T

der of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of CHA PÍ

Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe

upon

on the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but dangerous station.

B

201

fortunes of

About thirty-two years before that event, the Birth and emperor Severus, returning from an eastern ex- Maximin. pedition, halted in Thrace, to celebrate, with military games, the birth-day of his younger son, Geta. The country flocked in crowds to behold their sovereign, and a young barbarian of gigantic stature earnestly solicited, in his rude dialect, that he might be allowed to contend for the prize of wrestling. As the pride of discipline would have been disgraced in the overthow of a Roman soldier by a Thracian peasant, he was matched with the stoutest followers of the camp, sixteen of whom he successively laid on the ground. His victory was rewarded by some trifling gifts, and a permission to inlist in the troops. The next day, the happy barbarian was distinguished above a crowd of recruits, dancing and exulting after the fashion of his country. As soon as he perceived that he had attracted the emperor's notice, he instantly ran up to his horse, and followed him on foot, without the least appearance of fatigue, in a long and rapid career. "Thra"cian," said Severus, with astonishment," art "thou disposed to wrestle after thy race?" Most willingly, Sir, replied the unwearied youth; and, almost in a breath, overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers in the army. A gold collar was VOL. I. T

the

VII.

His mili

and ho

nours.

CHA P. the prize of his matchless vigour and activity, and he was immediately appointed to serve in the horseguards who always attended on the person of the sovereign *. 1954 to busz Maximin, for that was his name, though born tary service on the territories of the empire, decended from a mixed race of barbarians. His father was a Goth, and his mother of the nation of the Alani. He displayed, on every occasion, a valour equal to his strength; and his native fierceness was soon tempered or disguised by the knowledge of the world. Under the reign of Severus and his son, he obtained the rank of centurion, with the favour and esteem of both those princes, the former of whom was an excellent judge of merit. Gratitude forbade Maximin to serve under the assassin of Caracalla. Honour taught him to decline the effeminate insults of Elagabalus. On the accession of Alexander he returned to court, and was placed by that prince in a station useful to the service and honourable to himself. The fourth legion, to which he was appointed tribune, soon became, under his care, the best disciplined of the whole army. With the general applause of the soldiers, who bestowed on their favourite hero the names of Ajax and Hercules, he was successively promoted to the first military command ; and had not he still retained too much of

Hist. August. p. 138.

↑ Hist. August. p. 140. Herodian, 1. vi. p. 223. Aurelius Victor. By comparing these authors, it should seem that Maximin, had the particular command of the Triballian horse, with the

general

of his savage origin, the emperor might perhaps Chap. have given his own sister in marriage to the son VII. of Maximin *.

of Maxi

Instead of securing his fidelity, these favours Conspiracy served only to inflame the ambition of the Thra- min cian peasant, who deemed his fortune inadequate to his merit, as long as he was constrained to acknowledge a superior. Though a stranger to real wisdom, he was not devoid of a selfish cunning, which shewed him that the emperor had lost the affection of the army, and taught him to improve their discontent to his own advantage. It is easy for faction and calumny to shed their poison on the administration of the best of princes, and to accuse even their virtues, by artfully confounding them with those vices to which they bear the nearest affinity. The troops listened with pleasure to the emissaries of Maximin. They blushed at their own ignominious patience, which, during thirteen years, had supported the vexatious discipline imposed by an effeminate Sy rian, the timid slave of his mother and of the senate. It was time, they cried, to cast away that useless phantom of the civil power, and to elect for their prince and general a real soidier, educated in camps, exercised in war, who would assert the glory, and distribute among his companions the treasures of the empire. A great

T 2

army

general commission of disciplining the recruits of the whole army. His biographer ought to have marked, with more care, his exploits, and the successive steps of his military promotions.

* See the original letter of Alexander Severus, Hist. August.

p. 149.

VII

CHAP. army was at that time assembled on the banks of the Rhine, under the command of the emperor himself, who, almost immediately after his return from the Persian war, had been obliged to march against the barbarians of Germany. The important care of training and reviewing the new levies was intrusted to Maximin. One day, as he entered the field of exercise, the troops, either from a sudden impulse or a formed conspiracy, saluted him emperor, silenced by their loud acclamations his obstinate refusal, and hastened to consummate their rebellion by the murder of March 19. Alexander Severus.

A. D 235.

Murder of
Alexander
Severus.

has

The circumstances of his death are variously related. The writers, who suppose that he died in ignorance of the ingratitude and ambition of Maximin, affirm that, after taking a frugal repast in the sight of the army, he retired to sleep, and that, about the seventh hour of the day, a part of his own guards broke into the Imperial tent, and, with many wounds, assassinated their virtuous and unsuspecting prince *. If we credit another, and indeed a more probable account, Maximin was invested with the purple by a numerous detachment, at the distance of several miles from the head-quarters; and he trusted for success rather to the secret wishes, than to the public

*Hist. August. p. 135. I have softened some of the most improbable circumstances of this wretched biographer. From this ill-worded narration, it should seem that the prince's buffoon having accidentally entered the tent, and awakened the slumbering monarch, the fear of punishment urged him to persuade the disaffected soldiers to commit the murder.

He

VII.

public declarations of the great army. Alex- C H A P. ander had sufficient time t to awaken a faint sense of loyalty among his troops; but their reluctant professions of fidelity quickly vanished on the appearance of Maximin, who declared himself the friend and advocate of the military order, and was unanimously acknowledged emperor of the Romans by the applauding legions. The son of Mamæa, betrayed and deserted, withdrew into his tent, desirous at least to conceal his ab approaching fate from the insults of the multitude. was soon followed by a tribin by a tribune and come centurions, the ministers of death; but instead of receiving with manly resolution the inevitable stroke, his unavailing cries and entreaties disgraced the 7 last moments of his life, and converted into contempt some portion of the just pity which his innocence and misfortunes must inspire. His mother Mamæa, whose pride and avarice he loudly accused as the cause of his ruin, perished with her son. The most faithful of his friends were sacrificed to the first fury of the soldiers. Others were reserved for the more deliberate cruelty of the usurper: and those who experienced the mildest treatment, were stripped of their employments, and ignominiously driven from the court and army *.

The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Com- of MaxiTyranny modus and Caracalla, were all dissolute and un- min. experienced youths †, educated in the purple, and

* Herodian, 1. vi. 223–227.

T3

+ Caligula, the eldest of the four, was only twenty-five years of age when he ascended the throne; Caracalla was twentythree, Commodus nineteen, and Nero no more than seventeen.