marches he relaxed the severe obligation of carrying seventeen days' provision on their shoulders. Ample magazines were formed along the public roads; and as soon as they entered the enemy's country a numerous train of mules and camels waited on their haughty laziness. As Alexander despaired of correcting the luxury of his soldiers, he attempted at least to direct it to objects of martial pomp and ornament, fine horses, splendid armor, and shields enriched with silver and gold. He shared whatever fatigues he was obliged to impose, visited in person the sick and wounded, preserved an exact register of their services and his own gratitude, and expressed on every occasion the warmest regard for a body of men whose welfare, as he affected to declare, was so closely connected with that of the State." By the most gentle arts he labored to inspire the fierce multitude with a sense of duty, and to restore at least a faint image of that discipline to which the Romans owed their empire over so many other nations as warlike and more powerful than themselves. But his prudence was vain, his courage fatal, and the attempt towards a reformation served only to inflame the ills it was meant to cure.

Seditions of

guards, and murder of Ulpian.

The Prætorian guards were attached to the youth of Alexander. They loved him as a tender pupil whom they had saved from a tyrant's fury and placed on the imthe Pretorian perial throne. That amiable prince was sensible of the obligation; but, as his gratitude was restrained within the limits of reason and justice, they soon were more dissatisfied with the virtues of Alexander than they had ever been with the vices of Elagabalus. Their præfect, the wise Ulpian, was the friend of the laws and of the people; he was considered as the enemy of the soldiers, and to his pernicious counsels every scheme of reformation was imputed. Some trifling accident blew up their discontent into a furious mutiny; and a civil war raged during three days in Rome, whilst the life of that excellent minister was

78 It was a favorite saying of the emperor's, "Se milites magis servare, quam seipsum; quod salus publica in his esset."-Hist. Aug. p. 130. [Lampr. Alex. Sev. c. 47.]

a

defended by the grateful people. Terrified at length by the sight of some houses in flames, and by the threats of a general conflagration, the people yielded with a sigh, and left the virtuous but unfortunate Ulpian to his fate. He was pursued into the imperial palace, and massacred at the feet of his master, who vainly strove to cover him with the purple and to obtain his pardon from the inexorable soldiers. Such was the deplorable weakness of government that the emperor was unable to revenge his murdered friend, and his insulted dignity, without stooping to the arts of patience and dissimulation. Epagathus, the principal leader of the mutiny, was removed from Rome by the honorable employment of præfect of Egypt; from that high rank he was gently degraded to the government of Crete; and when at length his popularity among the guards was effaced by time and absence, Alexander ventured to inflict the tardy but deserved punishment of his crimes." Under the reign of a just and virtuous prince the tyranny of the army threatened with instant death his most faithful ministers who were suspected of an intention to correct their intolerable disorders. The historian Dion Cassius had commanded the Pannonian legions with the spirit of ancient discipline. Their brethren of Rome, Dion Cassius. embracing the common cause of military license, demanded the head of the reformer. Alexander, however, instead of yielding to their seditious clamors, showed a just

Danger of

74 Though the author of the Life of Alexander (Hist. August. p. 132 [Lampr. Alex. Sey. c. 51]) mentions the sedition raised against Ulpian by the soldiers, he conceals the catastrophe, as it might discover a weakness in the administration of his hero. From this designed omission we may judge of the weight and candor of that author.

a Gibbon has confounded two events altogether different-the quarrel of the people with the Prætorians, which lasted three days, and the assassination of Ulpian by the latter. Dion relates first the death of Ulpian; afterwards, reverting back according to a manner which is usual with him, he says that during the life of Ulpian there had been a war of three days between the Prætorians and the people. But Ulpian was not the cause. Dion says, on the contrary, that it was occasioned by some unimportant circumstance; whilst he assigns a weighty reason for the murder of Ulpian, the judgment by which that Prætorian præfect had condemned his predecessors, Chrestus and Flavian, to death, whom the soldiers wished to revenge. Zosimus (1. i. c. 11) attributes this sentence to Mamma; but even then the troops might have imputed it to Ulpian, who had reaped all the advantage, and was otherwise odious to them.-W.

sense of his merit and services by appointing him his colleague in the consulship, and defraying from his own treasury the expense of that vain dignity; but, as it was justly apprehended that if the soldiers beheld him with the ensigns of his office they would revenge the insult in his blood, the nominal first magistrate of the State retired, by the emperor's advice, from the city, and spent the greatest part of his consulship at his villas in Campania.

Tumults of the legions.

75 a

The lenity of the emperor confirmed the insolence of the troops; the legions imitated the example of the guards, and defended their prerogative of licentiousness with the same furious obstinacy. The administration of Alexander was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of his age. In Illyricum, in Mauritania, in Armenia, in Mesopotamia, in Germany, fresh mutinies perpetually broke out; his officers were murdered, his authority was insulted, and his life at last sacrificed to the fierce discontents of the Firmness of army." One particular fact well deserves to be rethe emperor. corded, as it illustrates the manners of the troops, and exhibits a singular instance of their return to a sense of duty and obedience. Whilst the emperor lay at Antioch, in his Persian expedition, the particulars of which we shall hereafter relate, the punishment of some soldiers who had been discovered in the baths of women excited a sedition in the legion to which they belonged. Alexander ascended his tribunal, and with a modest firmness represented to the armed. multitude the absolute necessity, as well as his inflexible resolution, of correcting the vices introduced by his impure predecessor, and of maintaining the discipline, which could not be relaxed without the ruin of the Roman name and empire.

