and amongst the number were to be met with some cases of eminence in war and politics, and some even of rare virtue and patriotism, such as Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, Deeius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus.  They made great efforts, some to protect the empire against the barbarians, growing day by day more aggressive, others to re-establish within it some sort of order, and to restore to the laws some sort of force.  All failed, and nearly all died a violent death, after a short-lived guardianship of a fabric that was crumbling to pieces in every part, but still under the grand name of Roman Empire.  Gaul had her share in this series of ephemeral emperors and tyrants; one of the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one of the most valorous and able, Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, was born at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aurelius.  A hundred years later Narbonne gave in two years to the Roman world three emperors, Carus and his two sons, Carinus and Numerian.  Amongst the thirty-one tyrants who did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and the last two, Amandus and AElianus, were, A.D. 285, the chiefs of that great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves, who, under the name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop of insurgents from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of Gaul, between the Rhine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of the fiscal agents and soldiers of the empire.  A contemporary witness, Lactantius, describes the causes of this popular outbreak in the following words:  “So enormous had the imposts become, that the tillers’ strength was exhausted; fields became deserts and farms were changed into forests.  The fiscal agents measured the land by the clod; trees, vinestalks, were all counted.  The cattle were marked; the people registered.  Old age or sickness was no excuse; the sick and the infirm were brought up; every one’s age was put down; a few years were added on to the children’s, and taken off from the old men’s.  Meanwhile the cattle decreased, the people died, and there was no deduction made for the dead.”

It is said that to excite the confidence and zeal of their bands, the two chiefs of the Bagaudians had medals struck, and that one exhibited the head of Amandus, “Emperor, Caesar, Augustus, pious and prosperous,” with the word “Hope” on the other side.

When public evils have reached such a pitch, and nevertheless the day has not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of the system that causes them, there arises nearly always a new power which, in the name of necessity, applies some remedy to an intolerable condition.  A legion cantoned amongst the Tungrians (Tongres), in Belgica, had on its muster-roll a Dalmatian named Diocletian, not yet very high in rank, but already much looked up to by his comrades on account of his