espotism, the Praetorian Praefect, who in his origin had been a simple
captain of the guards, [671] was placed not only at the head of the
army, but of the finances, and even of the law. In every department of
administration, he represented the person, and exercised the authority,
of the emperor. The first praefect who enjoyed and abused this immense
power was Plautianus, the favorite minister of Severus. His reign lasted
above then years, till the marriage of his daughter with the eldest son
of the emperor, which seemed to assure his fortune, proved the occasion
of his ruin. [68] The animosities of the palace, by irritating the
ambition and alarming the fears of Plautianus, [681] threatened to produce
a revolution, and obliged the emperor, who still loved him, to consent
with reluctance to his death. [69] After the fall of Plautianus, an
eminent lawyer, the celebrated Papinian, was appointed to execute the
motley office of Praetorian Praefect.

[Footnote 671: The Praetorian Praefect had never been a simple captain of
the guards; from the first creation of this office, under Augustus,
it possessed great power. That emperor, therefore, decreed that there
should be always two Praetorian Praefects, who could only be taken from
the equestrian order Tiberius first departed from the former clause of
this edict; Alexander Severus violated the second by naming senators
praefects. It appears that it was under Commodus that the Praetorian
Praefects obtained the province of civil jurisdiction. It extended only
to Italy, with the exception of Rome and its district, which was
governed by the Praefectus urbi. As to the control of the finances, and
the levying of taxes, it was not intrusted to them till after the great
change that Constantine I. made in the organization of the empire at
least, I know no passage which assigns it to them before that time; and
Drakenborch, who has treated this question in his Dissertation de
official praefectorum praetorio, vi., does not quote one.--W.]

[Footnote 68: One of his most daring and wanton acts of power, was the
castration of a hundred free Romans, some of them married men, and even
fathers of families; merely that his daughter, on her marriage with the
young emperor, might be attended by a train of eunuchs worthy of an
eastern queen. Dion, l. lxxvi. p. 1271.]

[Footnote 681: Plautianus was compatriot, relative, and the old friend,
of Severus; he had so completely shut up all access to the e