tituted to the infamy of the high-priest of Emesa. Alexander, though pressed by the studied, and perhaps sincere, importunity of the senate, nobly refused the borrowed lustre of a name; whilst in his own conduct he laboured to restore the glories and felicity of the age of the genuine Antonines.* In the civil administration of Alexander, wisdom was enforced by power; and the people, sensible of the public felicity, repaid their benefactor with their love and gratitude. There still remained a greater, a more necessary, but a more difficult enterprise; the reformation of the military order, whose interest and temper, confirmed by long impunity, rendered them impatient of the restraints of discipline, and careless of the blessings of public tranquillity. In the execution of his design the emperor affected to display his love, and to conceal his fear, of the army. The most rigid economy in every other branch of the administration, supplied a fund of gold and silver for the ordinary pay, and the extraordinary rewards, of the troops. In their marches he relaxed the severe obligation of carrying seventeen days' provisions 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 armour, and shields enriched with silver and gold. He shared whatever fatigues he was obliged to impose, visited in person the sick and the 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 laboured to inspire

blames, are more appropriately introduced in other parts of the history.-ED.] *See in the Hist. August. p. 116, 117, the whole contest between Alexander and the senate, extracted from the journals of that assembly. It happened on the 6th of March, probably of the year 223, when the Romans had enjoyed, almost a twelvemonth, the blessings of his reign. Before the appellation of Antoninus was offered him as a title of honour, the senate waited to see whether Alexander would not assume it as a family name. This rendered the soldiers more arrogant, and impoverished the state without obtaining one substantial advantage.-WENCK. It was a favourite

196

MURDER OF ULPIAN.

[CH. VI. 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.

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 imperial 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 prefect, 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 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

saying of the emperor's: Se milites magis servare, quam seipsum; quod salus publica in his esset. Hist. August p. 130.

The three days' contest between the people and the prætorian guards, and the murder of Ulpian by the latter, were two distinct events, which Gibbon, misunderstanding Dion, has here blended into one. The last of them is the first related by that historian; then turning back, as often was his custom, he says, that there had already been a civil war of three days between the people and the soldiers, during the life of Ulpian, but not on his account. It originated, as he states, in a very trifling circumstance. But the outbreak against Ulpian he attributes to his having, in his capacity of prætorian prefect, condemned to death his two predecessors, Chrestus and Flavian, whom the troops wished to avenge. Zosimus (1. 1, c. 11) imputes to Mamæa the sentence passed on them; but the military very willingly ascribed it to Ulpian, to whom it had been advantageous, and whom they hated.-WENCK. [M. Wenck forgot here, as both he and M. Guizot have done elsewhere, that Gibbon's object was rather to

the deplorable weakness of the 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 honourable employment of prefect 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, embracing the common cause of military license, demanded the head of the reformer. Alexander, however, instead of yielding to their seditious clamours, showed a just 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 in the state retired, by the emperor's advice, from the city, and spent the greatest part of his consulship at his villas in Campauia.†

trace results, than minutely to specify and unnecessarily divide details. -ED.] *Though the author of the life of Alexander (Hist. August. p. 132) 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 candour of that author. [Gibbon here knew more than his authority substantiates. Dion is the only writer who mentions the punishment of Epagathus; and says no more, than that he was appointed governor of Egypt, ostensibly as an honour, but in fact to remove him to a distance, where he might be safely executed. From that country he was taken to Crete, and there put to death. It is not stated that he was made governor of that island.-WENCK.] For an account of Ulpian's fate, and his own danger, see the mutilated conclusion of Dion's History, 1. 80, p. 1371. [Dion had no estates in Campania, and was not rich. He says only, that the emperor recommended him to reside somewhere out of Rome during his consulship; that he returned to the city when his year of office expired; and that he had some communication with his sovereign in Campania. He then requested

198

DANGEROUS REVOLT

[CH. VI. 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 army.*

One particular fact well deserves to be recorded, 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 the 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. Their clamours 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 obtained permission to pass the rest of his life in his native place, Nice, in Bithynia, where he completed his history to the end of his second consulship. As we advance beyond that point, we miss the assistance of that industrious writer.-WENCK.] *Annot. Reimar. ad Dion Cass., 1. 80, p. 1369. Julius Cæsar had appeased a sedition with the same word quirites, which, thus opposed to soldiers,

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.*

The resolutions of the multitude generally depend on a moment; and the caprice of passion might equally determine 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 by the penetration of a philosopher, we should discover 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

was used in a sense of contempt, and reduced the offenders to the less honourable condition of mere citizens. Tacit. Annal. 1. 43. * Hist. August. p. 132. choice was judicious. could reckon seven

From the Metelli. Hist. August, p. 119. The In one short period of twelve years, the Metelli consulships and five triumphs. See Velleius