unfortunate competitors. He was irritated by the just suspicion that he had never possessed the affections of the senate, and he concealed his old malevolence under the recent discovery of some treasonable correspondences. Thirty-five senators, however, accused of having favoured the party of Albinus, he freely pardoned, and, by his subsequent behaviour, endeavoured to convince them that he had forgotten, as well as forgiven, their supposed offences. But, at the same time, he condemned forty-one 57 other senators, whose names history has recorded; their wives, children, and clients attended them in death, and the noblest provincials of Spain and Gaul were involved in the same ruin. Such rigid justice, for so he termed it, was, in the opinion of Severus, the only conduct capable of ensuring peace to the people or stability to the prince; and he condescended slightly to lament that, to be mild, it was necessary that he should first be cruel.58 The wisdom and justice of his govern ment. a The true interest of an absolute monarch generally coincides with that of his people. Their numbers, their wealth, their order, and their security are the best and only foundations of his real greatness; and were he totally devoid of virtue, prudence might supply its place, and would dictate the same rule of conduct. Severus considered the Roman empire as his property, and had no sooner secured the possession, than he bestowed his care on the cultivation and improvement of so valuable an acquisition. Salutary laws, executed with inflexible firmness, soon corrected most of the abuses with which, since the death of Marcus, every part of the government had been infected. In the administration of justice, the judgments of the emperor were characterised by attention, discernment, and impartiality; and, whenever he deviated from the strict line of equity, it was generally in favour of the poor and oppressed; not so much indeed from any sense of humanity, as from the natural propensity of a despot to humble the pride of greatness, and to sink all his subjects to the same common level of absolute dependence. His expensive taste for building, magnificent shows, 57 Dion (1. lxxv. [c. 8] p. 1262); only twenty-nine senators are mentioned by him, but forty-one are named in the Augustan History, p. 69 [Spartian. Sever. c. 13], among whom were six of the name of Pescennius. Herodian (1. iii. [c. 8] p. 115) speaks in general of the cruelties of Severus. peace and and, above all, a constant and liberal distribution of corn and provisions, were the surest means of captivating the affection of the Roman people.59 The misfortunes of civil discord were General obliterated. The calm of peace and prosperity was once prosperity. more experienced in the provinces; and many cities, restored by the munificence of Severus, assumed the title of his colonies, and attested by public monuments their gratitude and felicity.60 The fame of the Roman arms was revived by that warlike and successful emperor, 61 and he boasted, with a just pride, that, having received the empire oppressed with foreign and domestic wars, he left it established in profound, universal, and honourable peace." 62 of military Although the wounds of civil war appeared completely healed, its mortal poison still lurked in the vitals of the constitution. Relaxation Severus possessed a considerable share of vigour and ability; discipline. but the daring soul of the first Cæsar, or the deep policy of Augustus, were scarcely equal to the task of curbing the insolence of the victorious legions. By gratitude, by misguided policy, by seeming necessity, Severus was induced to relax the nerves of discipline." The vanity of his soldiers was flattered with the honour of wearing gold rings; their ease was indulged in the permission of living with their wives in the idleness of quarters. He increased their pay beyond the example of former times, and taught them to expect, and soon to claim, extraordinary donatives on every public occasion of danger or festivity. Elated by success, enervated by luxury, and raised above the level of subjects by their dangerous privileges,' they soon became incapable of military fatigue, oppressive to the country, and impatient of a just subordination. Their officers asserted the superiority of rank by a more profuse and elegant luxury. There is still extant a letter of Severus, lamenting the licentious state of the 64 59 Dion, 1. lxxvi. [c. 1] p. 1272. Hist. August. p. 67. [Spartian. Sever. c. 8.] Severus celebrated the secular games with extraordinary magnificence, and he left in the public granaries a provision of corn for seven years, at the rate of 75,000 modii, or about 2500 quarters, per day. I am persuaded that the granaries of Severus were supplied for a long term, but I am not less persuaded that policy on one hand, and admiration on the other, magnified the hoard far beyond its true contents. [Cf. Hist. Aug. p. 73 (Spart. Sever. c. 23).] 60 See Spanheim's treatise of ancient medals, the inscriptions, and our learned travellers Spon and Wheeler, Shaw, Pocock, &c., who, in Africa, Greece, and Asia, have found more monuments of Severus than of any other Roman emperor whatsoever. 61 He carried his victorious arms to Seleucia and Ctesiphon, the capitals of the Parthian monarchy. I shall have occasion to mention this war in its proper place. 62 Etiam in Britannis, was his own just and emphatic expression. Hist. August. 73. [Spartian. Sever. c. 23.] 63 Herodian, 1. iii. [c. 8] p. 115. Hist. August. p. 68. [Spartian. Sever. c. 12.] 64 Upon the insolence and privileges of the soldiers, the 16th satire, falsely ascribed to Juvenal, may be consulted; the style and circumstances of it would induce me to believe that it was composed under the reign of Severus, or that of his son. army, and exhorting one of his generals to begin the necessary reformation from the tribunes themselves; since, as he justly observes, the officer who has forfeited the esteem, will never command the obedience, of his soldiers.65 Had the emperor pursued the train of reflection, he would have discovered that the primary cause of this general corruption might be ascribed, not, indeed, to the example, but to the pernicious indulgence, however, of the commander-in-chief. New establishment of the Prætorian guards. The Prætorians, who murdered their emperor and sold the empire, had received the just punishment of their treason; but the necessary, though dangerous, institution of guards, was soon restored on a new model by Severus, and increased to four times the ancient number. 66 Formerly these troops had been recruited in Italy; and as the adjacent provinces gradually imbibed the softer manners of Rome, the levies were extended to Macedonia, Noricum, and Spain. In the room of these elegant troops, better adapted to the pomp of courts than to the uses of war, it was established by Severus, that from all the legions of the frontiers the soldiers most distinguished for strength, valour, and fidelity should be occasionally draughted, and promoted, as an honour and reward, into the more eligible service of the guards. 