CHAP. III.
_____of the administration. The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power. In all the offices of life, they affected to confound themselves with their subjects, and maintained with them an equal intercourse of visits and entertainments. Their habit, their palace, their table, were suited only to the rank of an opulent senator. Their family, however numerous or
splendid, was composed entirely of their domestic slaves and freedmen[1]. Augustus or Trajan would have blushed at employing the meanest of the Romans in those menial offices which, in the household and bedchamber of a limited monarch, are so eagerly solicited by the proudest nobles of Britain.
- ↑ A weak prince will always be governed by his domestics. The power of slaves aggravated the shame of the Romans ; and the senate paid court to a Pallas or a Narcissus. There is a chance that a modern favourite may be a gentleman.
- ↑ See a treatise of Vandale de Consecratione Principum. It would be easier for me to copy, than it has been to verify, the quotations of that learned Dutchman.
- ↑ See a dissertation of the abb6 Mongault in the first volume of the Academy of Inscriptions.