CHAPTER XXIII

THE REIGN OF GALLIENUS

IT is best to hear his own words, as follows: “He indeed, viz., Macrianus, having betrayed the one, and waged war with the other emperor, suddenly perished with his whole family. Gallienus was proclaimed and universally acknowledged emperor, and emperor at once new and old, having been before them, and now surviving them. For as it is said by the prophet Isaiah, “Those things that were from the first, lo they have come, and those are new which shall now arise.” As the cloud rising before the sun, obscuring it by its shadow and appearing in its place, afterwards passes away and is dissipated, and the sun which had arisen before, seems to rise again, so Macrianus, who had aspired to the very power of Gallienus, is now no more, indeed never was; but the latter, as he was previously, is now again, and his government, as if it had lost the feebleness of age, and had become purified of its former baseness, now arose and assumed a more flourishing aspect; and is seen and heard and diffuses itself every where. After this he also indicates the time when he wrote this. “And it occurs to me again, to survey the days of our emperor’s reign. For I see, that those most impious men, once honoured and famous, ere long became obscure. But the more holy and pious emperor, surviving the seventh year, is now in the ninth, in which we are about to celebrate the festival.”