lute monarchy disguised by the
forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their
throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly
professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose
supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed. [19]

[Footnote 19: Dion Cassius (l. liii. p. 703--714) has given a very loose
and partial sketch of the Imperial system. To illustrate and often to
correct him, I have meditated Tacitus, examined Suetonius, and consulted
the following moderns: the Abbe de la Bleterie, in the Memoires de
l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xix. xxi. xxiv. xxv. xxvii. Beaufort
Republique Romaine, tom. i. p. 255--275. The Dissertations of Noodt and
Gronovius de lege Regia, printed at Leyden, in the year 1731 Gravina de
Imperio Romano, p. 479--544 of his Opuscula. Maffei, Verona Illustrata,
p. i. p. 245, &c.] The face of the court corresponded with the forms 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. [20] 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.]

[Footnote 20: 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
favorite may be a gentleman.]

The deification of the emperors [21] is the only instance in which they
departed from their accustomed prudence and modesty. The Asiatic Greeks
were the first inventors, the successors of Alexander the first objects,
of this servile and impious mode of adulation. [211] It was easily
transferred from the kings to the governors of Asia; and the Roman
magistrates very frequently were adored as provincial deities, with the
pomp of altars and temples, of fe