75 For an account of Ulpian's fate and his own danger, see the mutilated conclusion of Dion's History, 1. lxxx. [c. 2, 4] p. 1371.

76 Annot. Reimar. ad Dion Cassius, 1. lxxx. [c. 2] p. 1369.

a Dion possessed no estates in Campania, and was not rich. He only says that the emperor advised him to reside during his consulate in some place out of Rome; that he returned to Rome after the end of his consulate, and had an interview with the emperor in Campania. He asked and obtained leave to pass the rest of his life in his native city (Nice, in Bithynia): it was there that he finished his history, which closes with his second consulship.-W.

Their clamors interrupted his mild expostulation. "Reserve your shouts," said the undaunted emperor, "till you take the field against the Persians, the Germans, and the Sarmatians. Be silent in the presence of your sovereign and benefactor, who bestows upon you the corn, the clothing, and the money of the provinces. Be silent, or I shall no longer style you soldiers, but citizens," if those, indeed, who disclaim the laws of Rome deserve to be ranked among the meanest of the people." His menaces inflamed the fury of the legion, and their brandished arms already threatened his person. "Your courage," resumed the intrepid Alexander, "would be more nobly displayed in the field of battle; me you may destroy, you cannot intimidate; and the severe justice of the republic would punish your crime and revenge my death." The legion still persisted in clamorous sedition, when the emperor pronounced with a loud voice the decisive sentence, "Citizens! lay down your arms, and depart in peace to your respective habitations." The tempest was instantly appeased: the soldiers, filled with grief and shame, silently confessed the justice of their punishment and the power of discipline, yielded up their arms and military ensigns, and retired in confusion, not to their camp, but to the several inns of the city. Alexander enjoyed, during thirty days, the edifying spectacle of their repentance; nor did he restore them to their former rank in the army till he had punished with death those tribunes whose connivance had occasioned the mutiny. The grateful legion served the emperor whilst living, and revenged him when dead." a

The resolutions of the multitude generally depend on a moment; and the caprice of passion might equally determine

Julius Cæsar had appeased a sedition with the same word Quirites, which, thus opposed to Soldiers, was used in a sense of contempt, and reduced the of fenders to the less honorable condition of mere citizens. Tacit. Annal. i. 42. 78 Hist. August. p. 132. [Lampr. Alex. Sev. c. 54.]

This story rests solely on the authority of Lampridius, whose Life of Alexander is characterized by Gibbon (see next page) as "the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.' The whole tale is probably a fabrication, taken from the celebrated anecdote about the first Casar; but the Prætorians were no longer the old Roman legions, and Alexander was certainly no Cæsar.-S.

the seditious legion to lay down their arms at the emperor's feet, or to plunge them into his breast. Perhaps, if the singular transaction had been investigated character. by the penetration of a philosopher, we should dis

Defects of his reign and

cover the secret causes which on that occasion authorized the boldness of the prince, and commanded the obedience of the troops; and perhaps, if it had been related by a judicious historian, we should find this action, worthy of Cæsar himself, reduced nearer to the level of probability and the common standard of the character of Alexander Severus. The abilities of that amiable prince seem to have been inadequate to the difficulties of his situation, the firmness of his conduct inferior to the purity of his intentions. His virtues, as well as the vices of Elagabalus, contracted a tincture of weakness and effeminacy from the soft climate of Syria, of which he was a native; though he blushed at his foreign origin, and listened with a vain complacency to the flattering genealogists, who derived his race from the ancient stock of Roman nobility." The pride and avarice of his mother cast a shade on the glories of his reign; and by exacting from his riper years the same dutiful obedience which she had justly claimed from his unexperienced youth, Mamma exposed to public ridicule both her son's character and her own.80 The fatigues of the Persian war irritated the military discontent; the unsuccessful event degraded the reputation of the emperor as a general,

79 From the Metelli. Hist. August. p. 129. [Lampr. Alex. Sev. c. 44.] The choice was judicious. In one short period of twelve years the Metelli could reckon seven consulships and five triumphs. See Velleius Paterculus, ii. 11, and the Fasti.

80 The Life of Alexander, in the Augustan History, is the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia. The account of his reign, as given by Herodian, is rational and moderate, consistent with the general history of the age; and, in some of the most invidious particulars, confirmed by the decisive fragments of Dion. Yet, from a very paltry prejudice, the greater number of our modern writers abuse Herodian, and copy the Augustan History. See Mess. de Tillemont and Wotton. From the opposite prejudice, the Emperor Julian (in Cæsarib. p. 315) dwells with a visible satisfaction on the effeminate weakness of the Syrian, and the ridiculous avarice of his mother.

a See editor's note on c. viii. note 50.-S.