[Footnote 44: In 165 the legions returning from the East are said to have brought the Oriental plague into Europe.] [Footnote 45: Gibbon reduces the number to _nineteen_.] [Footnote 46: The Eastern division of the province.] II A CENTURY OF REVIVAL An observer of the calamities and disgraces which overtook the Empire in what I have called "A Century of Disgrace," might have supposed that the end was at hand. But an ancient institution does not perish so easily. The Empire still possessed a great prestige, an organisation of government which had been worked out by a succession of able statesmen and rulers, and an army with numberless traditions of victory. Given an able leader, there would certainly be a revival of vigour, or, to say the least, a check to the progress of decay. A better time began with the death of Gallienus, the son of Valerian, in A.D. 268. He perished, it is doubtful whether by treachery or accident, in one of the numberless conflicts that occurred during this period between the possessor of the imperial throne and the numerous pretenders who aspired to it. His successor was a soldier of humble origin, though he bore the old patrician name of Claudius. He had soon an opportunity of showing his qualities as a soldier. In the year after his accession to the throne a huge army of Goths and of other tribes who were accustomed to fight under their standard invaded the provinces south of the Danube. Claudius hastened to encounter them, and fought a great battle at Nissa in Servia in which 50,000 of the barbarians are said to have perished. Little is known of the details of this or indeed of any of the conflicts of the time; the chronicles of the age are wanting in the power of description and, indeed, in all literary gift, but we gather that the legions were beginning to give way when Claudius brought up reinforcements to their help. These fresh troops fell upon the barbarian rear, and wholly changed the fortunes of the day. But the victory of Nissa did not put an end to the war. Nor, indeed, did Claudius live to finish it. He did enough, it is true, to win the title of Gothicus, and to deserve it better than was sometimes the case with Emperors who were similarly honoured.[47] But he died--the victim, it was said, of a plague which had originated in the barbarian camp--after a reign of little more than two years, and left the completion of the war to his successor Aurelian.