Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/153

 Danube, and the Euxine on the north, to the Euphrates on the east, and on the south to the securest frontier of all, the impassable deserts of Libya and Arabia.

The first emperors affected to rule as civil magistrates and accepted their appointment from the Senate, but their successors assumed the purple as the nominees of the troops, and often held it by right of conquest over less able competitors. Concurrently the Imperial city had been insensibly undergoing a transformation; by the persistent influx of strangers of diverse nationalities its ethnical homogeneity was lost; a new and more populous Rome, in which the traditions of republican freedom were dissipated, was evolved; and the inhabitants without a murmur saw themselves deprived of the right to elect their own magistrates. The laws of the Republic were submitted for ratification to the citizens, but in the ascent to absolutism the emperor became the sole legislator of the nation. The elevation of an emperor seemed*