ambitious designs of the tyrant of Gaul.

The reign of Maximus might have ended in peace and prosperity, could
he have contented himself with the possession of three ample
countries, which now constitute the three most flourishing kingdoms of
modern Europe. But the aspiring usurper, whose sordid ambition was not
dignified by the love of glory and of arms, considered his actual
forces as the instruments only of his future greatness, and his
success was the immediate cause of his destruction. The wealth which
he extorted from the oppressed provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain,
was employed in levying and maintaining a formidable army of
Barbarians, collected, for the most part, from the fiercest nations of
Germany. The conquest of Italy was the object of his hopes and
preparations: and he secretly meditated the ruin of an innocent youth,
whose government was abhorred and despised by his Catholic subjects.
But as Maximus wished to occupy, without resistance, the passes of the
Alps, he received, with perfidious smiles, Domninus of Syria, the
ambassador of Valentinian, and pressed him to accept the aid of a
considerable body of troops, for the service of a Pannonian war. The
penetration of Ambrose had discovered the snares of an enemy under the
professions of friendship; but the Syrian Domninus was corrupted, or
deceived, by the liberal favor of the court of Treves; and the council
of Milan obstinately rejected the suspicion of danger, with a blind
confidence, which was the effect, not of courage, but of fear. The
march of the auxiliaries was guided by the ambassador; and they were
admitted, without distrust, into the fortresses of the Alps. But the
crafty tyrant followed, with hasty and silent footsteps, in the rear;
and, as he diligently intercepted all intelligence of his motions, the
gleam of armor, and the dust excited by the troops of cavalry, first
announced the hostile approach of a stranger to the gates of Milan. In