The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18

31

Gibbon thus narrates the catastrophe: – “The extreme parsimony of Rufinus left him only the reproach and envy of ill-gotten wealth. His dependents served him without attachment; the universal hatred of mankind was repressed only by the influence of servile fear. The fate of Lucian proclaimed to the East, that the prefect, whose industry was much abated in the dispatch of ordinary business, was active and indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge. Lucian, (the son of the prefect Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul, and the enemy of Julian,) had employed a considerable part of his inheritance, the fruit of rapine and corruption, to purchase the friendship of Rufinus, and the high office of Count of the East. But the new magistrate imprudently departed from the maxims of the court and of the times; disgraced his benefactor, by the contrast of a virtuous and temperate administration; and presumed to refuse an act of injustice, which might have tended to the profit of the emperor’s uncle. Arcadius was easily persuaded to resent the supposed insult; and the prefect of the East resolved to execute in person the cruel vengeance which he meditated against this ungrateful delegate of his power. He performed, with incessant speed, the journey of seven or eight hundred miles, from Constantinople to Antioch, entered the capital of Syria at the dead of night, and spread universal consternation among a people ignorant of his design, but not ignorant of his character. The count of the fifteen provinces of the East was dragged, like the vilest malefactor, before the arbitrary tribunal of Rufinus. Notwithstanding the clearest evidence of his integrity, which was not impeached even by the voice of an accuser, Lucian was condemned, almost without a trial, to suffer a cruel and ignominious punishment. The ministers of the tyrant, by the order, and in the presence, of their master, beat him on the neck with leather thongs, armed at the extremities with lead; and when he fainted under the violence of the pain, he was removed in a close litter to conceal his dying agonies from the eyes of the indignant city. No sooner had Rufinus perpetrated this inhuman act, the sole object of his expedition, than he returned amidst the deep and silent curses of a trembling people, from Antioch to Constantinople; and his diligence was accelerated by the hope of accomplishing, without delay, the nuptials of his daughter with the emperor of the East.” – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iii. p. 209.

The punctuation throughout this piece is so inaccurate, and the paragraphs so strangely divided, that it must have been printed from a copy very carelessly written. In the present passage, we find Rafiany, instead of Rufinus. Malone.

32

A. D. 312. He suffered for favouring the Arians. Malone.

33

A. D. 415. He was minister of Caphargamala, and pretended to have been instructed by a dream of the burial place of the proto-martyr Stephen, Gamaliel, and other saints. See Gibbon’s History, vol. iii. p. 97.

Several other persons of this name, besides those here mentioned, are enumerated by Fabricius. Bibl. Græc. iv. 508.

34

Dr Franklin seems disposed to fix on the year 90.

35

Procurator principis. Under Marcus Aurelius.

36

See Juv. sat. i. 44.; vii. 148.; xv. 111. Quintil. lib. x. cap. 3.

37

Dr Jasper Mayne, who published a translation of some select dialogues of Lucian, in folio, in 1664.

38

I follow Mr Malone in reading might; the printed copy has must.

39

This is a gross mistake, 180 years intervening between the death of Aurelius and the reign of Julian.

40

Nicolas Perrot, Sieur d’Ablancourt, whose translation of the Dialogues of Lucian into French was first published at Paris in 1634. His continuation of the true history of Lucian is very much in the tone of the original.

41

This observation had been made by Gilbertas Cognatus, and by Thomas Hickes, in his Life of Lucian, printed in 1634. Malone.

42

Entitled “Philopatris.” The Christian religion, and its mysteries, are ridiculed in this piece with very little ceremony.

43

Gesner has written a long Latin essay upon this point, which is subjoined to the third volume of Lucian’s works, in the 4to edition of Hemsterhucius.

44

I follow Mr Malone in reading eclectic for elective.

45

The best judges have condemned Εταιρικοι Διαλογοι, or “Dialogues of the Harlots,” as not being genuine. They are at any rate gross and devoid of humour.

46

I presume a cant phrase for a graft from that garden of knowledge.