110

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

III.

Court ofthe empe-rors.

selves the accountable ministers of the senate,whose supreme decrees they dictated andobeyed. 1

The face of the court corresponded with theforms of the administration. The emperors, ifwe except those tyrants whose capricious follyviolated every law of nature and decency, dis-dained that pomp and ceremony which mightoffend their countrymen, but could add nothingto their real power. In all the offices of life,they affected to confound themselves with theirsubjects, and maintained with them an equalintercourse of visits and entertainments. Theirhabit, their palace, their table, were suited onlyto the rank of an opulent senator. Their family,however numerous or splendid, was composedentirely of their domestic slaves and freedmen. uAugustus or Trajan would have blushed at em-ploying the meanest of the Romans in those me-nial offices, which, in the household and bed-chamber of a limited monarch, are so eagerlysolicited by the proudest nobles of Britain .

' Dion Cassius 1. liii, p. 703-714) has given a very loose and partialsketch of the imperial system. To illustrate, and often to correct, him,I have meditated Tacitus, examined Suetonius , and consulted the fol-lowing moderns : The Abb6 de la Bletcrie, in the Memoires de 1’Aca-demic des Inscriptions, tom. xix, xxi, xxiv xxv, xxvii. Beaufort,Republique Romaine, tom. i, p. 255-275. Two Dissertations of Noodtand Gronovius, de lege Regia, printed at Leyden, in the year 1731.Gravina de Imperio Romano, p. 479-544 of his Opuscula. Maflfei Ve-rona Illustrata, p. i, p. 245, &c.

" A weak prince will always be governed by his domestics. Thepower of slaves aggravated the shame of the Romans ; and the senatepaid court to a Pallas or a Narcissus. There is a chance that a modernfavourite may be a gentleman.