each private citizen. No rank escaped this jealous vigilance; and private
liberty, even in the most indifferent circumstances of taste or expense,
was sacrificed to this inquisitorial rigor of _surveillance_ exercised on
behalf of the State, sometimes by erroneous patriotism, too often by
malice in disguise. To this spirit the highest public officers were
obliged to bow; the consuls, not less than others. And even the occasional
dictator, if by law irresponsible, acted nevertheless as one who knew that
any change which depressed his party, might eventually abrogate his
privilege. For the first time in the person of an imperator was seen a
supreme autocrat, who had virtually and effectively all the
irresponsibility which the law assigned, and the origin of his office
presumed. Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Augustus, as
much from natural taste as policy, was glad to dissemble it, and by every
means to withdraw it from public notice. But he had passed his youth as
citizen of a republic; and in the state of transition to autocracy, in his
office of triumvir, had experimentally known the perils of rivalship, and
the pains of foreign control, too feelingly to provoke unnecessarily any
sleeping embers of the republican spirit. Tiberius, though familiar from
his infancy with the servile homage of a court, was yet modified by the
popular temper of Augustus; and he came late to the throne. Caligula was
the first prince on whom the entire effect of his political situation was
allowed to operate; and the natural results were seen--he was the first
absolute monster. He must early have seen the realities of his position,
and from what quarter it was that any cloud could arise to menace his
security. To the senate or people any respect which he might think proper
to pay, must have been imputed by all parties to the lingering
superstitions of custom, to involuntary habit, to court dissimulation, or
to the decencies of external form, and the prescriptive reverence of
ancient names. But neither senate nor people could enforce their claims,
whatever they might happen to be. Their sanction and ratifying vote might