In these circumstances, some change was
imperatively demanded. Human nature was no longer equal to the terrors
which it was summoned to face. But the changes of Dioclesian transmuted
that golden sceptre into a base oriental alloy. They left nothing behind
of what had so much challenged the veneration of man: for it was in the
union of republican simplicity with the irresponsibility of illimitable
power, it was in the antagonism between the merely human and approachable
condition of Caesar as a man, and his divine supremacy as a potentate and
king of kings--that the secret lay of his unrivalled grandeur. This
perished utterly under the reforming hands of Dioclesian. Caesar only it
was that could be permitted to extinguish Caesar: and a Roman imperator it
was who, by remodelling, did in effect abolish, by exorcising from its
foul terrors, did in effect disenchant of its sanctity, that imperatorial
dignity, which having once perished, could have no second existence, and
which was undoubtedly the sublimest incarnation of power, and a monument
the mightiest of greatness built by human hands, which upon this planet
has been suffered to appear.
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