Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/481

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 457 the princes whom they accuse, and to ascribe their ex- CHAP, actions much less to their personal vices, than to the ^^^^' uniform system of their administration. The emperor Diocletian was indeed the author of that system ; but during his reign, the growing evil was confined within the bounds of modesty and discretion; and he deserves the reproach of establishing pernicious precedents, rather than of exercising actual oppression ". It may be added, that his revenues were managed with prudent economy ; and that after all the current expenses were discharged, there still remained in the imperial trea- sury an ample provision either for judicious liberality or for any emergency of the state. It was in the twenty-first year of his reign that Dio- Abdication cletian executed his memorable resolution of abdicating ^^^^ ^^^^' the empire ; an action more naturally to have been ex- Maximian. pected from the elder or the younger Antoninus, than from a prince who had never practised the lessons of philosophy, either in the attainment or in the use of su- preme power. Diocletian acquired the glory of giving to the world the first example of a resignation ^ which has not been very frequently imitated by succeeding monarchs. The parallel of Charles the fifth, however, Resem- will naturally offer itself to our mind, not only since chades^the the eloquence of a modern historian has rendered that fifth. name so familiar to an English reader, but from the very striking resemblance between the characters of the two emperors, whose political abilities were supe- rior to their mihtary genius, and whose specious vir- tues were much less the effect of nature than of art. The abdication of Charles appears to have been hast- ened by the vicissitude of fortune ; and the disappoint- ment of his favourite schemes urged him to relinquish a power which he found inadequate to his ambition. But the reign of Diocletian had flowed with a tide of " Indicia lex nova, quae sane illorum temporum modestia tolerabilis, in perniciem processit. Aurel. Victor, who has treated the character of Dio- cletian with good sense, though in bad Latin. ° Solus omnium, post conditura Romanum imperium, qui ex tanto fas- tigio sponte ad privatae vitae statum civilitateraque remearet. Eutrop. ix. 28.