now raised M. Aurelius Carus, the praefect of
the praetorian guards, to the throne.6 Our sources of inform-
ation are so imperfect, that we cannot even say whether Carus
was born at Rome, in IIlyricum, or at Narbonne. In a letter of
his still extant, he calls himself a Roman senator, but he was
unquestionably a senator of Gaul. There was indeed a regula-
tion, a senatus Consultum passed in the reign of Gallienus, that
no senator should have an army, but this must have been of a
different nature from what it is commonly, and even by Gibbon,
believed to have been: I believe that it merely referred to
giving a senator a province with the imperium, and this prac-
tice accordingly ceased, except in the short reign of Tacitus :
but the regulation did not forbid senators to hold the command
of an army in general. Carus was one of those princes to whom
war is everything. He led his army against the Persians, and
this war is the last but one that Rome waged against Persia,
and that produced permanent results. Carus is said to have
recovered Seleucia and Ctesiphon, but our accounts are so un-
trustworthy that I cannot answer for the correctness of the
6 Vopiscus, Carus ; Aurel. Victor, Epitome, 38, De Caesar. 38; Eutrop. ix.
18; Zonaras, xii. 29, foil.
CAEiNus and numerianus.—diocletian.
305
statement. However this may be, Persia had lost the power
which it had possessed under Ardshir; and Bahram, the pre-
sent king of the Persians, was so alarmed and terrified, that he
was incapable of leading out his army against the Eomans.
Cams, therefore, penetrated far into the Persian empire. But
a sudden death, caused, it is said, in his tent, by a flash of
lightning, put an end to his victorious career, in a.d. 283.
The received account of the death of Eomulus is certainly a
poetical tradition, and it is not true that he fell by a conspiracy
of the senators; but whether Cams fell by the hands of a mur-
derer, cannot be decided. After his death, it was impossible to
induce the soldiers to advance any farther; for it was an ancient
superstition that, when the praetorium was struck by lightning,
it foreboded the destruction of the army itself.
Carus had two sons, Carinus and Numerianus, and the latter
had accompanied his father in his Persian campaign. He had
received a good education, but was not warlike, and appears to
have been a man of refined and amiable character. His brother
Carinus had remained behind at Eome, where he acted like a
second Commodus. He fully deserves the charges which are
brought against him, namely, that he was a dissolute and
voluptuous tyrant. He made himself so odious that the
army would not for a moment listen to his elevation to the
throne. Numerianus died while marching westward ; and Arrius
Aper, the praefectus praetorio, kept his death secret, in order to
secure the empire to himself. But when the death of Nume-
rianus became known, the soldiers immediately proclaimed the
Illyrian, C. Valerius Diocletianus, emperor, a.d. 284. He put
Arrius Aper to death in the presence of the army, for he was
superstitious, and had been told by some old woman that he
should obtain the imperial throne, if he killed an aj>er. That
oracle now became clear to him, and he killed Arrius Aper with
his own hand.
Carinus collected the forces of the West, where the legions
were still faithful to him. A great battle was fought in Jdocsia,
which terminated in favor of Diocletian at the moment when
he was on the point of losing it; at the same moment, Carinus
was cut down by one of his own tribunes, whose wife he had
dishonoured, and the army of Carinus at once recognised
Dioclctian as emperor, λ.d. 285.
Diocletian was a most distinguished general, and was
VOL. III. X