CHAP. XVII.
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[1]. 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 Cæsar 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 honourable and
sacred[2]. 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[3]. 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 cha-
- ↑ In the year of Rome 800, very few remained, not only of the old patrician families, but even of those which had been created by Cæsar and Augustus. Tacit. Annal. xi. 25. The family of Scaurus (a branch of the patrician Æmilii) was degraded so low that his father, who exercised the trade of a charcoal merchant, left him only ten slaves, and somewhat less than three hundred pounds sterling. Valerius Maximus, 1. iv. c. 4. n. 11; Aurel. Victor in Scauro. The family was saved from oblivion by the merit of the son.
- ↑ Tacit. Annal. xi. 25; Dion Cassius, 1. Hi. p. 693. The virtues of Agricola, who was created a patrician by the emperor Vespasian, reflected honour on that ancient order; but his ancestors had not any claim beyond an equestrian nobility.
- ↑ This failure would have been almost impossible, if it were true, as Casaubon compels Aurelius Victor to affirm, (ad Suetou. in Caesar, c. 42; see Hist. August, p. 203; and Casaubon. Comment, p. 220.) that Vespasian created at once a thousand patrician families. But this extravagant number is too much even for the whole senatorial order, unless we should include all the Roman knights who were distinguished by the permission of wearing the laticlave.
to brook the idea that the honour of the consulship should be bestowed on the obscure merit of his lieutenant Rlarius, (c. 64.) Two hundred years before, the race of the Metelli themselves were confounded among the plebeians of Rome; and from the etymology of their name of Ciecilius, there is reason to believe that those haughty nobles derived their origin from a sutler.
