V. CHAP. eldest son of the emperor, which seemed to assure his fortune, proved the occasion of his ruin. The animosities of the palace, by irritating the ambition and alarming the fears of Plautianus, threatened to produce a revolution, and obliged the emperor, who still loved him, to consent with reluctance to his death. After the fall of Plautianus, an eminent lawyer, the celebrated Papinian, was appointed to execute the motley office of Prætorian Præfect. The se Till the reign of Severus, the virtue and even the nate op good sense of the emperors had been distinguished by military their zeal or affected reverence for the senate, and by despotism. a tender regard to the nice frame of civil policy insti tuted by Augustus. But the youth of Severus had been trained in the implicit obedience of camps, and his riper years spent in the despotism of military command. His haughty and inflexible spirit could not discover, or would not acknowledge, the advantage of preserving an intermediate power, however imaginary, between the emperor and the army. He disdained to profess himself the servant of an assembly that detested his person and trembled at his frown; he issued his commands, where his request would have proved as effectual; assumed the conduct and style of a sovereign and a conqueror, and exercised, without disguise, the whole legislative, as well as the executive, power. The victory over the senate was easy and inglorious. Every eye and every passion were directed to the supreroga preme magistrate, who possessed the arms and treasure of the state; whilst the senate, neither elected by the people, nor guarded by military force, nor animated by public spirit, rested its declining authority on the frail and crumbling basis of. ancient opinion. The fine theory of a republic insensibly vanished, and made way for the more natural and substantial feelings New max ims of the Imperial tive, 68 One of his most daring and wanton acts of power, was the castration of an hundred free Romans, some of them married men, and even fathers of families; merely that his daughter, on her marriage with the young emperor, might be attended by a train of eunuchs worthy of an eastern queen. Dion, 1. lxxvi. p. 1271. 69 Dion, 1. lxxvi. p. 1274. Herodian, 1. liii. p. 122-129. The grammarian of Alexandria seems, as it is not unusual, much better acquainted with this mysterious transaction, and more assured of the guilt of Plautianus, than the Roman senator ventures to be. V. of monarchy. As the freedom and honours of Rome CHAP. were successively communicated to the provinces, in which the old government had been either unknown, or was remembered with abhorrence, the tradition of republican maxims was gradually obliterated. The Greek historians of the age of the Antonines" observe with a malicious pleasure, that although the sovereign of Rome, in compliance with an obsolete prejudice, abstained from the name of king, he possessed the full measure of regal power. In the reign of Severus, the senate was filled with polished and eloquent slaves from the eastern provinces, who justified personal flattery by speculative principles of servitude. These new advocates of prerogative were heard with pleasure by the court, and with patience by the people, when they inculcated the duty of passive obedience, and descanted on the inevitable mischiefs of freedom. The lawyers and the historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will, the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony"1. The most eminent of the civil lawyers, and particularly Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, flourished under the house of Severus; and the Roman jurisprudence having closely united itself with the system of monarchy, was supposed to have attained its full maturity and perfection. The contemporaries of Severus, in the enjoyment of the peace and glory of his reign, forgave the cruelties by which it had been introduced. Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example, justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire. 70 Appian. in Prom. 71 Dion Cassius seems to have written with no other view than to form these opinions into an historical system. The Pandects will shew how as. siduously the lawyers, on their side, laboured in the cause of prerogative. CHAP. CHAPTER VI. The Death of Severus.-Tyranny of Caracalla.— nances. THE ascent to greatness, however steep and danVI. gerous, may entertain an active spirit with the conGreatness sciousness and exercise of its own powers; but the posand dis- session of a throne could never yet afford a lasting sacontent of tisfaction to an ambitious mind. This melancholy truth Severus. His wife the empress Julia. was felt and acknowledged by Severus. Fortune and merit had, from an humble station, elevated him to the first place among mankind. "He had been all things," as he said himself, "and all was of little value1." Distracted with the care, not of acquiring, but of preserving an empire, oppressed with age and infirmities, careless of fame, and satiated with power, all his prospects of life were closed. The desire of perpetuating the greatness of his family, was the only remaining wish of his ambition and paternal tenderness. Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology; which, in almost every age, except the present, has maintained its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost his first wife, whilst he was governor of the Lionnese Gaul3. In the choice of a second, he sought only to connect himself with some favourite of fortune; and as soon as he had discovered that a 1 Hist. August. p. 71. “Omnia fui et nihil expedit.” 