inting him of the treasonable designs of some discontented
generals, and authorizing him to declare himself the guardian and
successor of the throne, by assuming the title and ensigns of Caesar.
[18] The governor of Britain wisely declined the dangerous honor,
which would have marked him for the jealousy, or involved him in the
approaching ruin, of Commodus. He courted power by nobler, or, at
least, by more specious arts. On a premature report of the death of
the emperor, he assembled his troops; and, in an eloquent discourse,
deplored the inevitable mischiefs of despotism, described the happiness
and glory which their ancestors had enjoyed under the consular
government, and declared his firm resolution to reinstate the senate and
people in their legal authority. This popular harangue was answered by
the loud acclamations of the British legions, and received at Rome with
a secret murmur of applause. Safe in the possession of his little world,
and in the command of an army less distinguished indeed for discipline
than for numbers and valor, [19] Albinus braved the menaces of Commodus,
maintained towards Pertinax a stately ambiguous reserve, and instantly
declared against the usurpation of Julian. The convulsions of the
capital added new weight to his sentiments, or rather to his professions
of patriotism. A regard to decency induced him to decline the lofty
titles of Augustus and Emperor; and he imitated perhaps the example of
Galba, who, on a similar occasion, had styled himself the Lieutenant of
the senate and people. [20]

[Footnote 16: The Posthumian and the Ce'onian; the former of whom was
raised to the consulship in the fifth year after its institution.]

[Footnote 17: Spartianus, in his undigested collections, mixes up all
the virtues and all the vices that enter into the human composition, and
bestows them on the same object. Such, indeed are many of the characters
in the Augustan History.]

[Footnote 18: Hist. August. p. 80, 84.]

[Footnote 19: Pertinax, who governed Britain a few years before, had
been left for dead, in a mutiny of the soldiers. Hist. August. p 54.
Yet they loved and regretted him; admirantibus eam virtutem cui
irascebantur.]

[Footnote 20: Sueton. in Galb. c. 10.]

Personal merit alone had raised Pescennius Niger, from an obscure birth
and station, to the government of Syria; a lucrative and important
command, which in times of civil confusion gave him a near prospect of
the throne. Yet