67 By this new institution the Italian youth were diverted from the exercise of arms, and the capital was terrified by the strange aspect and manners of a multitude of barbarians. But Severus flattered himself that the legions would consider these chosen Prætorians as the representatives of the whole military order; and that the present aid of fifty thousand men, superior in arms and appointments to any force that could be brought into the field against them, would for ever crush the hopes of rebellion, and secure the empire to himself and his posterity. The command of these favoured and formidable troops soon became the first office of the empire. As the government degenerated into military despotism, the Prætorian præfect, who in his origin had been a simple captain of the guards, The office of Prato rian præ fect. was placed not only at the head of the army, but of the finances, and even of the law. In every department of administration he represented the person, and exercised the authority, of the emperor. The first præfect who enjoyed and abused this immense power was Plautianus, the favourite minister of Severus. His reign lasted above ten years, till the marriage of his daughter with the eldest son of the emperor, which seemed to assure his fortune, proved the occasion of his ruin. The animosities of the palace, by irritating the ambition and alarming the fears of Plautianus, threatened to produce a revolution, and obliged the emperor, who still loved him, to consent with reluctance to his death.69 After the fall of Plautianus, an eminent lawyer, the celebrated Papinian, was appointed to execute the motley office of Prætorian præfect. oppressed Till the reign of Severus the virtue, and even the good sense, of the emperors had been distinguished by their real or The senate affected reverence for the senate, and by a tender regard military to the nice frame of civil policy instituted by Augustus. despotism. But the youth of Severus had been trained in the implicit obedience of camps, and his riper years spent in the despotism of military command. His haughty and inflexible spirit could not discover, or would not acknowledge, the advantage of preserving an intermediate power, however imaginary, between the emperor and the army. He disdained to profess himself the servant of an assembly that detested his person and trembled at his frown; he issued his commands where 68 One of his most daring and wanton acts of power was the castration of an hundred free Romans, some of them married men, and even fathers of families, merely that his daughter, on her marriage with the young emperor, might be attended by a train of eunuchs worthy of an eastern queen. Dion, 1. lxxvi. [c. 1] p. 1271. 69 Dion, 1. lxxvi. [c. 4] p. 1274. Herodian, 1. iii. [c. 12] p. 122, 129. The grammarian of Alexandria seems, as is not unusual, much better acquainted with this mysterious transaction, and more assured of the guilt of Plautianus, than the Roman senator ventures to be. præfects; and, secondly, by choosing them exclusively from the equestrian order. The wisdom of the first precaution was shown by the peril to which Tiberius was exposed by intrusting to Sejanus the sole command; and the second continued to be observed till the reign of Alexander Severus, when all danger to the monarchy from the influence of the senate had entirely disappeared. (Lamprid. Alex. Seyer. c. 10.) After the reign of Tiberius there were generally two præfects, though occasionally we find only one, as in the case of Plautianus under Septimius Severus, and sometimes even three. (See c. 4, note 26.) The power of the præfects was extended, first, by placing all the troops in the empire under their authority, and, secondly, by giving them jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases. They appear to have obtained civil jurisdiction for the first time under Hadrian. As the præfects were regarded as the representatives of the emperors, they came to exercise all the functions of the emperors. Thus they possessed not only the supreme military and judicial authority, but even legislative powers, and the control of the finances and the provinces. Hence the office lost its exclusively military character, and was frequently held by civilians. See Drakenborch, De Officio Præfecti Prætorio, Traj. ad Rhen. 1707; Marquardt in Becker's Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 286, seq. S. his request would have proved as effectual; assumed the conduct and style of a sovereign and a conqueror, and exercised, without disguise, the whole legislative as well as the executive power. New max ims of the Imperial preroga The victory over the senate was easy and inglorious. Every eye and every passion were directed to the supreme magistrate, who possessed the arms and treasure of the state; whilst tive. the senate, neither elected by the people, nor guarded by military force, nor animated by public spirit, rested its declining authority on the frail and crumbling basis of ancient opinion. The fine theory of a republic insensibly vanished, and made way for the more natural and substantial feelings of monarchy. As the freedom and honours of Rome were successively communicated to the provinces, in which the old government had been either unknown or was remembered with abhorrence, the tradition of republican maxims was gradually obliterated. The Greek historians of the age of the Antonines 70 observe, with a malicious pleasure, that, although the sovereign of Rome, in compliance with an obsolete prejudice, abstained from the name of king, he possessed the full measure of regal power. In the reign of Severus the senate was filled with polished and eloquent slaves from the eastern provinces, who justified personal flattery by speculative principles of servitude. These new advocates of prerogative were heard with pleasure by the court, and with patience by the people, when they inculcated the duty of passive obedience, and descanted on the inevitable mischiefs of freedom. The lawyers and the historians concurred in teaching that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command, by his arbitrary will, the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony. The most eminent of the civil lawyers, and particularly Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, flourished under the house of Severus; and the Roman jurisprudence, having closely united itself with the system of monarchy, was supposed to have attained its full maturity and perfection. The contemporaries of Severus, in the enjoyment of the peace and glory of his reign, forgave the cruelties by which it had been introduced. Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example, justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire. 70 Appian in Procem. [c. 6.] 71 Dion Cassius seems to have written with no other view than to form these opinions into an historical system. The Pandects will show how assiduously the lawyers, on their side, laboured in the cause of prerogative, |