In the sixth Caesar terminated the Julian line. The three next princes in
the succession were personally uninteresting; and, with a slight reserve
in favor of Otho, whose motives for committing suicide (if truly reported)
argue great nobility of mind, [Footnote: We may add that the unexampled
public grief which followed the death of Otho, exceeding even that which
followed the death of Germanicus, and causing several officers to commit
suicide, implies some remarkable goodness in this Prince, and a very
unusual power of conciliating attachment.] were even brutal in the tenor
of their lives and monstrous; besides that the extreme brevity of their
several reigns (all three, taken conjunctly, having held the supreme power
for no more than twelve months and twenty days) dismisses them from all
effectual station or right to a separate notice in the line of Caesars.
Coming to the tenth in succession, Vespasian, and his two sons, Titus and
Domitian, who make up the list of the twelve Caesars, as they are usually
called, we find matter for deeper political meditation and subjects of
curious research.
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