ine labore suscipitur. (Mamertin.
in Panegyr. Vet. xi. [x.] 2.) This exalted idea of the consulship is
borrowed from an oration (iii. p. 107) pronounced by Julian in the
servile court of Constantius. See the Abbe de la Bleterie, (Memoires de
l'Academie, tom. xxiv. p. 289,) who delights to pursue the vestiges of
the old constitution, and who sometimes finds them in his copious fancy]

The proudest and most perfect separation which can be found in any age
or country, between the nobles and the people, is perhaps that of the
Patricians and the Plebeians, as it was established in the first age of
the Roman republic. Wealth and honors, the offices of the state, and the
ceremonies of religion, were almost exclusively possessed by the former
who, preserving the purity of their blood with the most insulting
jealousy, [93] held their clients in a condition of specious vassalage.
But these distinctions, so incompatible with the spirit of a free
people, were removed, after a long struggle, by the persevering efforts
of the Tribunes. The most active and successful of the Plebeians
accumulated wealth, aspired to honors, deserved triumphs, contracted
alliances, and, after some generations, assumed the pride of ancient
nobility. [94] The Patrician families, on the other hand, whose original
number was never recruited till the end of the commonwealth, either
failed in the ordinary course of nature, or were extinguished in so
many foreign and domestic wars, or, through a want of merit or fortune,
insensibly mingled with the mass of the people. [95] Very few remained
who could derive their pure and genuine origin from the infancy of
the city, or even from that of the republic, when Caesar and Augustus,
Claudius and Vespasian, created from the body of the senate a competent
number of new Patrician families, in the hope of perpetuating an order,
which was still considered as honorable and sacred. [96] But these
artificial supplies (in which the reigning house was always included)
were rapidly swept away by the rage of tyrants, by frequent revolutions,
by the change of manners, and by the intermixture of nations. [97]
Little more was left when Constantine ascended the throne, than a vague
and imperfect tradition, that the Patricians had once been the first
of the Romans. To form a body of nobles, whose influence may restrain,
while it secures the authority of the monarch, would have been very
inconsistent with the character and policy of Con