cy
of the occasion, the authority of their praefect, the reputation of
Pertinax, and the clamors of the people, obliged them to stifle their
secret discontents, to accept the donative promised by the new emperor,
to swear allegiance to him, and with joyful acclamations and laurels
in their hands to conduct him to the senate house, that the military
consent might be ratified by the civil authority. This important night
was now far spent; with the dawn of day, and the commencement of the new
year, the senators expected a summons to attend an ignominious ceremony.
[461] In spite of all remonstrances, even of those of his creatures who
yet preserved any regard for prudence or decency, Commodus had resolved
to pass the night in the gladiators' school, and from thence to take
possession of the consulship, in the habit and with the attendance of
that infamous crew. On a sudden, before the break of day, the senate was
called together in the temple of Concord, to meet the guards, and to
ratify the election of a new emperor. For a few minutes they sat in
silent suspense, doubtful of their unexpected deliverance, and
suspicious of the cruel artifices of Commodus: but when at length they
were assured that the tyrant was no more, they resigned themselves to
all the transports of joy and indignation. Pertinax, who modestly
represented the meanness of his extraction, and pointed out several
noble senators more deserving than himself of the empire, was
constrained by their dutiful violence to ascend the throne, and received
all the titles of Imperial power, confirmed by the most sincere vows of
fidelity. The memory of Commodus was branded with eternal infamy. The
names of tyrant, of gladiator, of public enemy resounded in every corner
of the house. They decreed in tumultuous votes, [462] that his honors
should be reversed, his titles erased from the public monuments, his
statues thrown down, his body dragged with a hook into the stripping
room of the gladiators, to satiate the public fury; and they expressed
some indignation against those officious servants who had already
presumed to screen his remains from the justice of the senate. But
Pertinax could not refuse those last rites to the memory of Marcus, and
the tears of his first protector Claudius Pompeianus, who lamented the
cruel fate of his brother-in-law, and lamented still more that he had
deserved it. [47]

[Footnote 461: The senate always assembled at the beginning of the yea