of these writers relates the story like an
orator, the second like a lawyer, and the third like a moralist, and
none of them probably without some intermixture of fable.]

On the twenty-fifth of September, near eight months after the murder of
Aurelian, the consul convoked an assembly of the senate, and reported
the doubtful and dangerous situation of the empire. He slightly
insinuated, that the precarious loyalty of the soldiers depended on the
chance of every hour, and of every accident; but he represented, with
the most convincing eloquence, the various dangers that might attend any
further delay in the choice of an emperor. Intelligence, he said, was
already received, that the Germans had passed the Rhine, and occupied
some of the strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambition of
the Persian king kept the East in perpetual alarms; Egypt, Africa, and
Illyricum, were exposed to foreign and domestic arms, and the levity of
Syria would prefer even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman
laws. The consul, then addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the
senators, [4] required his opinion on the important subject of a proper
candidate for the vacant throne.

[Footnote 4: Vopiscus (in Hist. August p. 227) calls him "primae
sententia consularis;" and soon afterwards Princeps senatus. It is
natural to suppose, that the monarchs of Rome, disdaining that humble
title, resigned it to the most ancient of the senators.]

If we can prefer personal merit to accidental greatness, we shall esteem
the birth of Tacitus more truly noble than that of kings. He claimed his
descent from the philosophic historian, whose writings will instruct
the last generations of mankind. [5] The senator Tacitus was then
seventy-five years of age. [6] The long period of his innocent life was
adorned with wealth and honors. He had twice been invested with the
consular dignity, [7] and enjoyed with elegance and sobriety his ample
patrimony of between two and three millions sterling. [8] The experience
of so many princes, whom he had esteemed or endured, from the vain
follies of Elagabalus to the useful rigor of Aurelian, taught him to
form a just estimate of the duties, the dangers, and the temptations
of their sublime station. From the assiduous study of his immortal
ancestor, he derived the knowledge of the Roman constitution, and of
human nature. [9] The voice of the people had already named Tacitus as
the citizen the most worthy o