Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/18

of the brave and moderate Agricola, "though, at the dawn of a most happy age, Nerva Cæsar blended things once irreconcilable—sovereignty and freedom—though Nerva Trajan is now daily augmenting the prosperity of the time; and though the public safety has not only our hopes and good wishes, but has also the certain pledge of their fulfilment, still, from the necessary condition of human frailty, the remedy works less quickly than the disease." The profound melancholy of these words will be obvious to every reader. He had lived to witness a senate honoured; the prætorians and the legions kept under restraint; the informers (delatores) banished or silenced; the people, if not content, controlled by an effective police; the provinces equitably ruled; the Cæsar, in semblance at least, only the first citizen; thoughts no longer manacled; books no longer burnt in the forum, or used as evidence of treason against their authors. Yet he could not hide from himself the precarious tenure of these blessings. The happy age that had dawned rested on a foundation of sand. Among the senators might lie hid, in case of another revolution—and Tacitus had witnessed the untimely ends of four Cæsars—another voluptuous Nero, another timid and sanguinary Domitian. The freedom which depends on the character of the reigning sovereign is ever uncertain. Even Caligula and Nero for a while ruled well. The conduct of Trajan made vain the apprehensions of Tacitus. But the experience of his earlier days affected all his later ones, and he never quite reconciled himself to a Cæsar in the place of elective consuls, or to a privy council in that of a senate.