artful system of the imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government.

I. The death of Cæsar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished wealth and honour on his adherents; but the most favoured friends of his uncle were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions might defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance could not secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican; and the Romans, who revered the memory of Brutus,* would applaud the imitation of his virtue. Cæsar had provoked his fate, as much by the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself. The consul or the tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a

motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor.

There appears, indeed, one memorable occasion, in which the senate, after seventy years of patience, made an ineffectual attempt to reassume its long-forgotten rights. When the throne was vacant by the murder of Caligula, the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol, condemned the memory of the Cæsars, gave the watchword liberty to the few cohorts who faintly adhered to their standard, and during eight-and-forty hours, acted as the independent chiefs of a free commonwealth. But while they deliberated, the

fiction, is just and elegant; but when he considers this change of character as real, and ascribes it to the power of philosophy, he does too much honour to philosophy and to Octavianus. * Two centuries after the establishment of monarchy, the Emperor Marcus Antoninus recommends the character of Brutus as a perfect model of Roman virtue.

96

OBEDIENCE OF THE ARMIES.

[CH. IIJ. prætorian guards had resolved. The stupid Claudius, brother of Germanicus, was already in their camp, invested with the imperial purple, and prepared to support his election by arms. The dream of liberty was at an end; and the senate awoke to all the horrors of inevitable servitude. Deserted by the people, and threatened by a military force, that feeble assembly was compelled to ratify the choice of the prætorians, and to embrace the benefit of an amnesty, which Claudius had the prudence to offer, and the generosity to observe.*

II. The insolence of the armies inspired Augustus with fears of a still more alarming nature. The despair of the citizens could only attempt what the power of the soldiers was, at any time, able to execute. How precarious was his own authority over men whom he had taught to violate every social duty! He had heard their seditious clamours; he dreaded their calmer moments of reflection. One revolution had been purchased by immense rewards; but a second revolution might double those rewards. The troops professed the fondest attachment to the house of Cæsar; but the attachments of the multitude are capricious and inconstant. Augustus summoned to his aid whatever remained in those fierce minds of Roman prejudices; enforced the rigour of discipline by the sanction of law; and interposing the majesty of the senate between the emperor and the army, boldly claimed their allegiance, as the first magistrate of the republic.t

During a long period of two hundred and twenty years, from the establishment of this artful system to the death of Commodus, the dangers inherent to a military government were, in a great measure, suspended. The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and afterwards, productive of such dreadful calamities. Caligula and Domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own

* It is much to be regretted, that we have lost the part of Tacitus which treated of that transaction. We are forced to content ourselves with the popular rumours of Josephus, and the imperfect hints of Dion and Suetonius. Augustus restored the ancient severity of discipline. After the civil wars, he dropped the endearing name of fellow-soldiers, and called them only soldiers. (Sueton. in August. c. 25.) See the use Tiberius made of the senate, in the mutiny of the Pannonian legions. (Tacit. Annal. 1.)

domestics;* the convulsions which agitated Rome on the death of the former were confined to the walls of the city. But Nero involved the whole empire in his ruin. In the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword; and the Roman world was shaken by the fury of the contending armies. Excepting only this short, though violent, eruption of military licence, the two centuries from Augustus to Commodus passed away unstained with civil blood, and undisturbed by revolutions. The emperor was elected by the authority of the senate, and the consent of the soldiers.t The legions respected their oath of fidelity; and it requires a minute inspection of the Roman annals to discover three inconsiderable rebellions, which were all suppressed in a few months, and without even the hazard of a battle.‡

In elective monarchies, the vacancy of the throne is a

* [Caligula (or more properly Caius, as he is generally called by the ancients, for the other was a mere nick-name, given by the soldiers) perished through a conspiracy among the officers of the prætorian guards, in which his domestics had no share; and Domitian would probably have escaped assassination, had not the act been sanctioned by the two chiefs of that formidable body.-WENCK.] These words seem to have been The first was

the constitutional language. See Tacit. Annal. 13, 4. Camillus Scribonianus, who took up arms in Dalmatia against Claudius, and was deserted by his own troops in five days. The second, L. Antonius, in Germany, who rebelled against Domitian; and the third, Avidius Cassius, in the reign of M. Antoninus. The two last reigned but a few months, and were cut off by their own adherents. We may observe, that both Camillus and Cassius coloured their ambition with the design of restoring the republic; a task, said Cassius, peculiarly reserved for his name and family. [The soldiers scarcely deserve the praise here too liberally bestowed on them. Claudius was obliged to purchase their consent to his elevation; his donatives, at that time, and on some subsequent occasions, impoverished the treasury. Often, too, were the cruelties of tyrants favoured by these domineering guards, who were conciliated by extravagant gifts and a pernicious relaxation of discipline. Their excesses were, indeed, chiefly confined to the city of Rome; but as that was the seat of government, their influence was widely felt. Revolts in distant parts of the empire were more frequent than Gibbon has admitted. Under Tiberius the German legions attempted, by seditious force, to make Germanicus assume the imperial purple. When Claudius Civilis rebelled, under Vespasian, the legions of Gaul put their general to death, and offered to support the revolted natives. Julius Sabinus was proclaimed emperor, &c. The wars, in which the troops were employed by Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, the strict discipline enforced by these emperors, and their personal merit, restored for a time a greater degree of subordination.— WENCK.]

