n to the sea, there he met the emperor:
if he took the wings of the morning, and fled to the uttermost parts of
the earth, there was also Caesar in the person of his lieutenants. But,
by a dreadful counter-charm, the same omnipresence of imperial anger and
retribution which withered the hopes of the poor humble prisoner, met
and confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his elevation by
some fortunate rival. All the kingdoms of the earth, to one in that
situation, became but so many wards of the same infinite prison. Flight,
if it were even successful for the moment, did but a little retard his
inevitable doom. And so evident was this, that hardly in one instance
did the fallen prince _attempt_ to fly; passively he met the death which
was inevitable, in the very spot where ruin had overtaken him. Neither
was it possible even for a merciful conqueror to show mercy; for, in
the presence of an army so mercenary and factious, his own safety was
but too deeply involved in the extermination of rival pretenders to
the crown.

Such, amidst the sacred security and inviolability of the office, was
the hazardous tenure of the individual. Nor did his dangers always arise
from persons in the rank of competitors and rivals. Sometimes it menaced
him in quarters which his eye had never penetrated, and from enemies too
obscure to have reached his ear. By way of illustration we will cite a
case from the life of the Emperor Commodus, which is wild enough to have
furnished the plot of a romance, though as well authenticated as any
other passage in that reign. The story is narrated by Herodian, and the
outline was this:--A slave of noble qualities, and of magnificent
person, having liberated himself from the degradations of bondage,
determined to avenge his own wrongs by inflicting continual terror upon
the town and neighborhood which had witnessed his humiliation. For this
purpose he resorted to the woody recesses of the province (somewhere in
the modern Transylvania), and, attracting to his wild encampment as many
fugitives as he could, by degrees he succeeded in training a very
formidable troop of freebooters. Partly from the energy of his own
nature, and partly from the neglect and remissness of the provincial
magistrates, the robber captain rose from less to more, until he had
formed a little army, equal to the task of assaulting fortified cities.
In this stage of his adventures he encountered and defeated several of
the imperia