ewards. The provinces, long oppressed by the ministers of the republic,
sighed for the government of a single person, who would be the master,
not the accomplice, of those petty tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing,
with a secret pleasure, the humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded
only bread and public shows; and were supplied with both by the
liberal hand of Augustus. The rich and polite Italians, who had almost
universally embraced the philosophy of Epicurus, enjoyed the present
blessings of ease and tranquillity, and suffered not the pleasing dream
to be interrupted by the memory of their old tumultuous freedom. With
its power, the senate had lost its dignity; many of the most noble
families were extinct. The republicans of spirit and ability had
perished in the field of battle, or in the proscription. The door of the
assembly had been designedly left open, for a mixed multitude of more
than a thousand persons, who reflected disgrace upon their rank, instead
of deriving honor from it. [2]

[Footnote 1: Orosius, vi. 18. * Note: Dion says twenty-five, (or three,)
(lv. 23.) The united triumvirs had but forty-three. (Appian. Bell. Civ.
iv. 3.) The testimony of Orosius is of little value when more certain
may be had.--W. But all the legions, doubtless, submitted to Augustus
after the battle of Actium.--M.]

[Footnote 2: Julius Caesar introduced soldiers, strangers, and
half-barbarians into the senate (Sueton. in Caesar. c. 77, 80.) The
abuse became still more scandalous after his death.]

The reformation of the senate was one of the first steps in which
Augustus laid aside the tyrant, and professed himself the father of
his country. He was elected censor; and, in concert with his faithful
Agrippa, he examined the list of the senators, expelled a few members,
[201] whose vices or whose obstinacy required a public example, persuaded
near two hundred to prevent the shame of an expulsion by a voluntary
retreat, raised the qualification of a senator to about ten thousand
pounds, created a sufficient number of patrician families, and accepted
for himself the honorable title of Prince of the Senate, [202] which had
always been bestowed, by the censors, on the citizen the most eminent
for his honors and services. [3] But whilst he thus restored the dignity,
he destroyed the independence, of the senate. The principles of a free
constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is
nominated by the executive.

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