pire.

[Footnote 63: Hist. August. p. 114. By this unusual precipitation, the
senate meant to confound the hopes of pretenders, and prevent the
factions of the armies.]

In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the
two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies,
however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of
chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a
singular exception; and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute
sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of
exercising the smallest employment, civil or military. But as the Roman
emperors were still considered as the generals and magistrates of the
republic, their wives and mothers, although distinguished by the name of
Augusta were never associated to their personal honors; and a female
reign would have appeared an inexpiable prodigy in the eyes of those
primitive Romans, who married without love, or loved without delicacy
and respect. [64] The haughty Agripina aspired, indeed, to share the
honors of the empire which she had conferred on her son; but her mad
ambition, detested by every citizen who felt for the dignity of Rome,
was disappointed by the artful firmness of Seneca and Burrhus. [65] The
good sense, or the indifference, of succeeding princes, restrained them
from offending the prejudices of their subjects; and it was reserved for
the profligate Elagabalus to discharge the acts of the senate with the
name of his mother Soaemias, who was placed by the side of the consuls,
and subscribed, as a regular member, the decrees of the legislative
assembly. Her more prudent sister, Mamaea, declined the useless and
odious prerogative, and a solemn law was enacted, excluding women
forever from the senate, and devoting to the infernal gods the head of
the wretch by whom this sanction should be violated. [66] The substance,
not the pageantry, of power. was the object of Mamaea's manly ambition.
She maintained an absolute and lasting empire over the mind of her son,
and in his affection the mother could not brook a rival. Alexander, with
her consent, married the daughter of a patrician; but his respect for
his father-in-law, and love for the empress, were inconsistent with the
tenderness of interest of Mamaea. The patrician was executed on the
ready accusation of treason, and the