256 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, on the other hand, wliose oriijinal number was never XVII • • recruited till the end of tlie commonwealth, either failed in the ordinary course of nature, or were extin- guished in so many foreign and domestic wars, or, through a want of merit or fortune, insensibly mingled with the mass of the people*^. Very few remained who could derive their pure and genuine origin from the infiincy of the city, or even from that of the republic, when CfEsar 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^. 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^. Little more was left, when Constantine as- cended the throne, than a vague and imperfect tradi- tion, 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 mon- arch, would have been very inconsistent with the cha- 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 ple- beians 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. <^ In the year of Rome 800, very few remained, not only of the old patri- cian families, but even of those which had been created by Cajsar and Au- gustus. Tacit. Annal. xi. 25. The family of Scaurus (a branch of the pa- trician ^milii) 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. Tiie 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 Ca- saubon 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 fMiiilies. But this extravagant num- ber is too much even for the whole senatorial order, unless we should in- clude all the Roman knights who were distinguished by the permission of wearing the laticlave.
