Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/105

CHAP. III.
_____of the administration. The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power. In all the offices of life, they affected to confound themselves with their subjects, and maintained with them an equal intercourse of visits and entertainments. Their habit, their palace, their table, were suited only to the rank of an opulent senator. Their family, however numerous or splendid, was composed entirely of their domestic slaves and freedmen^[1]. Augustus or Trajan would have blushed at employing the meanest of the Romans in those menial offices which, in the household and bedchamber of a limited monarch, are so eagerly solicited by the proudest nobles of Britain.

Deification.The deification of the emperors^[2] is the only instance in which they departed from their accustomed prudence and modesty. The Asiatic Greeks were the first inventors, the successors of Alexander the first objects, of this servile and impious mode of adulation. It was easily transferred from the kings to the governors of Asia; and the Roman magistrates very frequently were adored as provincial deities, with the pomp of altars and temples, of festivals and sacrifices^[3]. It was natural that the emperors should not refuse what the proconsuls had accepted ; and the divine honours which both the one and the other received from the provinces, attested rather the despotism than the servitude of Rome. But the conquerors soon imitated the vanquished nations in the arts of flattery ; and the imperious spirit of the first Caesar too easily consented to assume, during his lifetime, a place among the tutelar

1. A weak prince will always be governed by his domestics. The power of slaves aggravated the shame of the Romans ; and the senate paid court to a Pallas or a Narcissus. There is a chance that a modern favourite may be a gentleman.
2. See a treatise of Vandale de Consecratione Principum. It would be easier for me to copy, than it has been to verify, the quotations of that learned Dutchman.
3. See a dissertation of the abb6 Mongault in the first volume of the Academy of Inscriptions.