ublic had been chosen by the people, to exercise,
in the senate and in the camp, the powers of peace and war, which were
afterwards translated to the emperors. But the tradition of ancient
dignity was long revered by the Romans and Barbarians. A Gothic
historian applauds the consulship of Theodoric as the height of all
temporal glory and greatness; the king of Italy himself congratulated
those annual favorites of fortune who, without the cares, enjoyed the
splendor of the throne; and at the end of a thousand years, two consuls
were created by the sovereigns of Rome and Constantinople, for the sole
purpose of giving a date to the year, and a festival to the people. But
the expenses of this festival, in which the wealthy and the vain aspired
to surpass their predecessors, insensibly arose to the enormous sum of
fourscore thousand pounds; the wisest senators declined a useless
honor, which involved the certain ruin of their families, and to this
reluctance I should impute the frequent chasms in the last age of the
consular Fasti. The predecessors of Justinian had assisted from the
public treasures the dignity of the less opulent candidates; the avarice
of that prince preferred the cheaper and more convenient method of
advice and regulation. Seven _processions_ or spectacles were the number
to which his edict confined the horse and chariot races, the athletic
sports, the music, and pantomimes of the theatre, and the hunting of
wild beasts; and small pieces of silver were discreetly substituted to
the gold medals, which had always excited tumult and drunkenness,
when they were scattered with a profuse hand among the populace.
Notwithstanding these precautions, and his own example, the succession
of consuls finally ceased in the thirteenth year of Justinian, whose
despotic temper might be gratified by the silent extinction of a title
which admonished the Romans of their ancient freedom. Yet the annual
consulship still lived in the minds of the people; they fondly expected
its speedy restoration; they applauded the gracious condescension of
successive princes, by whom it was assumed in the first year of their
reign; and three centuries elapsed, after the death of Justinian, before
that obsolete dignity, which had been suppressed by custom, could be
abolished by law. The imperfect mode of distinguishing each year by the
name of a magistrate, was usefully supplied by the date of a permanent
aera: the creation of the world, accordi