2 Dion Cassius, 1. lxxvi. p. 1284. 3 About the year 186, M. de Tillemont is miserably embarrassed with a passage of Dion, in which the empress Faustina, who died in the year 175, is introduced as having contributed to the marriage of Severus and Julia (1. lxxiv, p. 1243.) The learned compiler forgot, that Dion is relating, not a real fact, but a dream of Severus; and dreams are circumscribed to no limits of time or space. Did M. de Tillemont imagine that marriages were consummated in the temple of Venus at Rome? Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 389. Note 6. VI. young lady of Emesa in Syria had a royal nativity, CHAP. he solicited and obtained her hand Julia Domna (for that was her name) deserved all that the stars could promise her. She possessed, even in an advanced age, the attractions of beautys, and united to a lively imagination, a firmness of mind, and strength of judgment seldom bestowed on her sex. Her amiable qualities never made any deep impression on the dark and jealous temper of her husband; but in her son's reign, she administered the principal affairs of the empire, with a prudence that supported his authority; and with a moderation that sometimes corrected his wild extravagancies. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy, with some success, and with the most splendid reputation. She was the patroness of every art, and the friend of every man of genius'. The grateful flattery of the learned has celebrated her virtues; but, if we may credit the scandal of ancient history, chastity was very far from being the most conspicuous virtue of the empress Julia3. racalla Two sons, Caracalla and Geta, were the fruit of Their two this marriage, and the destined heirs of the empire. sons, CaThe fond hopes of the father, and of the Roman world, and Geta. were soon disappointed by these vain youths, who displayed the indolent security of hereditary princes; and a presumption that fortune would supply the place of merit, and application. Without any emulation of virtue or talents, they discovered, almost from their infancy, a fixed and implacable antipathy for each other. Their muTheir aversion, confirmed by years, and fomented by tual averthe arts of their interested favourites, broke out in each childish, and, gradually in more serious, competi- other, tions; and, at length, divided the theatre, the circus, 4 Hist. August. p. 65. 5 Hist. August. p. 85. 6 Dion Cassius, 1. lxxvii. p. 1304.-1314. 7 See a Dissertation of Menage, at the end of his edition of Diogenes Laertius, de Fominis Philosophis. 8 Dion 1. lxxvi. p. 1285. Aurelius Victor. 9 Bassianus was his first name, as it had been that of his maternal grandfather. During his reign he assumed the appellation of Antoninus, which is employed by lawyers and ancient historians. After his death, the public indignation loaded him with the nick-names of Tarantus and Caracalla. The first was borrowed from a celebrated Gladiator, the second from a long Gallic gown which he distributed to the people of Rome. sion to VI. CHAP. and the court, into two factions; actuated by the hopes and fears of their respective leaders. The prudent emperor endeavoured, by every expedient of advice and authority, to allay this growing animosity. The unhappy discord of his sons clouded all his prospects, and threatened to overturn a throne raised with so much labour, cemented with so much blood, and guarded with every defence of arms and treasure. With an impartial hand he maintained between them an exact balance of favour, conferred on both the rank of Augustus, with the revered name of Antoninus; and for the first time the Roman world beheld three emThree em-perors1o. Yet even this equal conduct served only to inflame the contest, while the fierce Caracalla asserted the right of primogeniture, and the milder Geta courted the affections of the people and the soldiers. In the anguish of a disappointed father, Severus foretold, that the weaker of his sons would fall a sacrifice to the stronger; who, in his turn, would be ruined by his own vices11. perors. The Cale war. In these circumstances the intelligence of a war in donian Britain and of an invasion of the province by the barA. D. 208. barians of the North, was received with pleasure by Severus. Though the vigilance of his lieutenants might have been sufficient to repel the distant enemy, he resolved to embrace the honourable pretext of withdrawing his sons from the luxury of Rome, which enervated their minds and irritated their passions; and of inuring their youth to the toils of war and government. Notwithstanding his advanced age (for he was above three-score), and his gout, which obliged him to be carried in a litter, he transported himself in person into that remote island, attended by his two sons, his whole court, and a formidable army. He immediately passed the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus, and entered the enemy's country, with a design of completing the long attempted conquest of Britain. He penetrated to the northern extremity of the island, 10 The elevation of Caracalla is fixed by the accurate M. de Tillemont to the year 198: the association of Geta to the year 208. 11 Herodian, l. iii. p. 130, The lives of Caracalla and Geta in the Augustan History. |