vate citizens; and were soon considered as the
eyes of the monarch, [160] and the scourge of the people. Under the warm
influence of a feeble reign, they multiplied to the incredible number
of ten thousand, disdained the mild though frequent admonitions of
the laws, and exercised in the profitable management of the posts a
rapacious and insolent oppression. These official spies, who regularly
corresponded with the palace, were encouraged by favor and reward,
anxiously to watch the progress of every treasonable design, from the
faint and latent symptoms of disaffection, to the actual preparation
of an open revolt. Their careless or criminal violation of truth and
justice was covered by the consecrated mask of zeal; and they might
securely aim their poisoned arrows at the breast either of the guilty or
the innocent, who had provoked their resentment, or refused to purchase
their silence. A faithful subject, of Syria perhaps, or of Britain, was
exposed to the danger, or at least to the dread, of being dragged in
chains to the court of Milan or Constantinople, to defend his life and
fortune against the malicious charge of these privileged informers. The
ordinary administration was conducted by those methods which extreme
necessity can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were
diligently supplied by the use of torture. [161]

[Footnote 160: Xenophon, Cyropaed. l. viii. Brisson, de Regno Persico,
l. i No 190, p. 264. The emperors adopted with pleasure this Persian
metaphor.]

[Footnote 161: For the Agentes in Rebus, see Ammian. l. xv. c. 3, l.
xvi. c. 5, l. xxii. c. 7, with the curious annotations of Valesius. Cod.
Theod. l. vi. tit. xxvii. xxviii. xxix. Among the passages collected in
the Commentary of Godefroy, the most remarkable is one from Libanius, in
his discourse concerning the death of Julian.]

The deceitful and dangerous experiment of the criminal quaestion, as
it is emphatically styled, was admitted, rather than approved, in
the jurisprudence of the Romans. They applied this sanguinary mode of
examination only to servile bodies, whose sufferings were seldom weighed
by those haughty republicans in the scale of justice or humanity; but
they would never consent to violate the sacred person of a citizen, till
they possessed the clearest evidence of his guilt. [162] The annals
of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian,
circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as
l