V in his origin had been a simple captain of the CHAP. guards, 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 prefect 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." After the fall of Plautianus, an eminent lawyer, the celebrated Papinian, was appointed to exe cute the motely office of prætorian prefect. by military Till the reign of Severus, the virtue, and even The senate the good sense of the emperors had been distin-oppressed guished by their zeal or affected reverence for the despotism. senate, and by a tender regard to the nice frame of civil policy instituted by Augustus. But the youth of Severus had been trained in the implicit obedience of camps, and his riper years spent in One of his most daring and wanton acts of power, was the cas tration 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, p. 1271. The z Dion, 1. lxxvi, p. 1274. Herodian, 1. iii, p. 122-129. grammarian of Alexandria seems, as it 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. CHAP. the despotism of military command. His haughV. ty 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 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 preroga Live. The victory over the senate was easy and inimperial glorious. Every eye and every passion were directed to the supreme magistrate, who possessed the arms and treasure of the state; whilst 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, 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 a Appian in Proem. full measure of regal power. In the reign of Se- CHAP. verus, 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, Paulas, 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 enjoy ment 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. Dion Cassius seems to have written with no other view, than to form these opinions into an historical system. The pandects will shew how assiduously the lawyers, on their side, laboured in the cause of prerogative. VI. Greatness and discontent of Severus. CHAP. VI. The death of Severus.-Tyranny of Caracalla.Usurpation of Macrinus.—Follies of Elagabalus. -Virtues of Alexander Severus.—Licentiousness of the army-General state of the Roman fi nances. CHAP. THE ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own pow ers; but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind. This melancholy truth was felt and acknowledged by Severus. Fortune and merit had, from an humble station, elevated him to the first place among mankind. "He "had been all things," as he said himself, " and "all was of little value."a Distracted with the care, not of acquiring, but of preserving an empire, oppressed with age and infirmities, careless of fame, and satiated with power, all his prospects of life were closed. The desire of perpetuating the greatness of his family, was the only remaining wish of his ambition and paternal tenderness. His wife the em Like most of the Africans, Severus was pas press Julia, sionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpreta Hist. August. p. 71. "Omnia fui et nihil expedit." tion of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquaint- CHAP ed with the science of judicial astrology, which, VI. in almost every age except the present, has maintained its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost his first wife whilst he was gover, nor of the Lionese Gaul. In the choice of a second, he sought only to connect himself with some favourite of fortune; and as soon as he had discovered that a young lady of Emesa in Syria had a royal nativity, he solicited, and obtained her hand. Julia Domna (for that was her name) deserved all that the stars could promise her. She possessed, even in an advanced age, the at、 tractions of beauty; and united to a lively imagination a firmness of mind, and strength of judgment, seldom bestowed on her sex. Her amiable qualities never made any deep impression on the dark and jealous temper of her husband; but in her son's reign, she administered the prin cipal affairs of the empire, with a prudence that supported his authority, and with a moderation that sometimes corrected his wild extravagancies. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy, with some success, and with the most splendid • About the year 186, M. de Tillemont is miserably embarrassed with a passage of Dion, in which the empress Faustina, who died in the year 175, is introduced as having contributed to the marriage of Severus and Julia (1. lxxiv, p. 1243). The learned compiler forgot, that Dion is relating, not a real fact, but a dream of Severus ; and dreams are circumscribed to no limits of time or space. Did M. de Tillemont imagine that marriages were consummated in the temple of Venus at Rome? Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii, p. 389, note 6. d Hist. August. p. 65. Hist. August. p. 85. Dion Cassius, 1. lxxvii, p. 1304, 1814. |