At last,—so we are told,—Tacitus, the _princeps senatus_, was elected, who was distinguished for everything that could at all distinguish a senator,—immense fortune, of which he made a good use; a blameless life; administrative skill; and in his youth, military valour. On his election, he gave the senate the promise that he would look upon himself as its servant; whereupon the senators already began to give themselves up to their daydreams of freedom and power. The emperor was now to be their first servant; all rule and might was to be in the hands of the senate, and the republic was to be restored:—in a word, they expected to be like the senate of Venice. But that dream lasted but a short time. Tacitus went to the army in Asia Minor. The statement of his advanced age rests on the authority of the latest Greeks, and deserves little credit: the earlier writers say nothing about it. How they could then have elected an old man in his seventy-sixth year, is scarcely to be understood, as they needed a military prince. This reminds us of the Roman Cardinals, who elect an aged Pope to have so much more the hope of succeeding him themselves. Although Tacitus carried on the war against the Alans with success, the Romans were not yet rid of their causes for uneasiness in that quarter. When he died at Tarsus, in all likelihood it was quietly in his bed, of illness or exhaustion: murder seems not to be thought of. After his death, the throne was usurped by his brother Quintilius,[64] to whom however the legions refused obedience.