rescue from the faithful Germans of the imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the insults or to the pity of the populace.*

In the space of a few months, six princes had been cut off by the sword. Gordian, who had already received the title of Cæsar, was the only person that occurred to the soldiers as proper to fill the vacant throne. They carried him to the camp, and unanimously saluted him Augustus and emperor. His name was dear to the senate and people; his tender age promised a long impunity of military licence; and the submission of Rome and the provinces to the choice of the prætorian guards, saved the republic, at the expense indeed of its freedom and dignity, from the horrors of a new civil war in the heart of the capital.‡

* Herodian, 1. 8, p. 287, 288. + Quia non alius erat in præsenti, is the expression of the Augustan History. Quintus Curtius (1. 10, c. 9) pays an elegant compliment to the emperor of the day, for having, by his happy accession, extinguished so many firebrands, sheathed so many swords, and put an end to the evils of a divided government. After weighing with attention every word of the passage, I am of opinion, that it suits better with the elevation of Gordian than with any other period of the Roman history. In that case, it may serve to decide the age of Quintus Curtius. Those who place him under the first Cæsars argue from the purity of his style, but are embarrassed by the silence of Quintilian, in his accurate list of Roman historians. [Gibbon's conjecture as to the time when Quintus Curtius wrote will not find favour generally. The passages to which he refers are not applicable to the circumstances that preceded Gordian's accession. The "fidus noctis suprema " indicates some decisive occurrence during the night; and "exstinctæ faces," as well as "gladii conditi," a just-terminated civil war: the "discordia membra sine suo capite," cannot have been said of a supreme power, shared by two legitimate emperors, but rather of strife among competitors for ascendancy. All these expressions are better suited to periods which other commentators have selected. (See, in Snabenburg's edition, the preface, and p. 304, 5.) They accord more with the commencement of Vespasian's than of Gordian's reign. The style of Quintus Curtius is also that of the earlier period. Quintilian prepared no complete list of Roman historians; he enumerated (X. 1, 101) only five, adding that there were others who had merit, but whom he did not mention, since his object was only to point out a few writers in each department of literature. Nor can Quintus Curtius be properly classed among great historians; his chief excellence consists in a good latinity and an eloquence, which is however somewhat formal and scholastic.-WENCK. [There are many passages in the work of Quintus Curtius which prove that he must have lived at an earlier period. Speaking of the

As the third Gordian was only nineteen years of age at the time of his death, the history of his life, were it known to us with greater accuracy than it really is, would contain little more than the account of his education, and the conduct of the ministers, who by turns abused or guided the simplicity of his inexperienced youth. Immediately after his accession, he fell into the hands of his mother's eunuchs, that pernicious vermin of the east, who, since the days of Elagabalus, had infested the Roman palace. By the artful conspiracy of these wretches, an impenetrable veil was drawn between an innocent prince and his oppressed subjects, the virtuous disposition of Gordian was deceived, and the honours of the empire sold without his knowledge, though in a very public manner, to the most worthless of mankind. We are ignorant by what fortunate accident the emperor escaped from this ignominious slavery and devolved his confidence on a minister, whose wise counsels had no object except the glory of his sovereign and the happiness of the people. It should seem that love and learning introduced Misitheus to the favour of Gordian. The young prince married the daughter of his master of rhetoric, and promoted his father-in-law to the first offices of the empire. Two admirable letters that passed between them are still extant. The minister, with the conscious dignity of virtue, congratulates Gordian that he is delivered from the tyranny Parthians, he said, "Hinc in Parthienen perventum est; tunc ignobilem gentem; nunc caput omnium, quæ, post Euphraten et Tigrim omnes sitæ, Rubro mari terminantur," (1. 6. c. 2). The Parthian empire never had this extent, except during the first century of our vulgar era, which must therefore have been the age in which Quintus Curtius lived. "Critics," said M. de Sainte Croix, "have numerous conjectures on this subject; but most of them at least agree in making Quintus Curtius contemporary with the Emperor Claudius." See Justus Lipsius, ad Ann. Tac. 1. 2, c. 20. Michel Le Tellier, Præf. in Curt. Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. i. p. 251. Du Bos, Refl. crit. sur la Poésie, part ii. § 13. Tiraboschi, Storia della Letter. Ital., tom. ii. p. 149. Exam. crit. des Hist. d'Alex. ed. 2nde, p. 104, 849, 850. -GUIZOT.] [Dean Milman has justly observed, that M. Guizot's argument is rendered inconclusive by the indiscriminate use which Latin writers have often made of Parthian for Persian. But who would attempt to settle any contested point by Quintus Curtius's geography? And if, after all, this "interminable question could be decided, of what use would it be? It is one of those " nugæ critica which labour and talent sometimes pursue through "passages that lead to

VOL. I.

