There was no lack of valiant emperors, precarious and
ephemeral as their power may have been, to defend the empire, and
especially Gaul, against those enemies, themselves ephemeral, but
forever recurring; Decius, Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius Gothicus,
Aurelian, and Probus gallantly withstood those repeated attacks of
German hordes. Sometimes they flattered themselves they had gained a
definitive victory, and then the old Roman pride exhibited itself in
their patriotic confidence. About A.D. 278, the emperor Probus, after
gaining several victories in Gaul over the Franks, wrote to the senate:
"I render thanks to the immortal gods, conscript fathers, for that they
have confirmed your judgment as regards me. Germany is subdued
throughout its whole extent; nine kings of different nations have come
and cast themselves at my feet, or rather at yours, as suppliants with
their foreheads in the dust. Already all those barbarians are tilling
for you, sowing for you, and fighting for you against the most distant
nations. Order ye, therefore, according to your custom, prayers of
thanksgiving, for we have slain four thousand of the enemy; we have had
offered to us sixteen thousand men ready armed; and we have wrested from
the enemy the seventy most important towns.
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