And when he
died, in the sixty-first year of his life (the 18th of his reign), he was
lamented with a corresponding peculiarity in the public ceremonial, such,
for instance, as the studied interfusion of the senatorial body with the
populace, expressive of the levelling power of a true and comprehensive
grief; a peculiarity for which no precedent was found, and which never
afterwards became a precedent for similar honors to the best of his
successors.
But malice has the divine privilege of ubiquity; and therefore it was that
even this great model of private and public virtue did not escape the
foulest libels: he was twice accused of murder; once on the person of a
gladiator, with whom the empress is said to have fallen in love; and
again, upon his associate in the empire, who died in reality of an
apoplectic seizure, on his return from the German campaign. Neither of
these atrocious fictions ever gained the least hold of the public
attention, so entirely were they put down by the _prima facie_
evidence of facts, and of the emperor's notorious character. In fact his
faults, if he had any in his public life, were entirely those of too much
indulgence.
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