equity. The first was, that no one should be again prosecuted on a charge of which he had been once acquitted; the second, that the children of a person become a Roman citizen, who were not so themselves, should not, as was formerly the law, forfeit their inheritance to the treasury; the third, that a woman, prosecuted for adultery by her husband, should have a right to recriminate. He also issued rescripts in favour of the Christians, to protect them from popular rage and legal injustice. One of these, addressed to the people of Asia Minor, is extant in Eusebius, (Hist. Eccles. lib. iv.) and bears an honourable testimony to their character.

It is not wonderful that the reputation for wisdom and justice, which Antoninus by such a conduct acquired, should spread through all the countries of the German empire, and give him a weight and authority which force could not have bestowed. Some of the neighbouring kings came to salute him! and appointed him arbiter of their differences. The king of Parthia was prevented from making war upon the Armenians by a simple letter from him; and the Lazes, the people of Colchis, elevated Pacorus to their throne on his recommendation. His private life was frugal and modest; his table decent; his amusements innocent; and scarcely a spot can be discovered to tarnish the purity of his character. Perhaps he was too indulgent towards an unworthy wife, who certainly did not deserve those divine honours which he lavished upon her memory. His minute exactness was ridiculed by some who were not aware of the advantages of such a quality in the management of complicated concerns. Soon after his elevation to the throne, he manifested his esteem for the opening virtues of Marcus Aurelius, by marrying him to his daughter, Faustina, and declared him Cæsar. In course of time, he accumulated all sorts of honours upon him, and was repaid by the profoundest submission, and a true filial attachment. Aurelius never left him, and shared with him all the cares of government, without the least umbrage or suspicion on either part. In this state of domestic and public tranquillity he reached his seventy-fourth year, when, in the month of March, A. D. 161, at his favourite country seat of Lori, he fell ill of a fever, the fatal event of which he soon foresaw. Summoning the great officers of state, he confirmed in their presence his choice of Aurelius as a successor, and caused the imperial ensigns to be carried to him. In a delirium which soon ensued, all his thoughts were turned on the commonwealth, and he deprecated the anger of the kings whom he supposed hostile to it. In a lucid interval he gave as a watchword to the prætorian tribune, Æquanimitas, and then placidly expired, having reigned twenty-two years, seven months, and twenty-six days. His ashes were deposited in the tomb of

Adrian, and divine honours were unanimously decreed by the senate to his memory. The death of the father of his country, though at so mature an age, was lamented throughout the empire as a public calamity, and his praises were universally sounded. He made the name of Antoninus so respectable that, for near a century, the emperors assumed it as a title of honour, like that of Augustus; few were capable of supporting it in its native lustre. Marcus Aurelius and the senate consecrated to his memory a sculptured pillar, still subsisting as one of the principal ornaments of Rome, under the name of the Antonine column.

ANNA GALERIA FAUSTINA, the Elder, was the daughter of Annius Verus, and the wife of Antoninus Pius. Notwithstanding her debaucheries, the emperor would not divorce her. She died in 141. Her daughter was the wife of Marcus Aurelius, and exceeded her mother in dissoluteness. She died in 175.

DECEBALUS, one of the barbarian kings, who contended with the greatest success against the power of the Roman empire. He was raised to the throne of Dacia on account of his military talents, about the period in which Domitian was sovereign of Rome. In the war that commenced about the year A. D. 86, he frequently defeated the Romans, with great slaughter; and in one instance prevented, by stratagem, the enemy from advancing to his own capital, by felling a great number of trees, and covering their trunks with armour, so as to appear like soldiers. Shortly after Domitian sought for peace, to which Decebalus acceded, upon condition that he should receive from the emperor's own hand a diadem, and a yearly tribute, under the form and title of a pension, which was regularly paid till the time of Trajan, who not only refused to be tributary to the Dacians, but entered his country with a powerful army, and was completely victorious. Decebalus was obliged to submit to very humiliating terms for the sake of peace; he agreed to give up his arms, and dismantle his fortresses. Scarcely, however, had the emperor departed, before the Dacian king prepared for new hostilities, and defied the power of Rome. Trajan was again successful, and Decebalus, who found himself unequal to the open contest, determined to destroy by treachery and assassination him whom he dared not meet in the field; for this purpose he perfidiously got possession of Longinus, the favourite officer of the Roman emperor, and endeavoured, by bribes and by threats, to make use of him as the instrument of his master's death. Longinus preferred the life of his king to his own, and, by poison, freed himself from the power of his enemy. Trajan now built his celebrated bridge over the Danube, completely conquered Dacia, and took possession of its capital. Decebalus, seeing no

chance of escaping from the hands of the emperor, put an end to his own life; and with him terminated the independence of Dacia, which was afterwards a mere Roman province. He had concealed the vast treasures which he had accumulated, but these were discovered to the conqueror, and were found more than equal to the expence of a war. In the early part of life Decebalus had the character of being equally wise in council, and prompt in action; skilful in all the manœuvres of war, possessed of vigour to improve a victory, and constancy to repair a defeat

RHADAMISTUS, the son of Pharasmanes, king of Iberia. He put to death his uncle Mithridates, whose daughter, Zenobia, he had married. He was defeated by the Parthians, on which he stabbed his wife; for which his father caused him to be put to death, A. D. 52.

BRITAIN.

BRAN, the son of Llyr, and father of Caradog, or Caractacus, king of Britain, is classed with Prydain and Dyn-wall, as the three who consolidated the form of elective monarchy in Britain. When his son was delivered up to the Romans, Bran and his family were carried to Rome, where they embraced the Christian religion, which, at their return, they introduced among their countrymen. Bran died about the year A. D. 80.

