ong as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom
and honor, the last hours of a Roman were secured from the danger of
ignominions torture. [163] The conduct of the provincial magistrates
was not, however, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict
maxims of the civilians. They found the use of torture established not
only among the slaves of oriental despotism, but among the Macedonians,
who obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the
liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted
and adorned the dignity of human kind. [164] The acquiescence of the
provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp,
a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or
plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly
proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the
privileges of Roman citizens. The apprehensions of the subjects urged
them to solicit, and the interest of the sovereign engaged him to
grant, a variety of special exemptions, which tacitly allowed, and even
authorized, the general use of torture. They protected all persons of
illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors
of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers,
and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under
the age of puberty. [165] But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new
jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included
every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile
intention towards the prince or republic, [166] all privileges were
suspended, and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious
level. As the safety of the emperor was avowedly preferred to every
consideration of justice or humanity, the dignity of age and the
tenderness of youth were alike exposed to the most cruel tortures; and
the terrors of a malicious information, which might select them as the
accomplices, or even as the witnesses, perhaps, of an imaginary crime,
perpetually hung over the heads of the principal citizens of the Roman
world. [167]

[Footnote 162: The Pandects (l. xlviii. tit. xviii.) contain the
sentiments of the most celebrated civilians on the subject of torture.
They strictly confine it to slaves; and Ulpian himself is ready to
acknowledge that Res est fragilis, et periculosa, et quae veritatem
fa