CHAP. V.
_____an imaginary power. In the luxurious idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight ; nor was it possible to conceal from them, that the person of the sovereign, the authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the seat of empire, were all in their hands. To divert the pretorian bands from these dangerous reflections, the firmest and best established princes were obliged to mix blandishments with commands, rewards v/ith punishments, to flatter their pride, indulge their pleasures, connive at their irregularities, and to purchase their precarious faith by a liberal donative ; which, since the elevation of Claudius, was exacted as a legal claim, on the accession of every new emperor[1].
- ↑ Claudius, raised by the soldiers to the empire, was the first who gave a donative. He gave quina dena, one hundred and twenty pounds. Sueton. in Claud, c. 10. When Marcus, with his colleague Lucius Verus, took quiet possession of the throne, he gave vicena, one hundred and sixty pounds, to each of the guards. Hist. August, p. 25; Dion, 1. Ixxiii. p. 1231. We may form some idea of the amount of these sums, by Hadrian's complaint, that the promotion of a Caesar had cost him ter millies, two millions and a half sterling.
- ↑ Cicero de Legibus, iii. 3. The first book of Livy, and the second of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, show the authority of the people, even in the election of the kings.
- ↑ They were originally recruited in Latium, Etruria, and the old colonies. Tacit. Annal. iv. 5. The emperor Otho compliments their vanity with the flattering titles of Italiae alumni, Romana vere juventus. Tacit. Hist. i. 84.