CARACTACUŠ, a renowned king of the ancient British people called Silures, inhabiting South Wales. Having valiantly defended his country seven years against the Romans, he was at last defeated; and flying to Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, was by her treacherously delivered up to the Romans, and led in triumph to the emperor Claudius, then at York; where his noble behaviour, and heroic, but pathetic speech, obtained him not only his liberty, but the esteem of the emperor, A. D. 52. Buchanan, Monipenny, and other ancient Scots historians, make this heroic prince one of the Scots monarchs; nephew and successor to king Metellanus; and say that he was elected general of the united army of Scots, Picts, and Britons.

CARTISMANDUA, queen of the Brigantes, the famous betrayer of the brave Caractacus. She was also false to her husband, Venutius; but at last met with the reward of her perfidies; being taken prisoner by Corbred I. king of Scots, and buried alive about A. D. 57.

BELYN, son of Cynvelyn, a British prince, and chief of one of the three splendid retinues of Britain, because they embodied their troops at their own expence. He served under Caradog, or Caractacus, till that king was delivered to the Romans.

CYNOBELINE, a king of the South Britons, who flourished in the reign of Claudius, and fought several battles with the Romans under Plautius, the prætor; about A. D. 43-46. ARVIRAGUS, a British king, flourished, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, and other native writers, in the time of the emperor Claudius; but a line in the satirist Juvenal, is. supposed to prove that he was living in the time of Domitian. That poet, representing the base Vejento, as breaking out into a prophetic adulation of the emperor, for some trifling omen, makes him say,

Regem aliquem capies, aut de temone Britanno
Excidet Arviragus.
SAT. IV. LIB. 126.

I see some captive king; or tumbling down,
Arviragus desert his British car.

But it is sufficiently probable, that the name of Arviragus, as a British chief, or king of renown, might be used in a general sense in this instance, without regard to his being actually living or dead; just as in the very same satire, Juvenal calls Domitian, the bald Nero. Geoffrey, indeed, gives a manifestly fabulous account of Arviragus, of which some parts, however, may be true; as, that he was the younger son of Kymbeline; that, after the death of his father and brother, he headed the Britons; that, on the departure of Claudius, he raised himself to the state of an independent prince; that he was engaged in a war against Vespasian, and made a compromise with him; and that at length he ruled over the Britons to a good old age, and, after his death, was buried at Gloucester, in a temple which he had erected to the honour of the emperor Claudius.

MARIUS, an ancient British monarch, the son of king Arviragus, whom he succeeded, A. D. 74. He conquered the Picts, and erected a stone upon Stanmere, in memory of his victory. Dr. Anderson says, he married a daughter of the celebrated queen Boadicea. He died, A. D. 125, after having reigned 51 years.

BOADICEA, a British queen in the time of Nero, wife to Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, that is, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdonshire. Prasutagus, in order to secure the friendship and protection of Nero to his wife and family, left the emperor and his daughter co-heirs. But no sooner was he in the grave, than the emperor's officers seized upon his -effects in their master's name. Boadicea, widow of the deceased king, strongly remonstrated against these unjust proceedings; but her complaints were so far from being heard, or her grievances redressed, that she found herself exposed to farther wrongs and injuries. For, being a woman of high spirit,

she resented her ill usage in such terms, as provoked the officers to treat her in the most barbarous manner; they caused her to be publicly scourged, and her daughter's innocence fell a sacrifice to their barbarity.

This story soon spread through the island, and the public indignation was so generally raised, that all, excepting London, agreed to revolt. The Roman historians themselves acknowledge, that the universal violence and injustice of the emperor's officers, gave the Britons sufficient reason to lay aside their private animosities, aid the queen to revenge her wrongs, and recover her own liberty.

Boadicea, inspired with implacable hatred against the Romans, put herfelf at their head, and earnestly exhorted them to take advantage of the absence of the Roman general, then in the Isle of Man, by putting these foreign oppressors all to the sword. They readily embraced the proposal, and, on a sudden, flew with the utmost fury upon the Romans wherever they found them dispersed in their colonies, which were more curiously embellished with fine buildings than strengthened with fortifications, destroying all, without regard to age or sex; and so violent was the rage of the exasperated people, that the most horrible cruelties were practised on this occasion. Not a single Roman that came within their reach escaped their fury; and no less than seventy thousand perished.

Paulinus, in the mean time, suddenly returning, marched against the revolted Britons, who had an army of one hundred thousand, or, according to Dion Cassius, two hundred and thirty thousand strong, under the conduct of Boadicea, and Venutius her general. The fine person of Boadicea, large, fair, and dignified, with her undaunted courage, persuaded the people that she must have all the qualities of a good general; and, eager for the engagement with Paulinus, whose army consisted of no more than ten thousand men, she expected to satiate her revenge, by the utter destruction of so inconsiderable an enemy. Meanwhile, Paulinus was in great trouble; the ninth legion had been just defeated by the enemy. Pænius Posthumus, at the head of a large detachment of the second, refused to join him; so that he had the choice but of two expedients, either to march with his little army into the open field against his numerous enemies, or shut himself up in the town and wait for them. At first he chose the latter, and staid in London, but soon altered his resolution. And, instead of retiring from the Britons, who were now on the march towards him, resolved to meet them. The field of battle he pitched upon, was a narrow tract of ground, facing a large plain, where they encamped, and his rear was secured by a forest. The Britons traversed the plain in large bodies, exulting in their numbers, and secure of victory. They had brought their wives and children in wag