of his enemies; and, both the sovereign and the favorite being objects of public detestation, malignity itself could coin no tale so black, and even improbable, that men were not willing to believe."
The drift of the 'Annals' can hardly be mistaken: it is an elaborate protest against Cæsarianism: it is also, what Pliny's 'Panegyric' was directly, an indirect, encomium on Trajan. Nothing is more agreeable to the ears of a new dynasty than a picture of a former one drawn with the darkest colours. A golden age has come; an iron age has passed away.
"Tacitus," observes Dean Merivale, "constructs the history of the empire with reference to a dominant idea in his own mind." It was such an "idea" that, in his writings on the French Revolution, misled and indeed perverted the genius of Burke, and rendered the veteran champion of English liberty the advocate of a corrupt monarchy and a still more corrupt Church. It was a fixed belief with Tacitus that Rome owed all her greatness to a senatorial government, or rather to an oligarchy. In feeling and in theory he was a patrician of the patricians; and consequently he attributed to Cæsarian usurpation the decline and decay of Rome. The battle of Actium was for him the Hegira from which dated the beginning of evil days. Rome, governed by consuls and tribunes chosen by a free people, was virtuous and valiant; governed by despots, she was profligate and faint-hearted. The once noble and patriotic senators were succeeded by a sordid and servile race, who, shrinking like dogs under the huntsman's whip, crouched under their lords in peace, and did not resent humiliation in war. Julius Cæsar had admitted to the benches of the senate, Gauls, Spani-
