But neither senate nor people could enforce their claims,
whatever they might happen to be. Their sanction and ratifying vote might
be worth having, as consecrating what was already secure, and conciliating
the scruples of the weak to the absolute decision of the strong. But their
resistance, as an original movement, was so wholly without hope, that they
were never weak enough to threaten it.
The army was the true successor to their places, being the _ultimate_
depository of power. Yet, as the army was necessarily subdivided, as the
shifting circumstances upon every frontier were continually varying the
strength of the several divisions as to numbers and state of discipline,
one part might be balanced against the other by an imperator standing in
the centre of the whole. The rigor of the military _sacramentum_, or
oath of allegiance, made it dangerous to offer the first overtures to
rebellion; and the money, which the soldiers were continually depositing
in the bank, placed at the foot of their military standards, if sometimes
turned against the emperor, was also liable to be sequestrated in his
favor.
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