There is a curious dissertation in the "Mémoires de l'Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbé Mongault, "on the divine
honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman
republic;" in their lifetime these originally began in gratitude, and at
length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the
human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate
unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurdities. One of these
ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. When they voted a statue to a
proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the gods in the festival
called _Lectisternium_, from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn
festival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, which was
however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate mouths more
mortal. The gods were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on
beds ornamented in their temples; pillows were placed under their marble
heads; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with
a magnificent repast. When Cæsar had conquered Rome, the servile senate
put him to dine with the gods! Fatigued by and ashamed of these honours,
he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capitol the title
they had given him of a _demi-god_!
The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were extravagant;
but perhaps few know that they were less offensive than the flatterers
of the third century under the Pagan, and of the fourth under the
Christian emperors. Those who are acquainted with the character of the
age of Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other _code_, to
find an infinite number of passages which had not been tolerable even in
that age. For instance, here is a law of Arcadius and Honorius,
published in 404:--
"Let the officers of the palace be warned to abstain from frequenting
tumultuous meetings; and that those who, instigated by a _sacrilegious_
temerity, dare to oppose the authority of _our divinity_, shall be
deprived of their employments, and their estates confiscated." The
letters they write are _holy_. When the sons speak of their fathers, it
is, "Their father of _divine_ memory;" or "Their _divine_ father." They
call their own laws _oracles_, and _celestial_ oracles. So also their
subjects address them by the titles of "_Your Perpetuity_, _your
Eternity._" And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the
emperors at length added this to their titles. It begins, "If any
magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather
than that of _Our Perpetuity_, let him be judged guilty of
high-treason." All this reminds one of "the celestial empire" of the
Chinese.
Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some
of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, "Wonder! wonder!
wonder!" And a proverb current in his dominion was, "If the king saith
at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars!"
Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and
fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign without knowing
what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on
the throne, and it was he, rather than the spectators, who might have
truly used the interjection of astonishment!