THE DECLINE AND FALL

103

chap quired skill, which could enable one man to

_ keep in constant subjection one hundred of his

fellow-creatures: the tyrant of a single town, ora small district, would soon discover that anhundred armed followers were a weak defenceagainst ten thousand peasants or citizens; butan hundred well-disciplined soldiers will com-mand, with despotic sway, ten millions of sub-jects ; and a body of ten or fifteen thousandguards will strike terror into the most numerouspopulace that ever crowded the streets of animmense capital.

The pr®. The prsetorian bands, whose licentious furyguards; was the first symptom and cause of the declineof the Roman empire, scarcely amounted to theTheir in- last-mentioned number.* They derived theirstmition. ; ns tituti 0 n from Augustus . That crafty tyrant,sensible that laws might colour, but that armsalone could maintain, his usurped dominion,had gradually formed this powerful body ofguards, in constant readiness to protect his per-son, to awe the senate, and either to prevent orto crush the first motions of rebellion. He dis-tinguished these favoured troops by a doublepay, and superior privileges; but, as their formidable aspect would at once have alarmed andirritated the Roman people, three cohorts onlywere stationed in the capital; whilst the re-

* They were originally nine or ten thousand men (for Tacitus andDion are not agreed upon the subject), divided into as many cohorts.Vitellius increased them to sixteen thousand, and, as far as we canlearn from inscriptions, they never afterwards sunk much below thatnumber. See Lipsius de magnitudine Romana, i, 4.