Jam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
Catullus, lxxxii.
[532] Jn. Lydus, De Magistr., iii, 27, 68.
[533] In the absence of full contemporary evidence for a complete picture of Byzantine life at the point of time dealt with, it has often been necessary to have recourse to writers both of earlier and later date; an exigency, however, almost confined to Chrysostom and Constantine Porphyrogennetos. In taking this liberty I have exercised great caution so as to avoid anachronisms; and if such exist I may fairly hope them to be of a kind which will not easily be detected. I have always tried to obtain some presumptive proof in previous or subsequent periods that the scene as represented may be shifted backwards and forwards through the centuries without marring its truth as a picture of the times. In these unprogressive ages, wherever civilization was maintained, it often had practically the same aspect even for thousands of years.
[534] It is generally conceded that iconoclastic zeal in respect of primitive Roman history, under the impulse given by Lewis and Niebuhr, has been carried too far. Even now archaeological researches with the spade on the site of the Forum, etc., are producing confirmation of some traditional beliefs already proclaimed as mythical by too astute critics; see Lanciani, The Athenaeum, 1899. In any case the legends and hearsay as to their origin, current among various races, have a psychological interest, and may afford valuable indications as to national proclivities, which must rescue them from the neglect of every judicious historian.
[535] Livy, iv, 52, etc.
[536] The favourite title of Augustus was Princeps or “First citizen,” but the more martial emperors, such as Galba and Trajan, preferred the military Imperator, which after their time became distinctive of the monarch. By the end of the third century, under the administration of Aurelian and Diocletian, the emperor became an undisguised despot, and henceforward was regarded as the Dominus, a term which originally expressed the relation between a master and his slaves; see Jn. Lydus, De Magistr., i, 5; the series of coins in Cohen’s Numismatics of the Empire, etc.
[537] Strabo says it was full of Tarsians and Alexandrians; xiv, 5. Athenaeus calls it “an epitome of the world”; i, 17; cf. Tacitus, Ann., xv, 44; “The city which attracts and applauds all things villainous and shameful.”
[538] Tiberius made an end of the comitia or popular elections, and after his time the offices of state were conferred in the Senate, a body which in its elements was constituted at the fiat of the emperor; Tacitus, Ann., i, 15, etc.
[539] Under Diocletian (c. 300) the legislative individualism of the emperor attained maturity; see Muirhead, Private Law of Rome, Edin., 1899, P. 353.