The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶214

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons. But this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered. They were bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honors, and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent: but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of government; and it is only from the year of…

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #736 (Milman edition) — public domain
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