elves with the popular rumors of Josephus, and the imperfect hints
of Dion and Suetonius.]

II. The insolence of the armies inspired Augustus with fears of a still
more alarming nature. The despair of the citizens could only attempt,
what the power of the soldiers was, at any time, able to execute. How
precarious was his own authority over men whom he had taught to violate
every social duty! He had heard their seditious clamors; he dreaded
their calmer moments of reflection. One revolution had been purchased by
immense rewards; but a second revolution might double those rewards. The
troops professed the fondest attachment to the house of Caesar; but the
attachments of the multitude are capricious and inconstant. Augustus
summoned to his aid whatever remained in those fierce minds of Roman
prejudices; enforced the rigor of discipline by the sanction of law;
and, interposing the majesty of the senate between the emperor and the
army, boldly claimed their allegiance, as the first magistrate of the
republic.

During a long period of two hundred and twenty years from the
establishment of this artful system to the death of Commodus, the
dangers inherent to a military government were, in a great measure,
suspended. The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their
own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was,
before and afterwards, productive of such dreadful calamities. Caligula
and Domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics:
[281] the convulsions which agitated Rome on the death of the former, were
confined to the walls of the city. But Nero involved the whole empire in
his ruin. In the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by
the sword; and the Roman world was shaken by the fury of the contending
armies. Excepting only this short, though violent eruption of military
license, the two centuries from Augustus [29] to Commodus passed away
unstained with civil blood, and undisturbed by revolutions. The emperor
was elected by the authority of the senate, and the consent of the
soldiers. [30] The legions respected their oath of fidelity; and it
requires a minute inspection of the Roman annals to discover three
inconsiderable rebellions, which were all suppressed in a few months,
and without even the hazard of a battle. [31]

[Footnote 281: Caligula perished by a conspiracy formed by the officers
of the praetorian troops, and Domitian would not, perhaps, have be