OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

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name of king, he possessed the full measure of chap.

regal power. In the reign of Severus, the se- __,*_

natewas tilled with polished and eloquent slavesfrom the eastern provinces, who justified per-sonal flattery by speculative principles of servi-tude. These new advocates of prerogative wereheard with pleasure by the court, and with pa-tience by the people, when they inculcated theduty of passive obedience, and descanted on theinevitable mischiefs of freedom. The lawyersand the historians concurred in teaching, thatthe imperial authority was held, not by the de-legated commission, but by the irrevocable re-signation of the senate; that the emperor wasfreed from the restraint of civil laws, coidd com-mand by his arbitrary will the lives and for-tunes of his subjects, and might dispose of theempire as of his private patrimony. b The mosteminent of the civil lawyers, and particularlyPapinian, Paulus, and Ulpian , flourished underthe house of Severus ; and the Roman jurispru-dence having closely united itself unth the sys-tem of monarchy, w as supposed to have attain-ed its full maturity and perfection.

The contemporaries of Severus, in the enjoy-ment of the peace and glory of his reign, forgavethe cruelties by which it had been introduced.Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of hismaxims and example, justly considered him asthe principal author of the decline of the Romanempire.

b Dion Cassius seems to have written with no other view, than toform these opinions into an historical system. The pandects willshew how assiduously the lawyers, on their side, laboured in the causeof prerogative.