VOL. I.

H

98

THE RACE OF THE CESARS AND

[сн. III. moment big with danger and mischief. The Roman emperors, desirous to spare the legions that interval of suspense, and the temptation of an irregular choice, invested their designed successor with so large a share of present power, as should enable him, after their decease, to assume the remainder, without suffering the empire to perceive the change of masters. Thus Augustus, after all his fairer prospects had been snatched from him by untimely deaths, rested his last hopes on Tiberius, obtained for his adopted son the censorial and tribunitian powers, and dictated a law, by which the future prince was invested with an authority equal to his own, over the provinces and the armies.* Thus Vespasian subdued the generous mind of his eldest son. Titus was adored by the eastern legions, which, under his command, had recently achieved the conquest of Judea. His power was dreaded, and, as his virtues were clouded by the intemperance of youth, his designs were suspected. Instead of listening to such unworthy suspicions, the prudent monarch associated Titus to the full powers of the imperial dignity; and the grateful son ever approved himself the humble and faithful minister of so indulgent a father.+

The good sense of Vespasian engaged him, indeed, to embrace every measure that might confirm his recent and precarious elevation. The military oath, and the fidelity of the troops, had been consecrated, by the habits of a hundred years to the name and family of the Cæsars; and although that family had been continued only by the fictitious rite of adoption, the Romans still revered, in the person of Nero, the grandson of Germanicus, and the lineal successor of Augustus. It was not without reluctance and remorse,

Velleius Paterculus, 1. 2, c. 121. Sueton. in Tiber. c. 20. [Tiberius received the tribunitian, proconsular, and imperial powers; also the censorial, but without the title of censor, which the emperors never bore. The same dignities were bestowed on Titus by Vespasian, and on Trajan by Nerva. The title of imperator was given to none who had not first obtained that of proconsul, therefore was not held by Agrippa, whom Augustus had raised no higher than the tribuneship. These dignities all denote a share in the government, but those who enjoyed them remained subordinate to Augustus. M. Antoninus afforded the first example of a perfectly co-equal colleague, by giving the title of Augustus to his adopted brother, L. Verus. Compare Pagi Crit. Baron. T. J. ad A. c. 71.-WENCK.] + Sueton.

in Tit. c. 6. Plin. in Præfat. Hist. Natur.

that the prætorian guards had been persuaded to abandon the cause of the tyrant.* The rapid downfall of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, taught the armies to consider the emperors as the creatures of their will, and the instruments of their licence. The birth of Vespasian was mean; his grandfather had been a private soldier, his father a petty officer of the revenue,† his own merit had raised him, în an advanced age, to the empire; but his merit was rather useful than shining, and his virtues were disgraced by a strict and even sordid parsimony. Such a prince consulted his true interest by the association of a son, whose more splendid and amiable character might turn the public attention, from the obscure origin, to the future glories of the Flavian house. Under the mild administration of Titus, the Roman world enjoyed a transient felicity, and his beloved memory served to protect, above fifteen years, the vices of his brother Domitian.§

Nerva had scarcely accepted the purple from the assassins

*This idea is frequently and strongly inculcated by Tacitus. See Hist, i. 5, 16; ii. 76. The emperor Vespasian, with his usual good sense. laughed at the genealogists, who deduced his family from Flavius, the founder of Reate (his native country), and one of the companions of Hercules. Suet. in Vespasian, c. 12. [Vespasian was, no doubt,

of humble birth, especially when compared with his subsequent good fortune; yet his parentage was not so despicable as is here represented. His grandfather was not a common soldier, but a centurion, or captain; though it must be admitted, that the Roman leader of a hundred men was not considered to have so respectable a rank as the modern commander of a company in a regiment. His father held a profitable office in the collection of the Asiatic revenue, and the provincials, over whom he was placed, raised statues to commemorate the mildness of his administration. After this he carried on an extensive money-changing business, in the same manner as the knights. His mother was the daughter of a military tribune, and sister of a senator. If, in some cases, like an old man, he carried his frugality too far, it was always with the noblest intentions. He saved, not for himself, but for the commonwealth. No emperor, in so short a period, restored so successfully the sinking state; none adorned it with more splendid public works, or rewarded merit with a more magnanimous liberality. See Tillemont's opinion in his Hist. des Emp. tom. 2, p. 25-27, that, when the exigencies of the state compelled Vespasian to exact to the utmost, his avarice, though it might be less criminal, was nevertheless inexcusable.-WENCK.]

§ [The tyrant found a surer protection in his soldiers. He could only be rendered more hateful by the remembrance of Titus, to whose death he was suspected of having been accessory.-WENCK.]