rudent measures of
Diocletian, the numbers of the Praetorians were insensibly reduced,
their privileges abolished, [94] and their place supplied by two
faithful legions of Illyricum, who, under the new titles of Jovians
and Herculians, were appointed to perform the service of the Imperial
guards. [95] But the most fatal though secret wound, which the senate
received from the hands of Diocletian and Maximian, was inflicted by the
inevitable operation of their absence. As long as the emperors resided
at Rome, that assembly might be oppressed, but it could scarcely be
neglected. The successors of Augustus exercised the power of dictating
whatever laws their wisdom or caprice might suggest; but those laws were
ratified by the sanction of the senate. The model of ancient freedom
was preserved in its deliberations and decrees; and wise princes, who
respected the prejudices of the Roman people, were in some measure
obliged to assume the language and behavior suitable to the general and
first magistrate of the republic. In the armies and in the provinces,
they displayed the dignity of monarchs; and when they fixed their
residence at a distance from the capital, they forever laid aside the
dissimulation which Augustus had recommended to his successors. In
the exercise of the legislative as well as the executive power, the
sovereign advised with his ministers, instead of consulting the great
council of the nation. The name of the senate was mentioned with honor
till the last period of the empire; the vanity of its members was still
flattered with honorary distinctions; [96] but the assembly which had
so long been the source, and so long the instrument of power, was
respectfully suffered to sink into oblivion. The senate of Rome, losing
all connection with the Imperial court and the actual constitution, was
left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline
hill.

[Footnote 93: Lactantius accuses Maximian of destroying fictis
criminationibus lumina senatus, (De M. P. c. 8.) Aurelius Victor
speaks very doubtfully of the faith of Diocletian towards his friends.]

[Footnote 94: Truncatae vires urbis, imminuto praetoriarum cohortium
atque in armis vulgi numero. Aurelius Victor. Lactantius attributes to
Galerius the prosecution of the same plan, (c. 26.)]

[Footnote 95: They were old corps stationed in Illyricum; and according
to the ancient establishment, they each consisted of six thousand men.
They had acquired