378 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, sinuated, that the precarious loyalty of the soldiers ^^^' depended on the chance of every hour, and of every of Tacitus. accident ; but he represented, with the most convincing eloquence, the various dangers that might attend any farther delay in the choice of an emperor. Intelli- gence, he said, was already received, that the Germans had passed the Rhine, and occupied some of the strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambi- tion of the Persian king kept the east in perpetual alarms ; Egypt, Africa, and Illyricum, were exposed to foreign and domestic arms ; and the levity of Syria would prefer even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman laws. The consul then addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the senators'*, required his opinion on the important subject of a proper candidate for the vacant throne. Character If we Can prefer personal merit to accidental great- ness, we shall esteem the birth of Tacitus more truly noble than that of kings. He claimed his descent from the philosophic historian, whose writings will in- struct the last generations of mankind®. The senator Tacitus was then seventy -five years of age ^ The long period of his innocent life was adorned with wealth and honours. He had twice been invested with the consular dignity^, and enjoyed with elegance and so- briety his ample patrimony of between two and thrcQ millions sterling*^. The experience of so many princes, whom he had esteemed or endured, from the vain follies of Elagabalus to the useful rigour of Aurelian, d Vopiscus (in Hist. August, p. 227.) calls him " primae sententise con- sularis;" and soon afterwards, " princeps senatus." It is natural to suppose that the monarchs of Rome, disdaining that humble title, resigned it to the most ancient of the senators. e The only objection to this genealogy is, that the historian was named Cornelius ; the emperor, Claudius. But, under the lower empire, surnames were extremely various and uncertain.
- " Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 637. The Alexandrian Chronicle, by an obvious
mistake, transfers that age to Aurelian. s In the year 273 he was ordinary consul. But he must have been siif- fectus many years before, and most probably under Valerian.
- » Bis millies octingenties. Vopiscus in Hist. August, p. 229. This sum,
according to the old standard, was equivalent to eight hundred and forty thousand Roman pounds of silver, each of the value of three pounds sterling. But in the age of Tacitus the coin had lost much of its weight and purity.
