Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/190

CHAP. VI.
_____ age of only ten years, the imperial title and the popular name of Antoninus. The beautiful figure of the youth, assisted by an additional donative, for which the ceremony furnished a pretext, might attract, it was hoped, the favour of the army, and secure the doubtful throne of Macrinus.

Discontent of the senate.The authority of the new sovereign had been ratified by the cheerful submission of the senate and provinces. They exulted in their unexpected deliverance from a hated tyrant ; and it seemed of little consequence to examine into the virtues of the successor of Caracalla. But as soon as the first transports of joy and surprise had subsided, they began to scrutinize the merits of Macrinus with a critical severity, and to arraign the hasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be always chosen in the senate; and the sovereign power, no longer exercised by the whole body, was always delegated to one of its members. But Macrinus was not a senator^[1]. The sudden elevation of the pretorian prefects betrayed the meanness of their origin ; and the equestrian order was still in possession of that great office, which commanded with arbitrary sway the lives and fortunes of the senate. A murmur of indignation was heard, that a man whose obscure^[2] extraction had never been illustrated by any signal service, should dare to invest himself with the purple, instead of bestowing it on some distinguished senator, equal in birth and dignity to the splendour of the imperial station. As soon as the cha-

1. Dion, 1. Ixxxviii. p. 1350. Elagabalus reproached his predecessor with daring lo seat himself on the throne ; though, as pretorian prefect, he could not have been admitted into the senate after the voice of the crier had cleared the house. The personal favour of Plautianus and Sejanus had broke through the established rule. They rose indeed from the equestrian order ; but they preserved the prefecture with the rank of senator, and even with the consulship.
2. He was a native of Caesarea in Numidia, and began his fortune by serving in the household of Plautian, from whose ruin he narrowly escaped. His enemies asserted, that he was born a slave, and had exercised, among other infamous professions, that of gladiator. The fashion of aspersing the birth and condition of an adversary, seems to have lasted from the time of the Greek orators, to the learned grammarians of the last age.