I (JO

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

IV.

Legal ju-risdictionof the se-nate overthe empe-rors.

sed, his titles erased from the public monu-merits, his statues thrown down, his body drag-ged with a hook into the stripping-room of thegladiators, to satiate the public fury ; and theyexpressed some indignation against those offi-cious servants who had already presumed toscreen his remains from the justice of the se-nate. But Pertinax could not refuse those lastrites to the memory of Marcus, and the tearsof his first protector Claudius Pompeianus, wholamented the cruel fate of his brother-in-law,and lamented still more that he had deservedit . 1

These effusions of impotent rage against adead emperor, whom the senate had flatteredwhen alive with the most abject servility, be-trayed a just but ungenerous spirit of revenge.The legality of these decrees was however sup-ported by the principles of the imperial consti-tution. To censure, to depose, or to punishwith death, the first magistrate of the republic,who had abused his delegated trust, was theancient and undoubted prerogative of the Ro-man senate; 1 * but that feeble assembly wasobliged to content itself with inflicting on afallen tyrant that public justice, from which,during his life and reign, he had been shieldedby the strong arm of military despotism.

* Capitolinus gives us the particulars of these tumultuary votes,which were moved by one senator, and repeated, or rather chanted,by the whole body. Hist. August, pi 52.

b The senate condemned Nero to be put to death more majorum-Seuton. c. 49.