ABSTRACT
Chlorus under Aurelian (274), and indeed on the same day that his son Constantine was born. But victories seemed only to summon new hosts of these inexhaustible and youthful peoples across the Rhine. It no longer availed for capacious colonels to drink their envoys under the table and then draw their secrets out. They were no longer impressed when the Emperor received their deputations with calculated pomp before his crescent-shaped lines, himself clad in purple upon a lofty pulpit, before him the golden eagles of the legions, the imperial images, and the banners of the armies inscribed in gold and borne upon silver lances. Under Probus the war again assumed huge proportions, and without that great Emperor's skill and courage Gaul would definitely have been lost. Even so there arose a new party, chiefly in Lyons and its vicinity, which openly strove for a continuation of a Gallic empire after the model of Posthumus and Victorina. When Diocletian subsequently divided the imperial authority, he may have had to take these circumstances into consideration. But before that happened Probus' conquests in southern Germany were again lost, and unhappy Gaul was again traversed by German hordes. Carinus did defeat them, and left an army in Gaul; this army, however, he had to recall for his war against the usurper Julian and against the approaching Diocletian. Thereupon the entire social structure of Gaul went awry.
