"Pass like shadows, so depart!" The reason
for this defect of all personal variety of interest in these enormous
potentates, must be sought in the constitution of their power and the very
necessities of their office. Even the greatest among them, those who by
way of distinction were called _the Great_, as Constantine and Theodosius,
were not great, for they were not magnanimous; nor could they be so under
_their_ tenure of power, which made it a duty to be suspicious, and, by
fastening upon all varieties of original temper one dire necessity of
bloodshed, extinguished under this monotonous cloud of cruel jealousy and
everlasting panic every characteristic feature of genial human nature,
that would else have emerged through so long a train of princes. There is
a remarkable story told of Agrippina, that, upon some occasion, when a
wizard announced to her, as truths which he had read in the heavens, the
two fatal necessities impending over her son,--one that he should ascend
to empire, the other that he should murder herself, she replied in these
stern and memorable words--_Occidat, dum imperet_.
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