praetorians,
recruited among the veterans, received high pay and frequent
donatives. Relying on these soldiers, the emperor had nothing to fear
from malcontents in Rome. But the danger came from the praetorians
themselves; as they had the power they believed they had free rein,
and their chief, the praetorian prefect, was sometimes stronger than
the emperor.

=The Freedmen of the Emperor.=--Ever since the monarchy had superseded
the republic, there was no other magistrate than the emperor. All the
business of the empire of 80,000,000 people originated with him. For
this crushing task he required assistants. He found them, not among
the men of great family whom he mistrusted, but among the slaves of
whom he felt sure. The secretaries, the men of trust, the ministers of
the emperor were his freedmen, the majority of them foreigners from
Greece or the Orient, pliant people, adepts in flattery,
inventiveness, and loquacity. Often the emperor, wearied with serious
matters, gave the government into their hands, and, as occurs in
absolute monarchies, instead of aiding their master, they supplemented
him. Pallas and Narcissus, the freedmen of Claudius, distributed
offices and pronounced judgments; Helius, Nero's freedman, had
knights and senators executed without even consulting his master. Of
all the freedmen Pallas was the most powerful, the richest, and the
most insolent; he gave his orders to his underlings only by signs or
in writing. Nothing so outraged the old noble families of Rome as
this. "The princes," said a Roman writer, "are the masters of citizens
and the slaves of their freedmen." Among the scandals with which the
emperors were reproached, one of the gravest was governing Roman
citizens by former slaves.

=Despotism and Disorder.=--This regime had two great vices:

1. _Despotism._--The emperor was invested for life with a power
unlimited, extravagant, and hardly conceivable; according to his fancy
he disposed of persons and their property, condemned, confiscated, and
executed without restraint. No institution, no law fettered his will.
"The decree of the emperor has the force of law," say the
jurisconsults themselves. Rome recognized then the unlimited despotism
that the tyrants had exercised in the Greek cities, no longer
circumscribed within the borders of a single city, but gigantic as the
empire itself. As in Greece some honorable tyrants had presented
themselves, one sees in Rome some wise and honest m