Our immediate purpose,
however, is simply to characterize the office of emperor, and to notice
such events and changes as operated for evil, and for a final effect of
decay, upon the Caesars or their empire. As the best means of realizing it,
we shall rapidly review the history of both, promising that we confine
ourselves to the true Caesars, and the true empire, of the West.
The first overt act of weakness,--the first expression of conscious
declension, as regarded the foreign enemies of Rome, occurred in the reign
of Hadrian; for it is a very different thing to forbear making conquests,
and to renounce them when made. It is possible, however, that the cession
then made of Mesopotamia and Armenia, however sure to be interpreted into
the language of fear by the enemy, did not imply any such principle in
this emperor. He was of a civic and paternal spirit, and anxious for the
substantial welfare of the empire rather than its ostentatious glory. The
internal administration of affairs had very much gone into neglect since
the times of Augustus; and Hadrian was perhaps right in supposing that he
could effect more public good by an extensive progress through the empire,
and by a personal correction of abuses, than by any military enterprise.
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