o
appoint a successor whom your judgment shall declare worthy of
the Imperial purple! None of those whose guilt or misfortune have
contributed to our loss, shall ever reign over us." [1] The Roman
senators heard, without surprise, that another emperor had been
assassinated in his camp; they secretly rejoiced in the fall of
Aurelian; and, besides the recent notoriety of the facts, constantly
draws his materials from the Journals of the Senate, and the but the
modest and dutiful address of the legions, when it was communicated in
full assembly by the consul, diffused the most pleasing astonishment.
Such honors as fear and perhaps esteem could extort, they liberally
poured forth on the memory of their deceased sovereign. Such
acknowledgments as gratitude could inspire, they returned to the
faithful armies of the republic, who entertained so just a sense of
the legal authority of the senate in the choice of an emperor. Yet,
notwithstanding this flattering appeal, the most prudent of the assembly
declined exposing their safety and dignity to the caprice of an armed
multitude. The strength of the legions was, indeed, a pledge of their
sincerity, since those who may command are seldom reduced to the
necessity of dissembling; but could it naturally be expected, that a
hasty repentance would correct the inveterate habits of fourscore years?
Should the soldiers relapse into their accustomed seditions, their
insolence might disgrace the majesty of the senate, and prove fatal to
the object of its choice. Motives like these dictated a decree, by
which the election of a new emperor was referred to the suffrage of the
military order.

[Footnote 1: Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 222. Aurelius Victor mentions
a formal deputation from the troops to the senate.]

The contention that ensued is one of the best attested, but most
improbable events in the history of mankind. [2] The troops, as if
satiated with the exercise of power, again conjured the senate to invest
one of its own body with the Imperial purple. The senate still persisted
in its refusal; the army in its request. The reciprocal offer was
pressed and rejected at least three times, and, whilst the obstinate
modesty of either party was resolved to receive a master from the hands
of the other, eight months insensibly elapsed; an amazing period of
tranquil anarchy, during which the Roman world remained without a
sovereign, without a usurper, and without a sedition. [201] The gener