The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest TimesFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Constitutional history -- Great Britain
(52) The original text of the Song of Maldon will be found in Thorpe’s
Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. My extracts are made from the modern English
version which I attempted in my Old-English History, p. 192. I went
on the principle of altering the Old-English text no more than was
actually necessary to make it intelligible. When a word has altogether
dropped out of our modern language, I have of course changed it; when
a word is still in use, in however different a sense, I have kept it.
Many words which were anciently used in a physical sense are now used
only metaphorically; thus “cringe” is used in one of the extracts in
its primary meaning of bowing or falling down, and therefore of dying.
(53) The history of the Roman clientship is another of those points on
which legend and history and ingenious modern speculation all come to
much the same, as far as our present purpose is concerned. Whether the
clients were the same as the _plebs_ or not, at any rate no patricians
entered into the client relation, and this at once supplies the
contrast with Teutonic institutions.
(54) The title of _dominus_, implying a master of slaves, was always
refused by the early Emperors. This is recorded of Augustus by
Suetonius (Aug. 53) and Dion (lv. 12), and still more distinctly of
Tiberius (Suetonius, Tib. 27; Dion, lvii. 8). Tiberius also refused
the title of _Imperator_, except in its strictly military sense:
οὔτε γὰρ δεσπότην ἑαυτὸν τοῖς ἐλευθέροις οὔτε αὐτοκράτορα πλὴν τοῖς
στρατιώταις καλεῖν ἐφίει. Caius is said (Aurelius Victor, Cæs. xxxix.
4) to have been called _dominus_, and there is no doubt about Domitian
(Suetonius, Dom. 13; Dion, lxvii. 13, where see Reimar’s Note). Pliny
in his letters constantly addresses Trajan as _dominus_; yet in his
Panegyric(45) he draws the marked distinction: “Scis, ut sunt diversa
natura dominatio et principatus, ita non aliis esse principem gratiorem
quam qui maxime dominum graventur.” This marks the return to older
feelings and customs under Trajan. The final and formal establishment
of the title seems to have come in with the introduction of Eastern
ceremonies under Diocletian (see the passage already referred to in
Aurelius Victor). It is freely used by the later Panegyrists, as
for instance Eumenius, iv. 21, v. 13: “Domine Constanti,” “Domine
Maximiane, Imperator æterne,” and so forth.
(55) Vitellius (Tac. Hist. i. 58) was the first to employ Roman knights
in offices hitherto always filled by freedmen; but the system was not
fully established till the time of Hadrian (Spartianus, Hadrian, 22).
(56) See Norman Conquest, i. 89, 587, and the passages here quoted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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