Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/112

CHAP. III.
_____Augustus. It was not without reluctance and remorse, that the pretorian guards had been persuaded to abandon the cause of the tyrant^[1]. The rapid downfall of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, taught the armies to consider the emperors as the creatures of t/wir 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^[2]: his own merit had raised him, in 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.

A.D. 96. Adoption and character of Trajan.Nerva had scarcely accepted the purple from the assassins of Domitian, before he discovered that his feeble age was unable to stem the torrent of public disorders, which had multiplied under the long tyranny of his predecessor. His mild disposition was respected by the good ; but the degenerate Romans required a more vigorous character, whose justice should strike terror into the guilty. Though he had several relations, he fixed his choice on a stranger. He adopted Trajan, then about forty years of age, and who commanded a powerful army in the Lower Germany; and immediately, by a decree of the senate, declared him A.D. 98.his colleague and successor in the empire^[3]. It is sincerely to be lamented, that whilst we are fatigued with the disgustful relation of Nero's crimes and follies, we

1. This idea is frequently and strongly inculcated by Tacitus. See Hist, i. 5. 16. ii. 76.
2. The emperor Vespasian, with his usual good sense, laughed at the genealogists who deduced his family from Flavins, the founder of Reate, (his native country,) and one of the companions of Hercules. Suet, in Vespasian, c. 12.
3. Dion, 1. Ixviii. p. 1121. Plin. Secund. in Panegyric.