R

of the eunuchs* and still more that he is sensible of his deliverance. The emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the errors of his past conduct; and laments with singular propriety, the misfortunes of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labour to conceal the truth.t

The life of Misitheus had been spent in the profession of letters, not of arms; yet such was the versatile genius of that great man, that when he was appointed prætorian prefect, he discharged the military duties of his place with vigour and ability. The Persians had invaded Mesopotamia and threatened Antioch. By the persuasion of his fatherin-law, the young emperor quitted the luxury of Rome, opened, for the last time recorded in history, the temple of Janus, and marched in person into the east. On his approach with a great army, the Persians withdrew their garrisons from the cities which they had already taken, and retired from the Euphrates to the Tigris. Gordian enjoyed the pleasure of announcing to the senate the first success of his arms, which he ascribed with a becoming modesty and gratitude to the wisdom of his father and prefect. During the whole expedition, Misitheus watched over the safety and discipline of the army; whilst he prevented their dangerous murmurs by maintaining a regular plenty in the camp, and by establishing ample magazines of vinegar, bacon, straw, barley, and wheat, in all the cities of the frontier.§ But the prosperity of Gordian expired with Misitheus, who died of a flux, not without very strong suspicions of poison. Philip, his successor in the prefecture, was an Arab by birth, and consequently, in the earlier part of his life, a robber by profession. His rise from so obscure a station to the first dignities of the empire, seems to prove

nothing."-ED.] Hist. August. p. 161. From some hints in the two letters, I should suspect that the eunuchs were not expelled the palace without some degree of gentle violence: and that the young Gordian rather approved of, than consented to, their disgrace.

Duxit uxorem fiilam Misithei, quem causâ eloquentiæ dignum parentela suâ putavit; et præfectum statim fecit; post quod, non puerile jam et contemptibile videbatur imperium. They were several times defeated. Capitol. 5, 26.-WENCK. § Hist. August. p. 162. Aurelius Victor. Porphyrius in Vit. Plotin. ap. Fabricium. Biblioth. Græc. 1. 4, c. 36. The philosopher Plotinus accompanied the

that he was a bold and able leader. But his boldness prompted him to aspire to the throne, and his abilities were employed to supplant-not to serve his indulgent master. The minds of the soldiers were irritated by an artificial scarcity, created by his contrivance in the camp; and the distress of the army was attributed to the youth and incapacity of the prince. It is not in our power to trace the successive steps of the secret conspiracy and open sedition which were at length fatal to Gordian. A sepulchral monument was erected to his memory on the spot where he was killed, near the conflux of the Euphrates with the little river Aboras.† The fortunate Philip, raised to the empire by the votes of the soldiers, found a ready obedience from the senate and the provinces.‡

*

We cannot forbear transcribing the ingenious, though somewhat fanciful description, which a celebrated writer of our own times had traced of the military government of the Roman empire. "What in that time was called the army, prompted by the love of knowledge, and by the hope of penetrating as far as India. * About twenty miles from the little town of Circesium, on the frontier of the two empires. [The modern name of this place is Kerkisia, in the angle formed by the Chaboras, now Al Khabour, where it flows into the Euphrates. This spot appeared to Diocletian so advantageous that he fortified it strongly, as a bulwark to the empire, in that part of Mesopotamia. (D'Anville, Géog. Anc. tom. ii. p. 196.)-GUIZOT.] [At every such conflux of streams, the migrations of nomade races were arrested, and the natural strength of the positions caused them to be selected for the first settlement of rude tribes. At similar points the residences of former Celtic inhabitants may be traced from Asia across Europe, by names, now in most instances corrupted, which originally denoted "a meeting of waters." Chaboras seems to be one of these. It is the Chebar or Habor, and Circesium is the Carchemish of Scripture. See Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 234, 284, &c.-ED.] The inscrip

tion (which contained a very singular pun) was erased by the order of Licinius, who claimed some degree of relationship to Philip (Hist. August. p. 165), but the tumulus, or mound of earth, which formed the sepulchre, still subsisted in the time of Julian. See Ammian. Marcellin. 23, 5. Aurelius Victor. Eutrop. 9, 2. Orosius, 7, 20. Ammianus Marcellinus, 23, 5. Zosimus, 1. 1, p. 19. Philip, who was a native of Bostra, was about forty years of age. [Bostra is now called Bosnah. It was anciently the metropolis of a province designated Arabia, and the capital of Auranitis, the name of which is still preserved in the form of Bedul Hâuran; its boundary is lost in the deserts of Arabia. (D'Anville, Géog. Anc. tom. ii. p. 188.) According to Aurelius Victor, Philip was a native of Trachonitis, another Arabian district.-GUIZOT.]

Roman empire, was only an irregular republic, not unlike the aristocracy* of Algiers,† where the militia, possessed of the sovereignty, creates and deposes a magistrate, who is styled a Dey. Perhaps, indeed, it may be laid down as a general rule, that a military government is, in some respects, more republican than monarchical. Nor can it be said that the soldiers only partook of the government by their disobedience and rebellions. The speeches made to them by the emperors, were they not at length of the same nature as those formerly pronounced to the people by the consuls and the tribunes ? And although the armies had no regular place or forms of assembly; though their debates were short, their action sudden, and their resolves seldom the result of cool reflection, did they not dispose with absolute sway, of the public fortune? What was the emperor, except the minister of a violent government, elected for the private benefit of the soldiers?

"When the army had elected Philip, who was prætorian prefect to the third Gordian; the latter demanded, that he might remain sole emperor; he was unable to obtain it. He requested that the power might be equally divided between them; the army would not listen to his speech. He consented to be degraded to the rank of Cæsar; the favour was refused him. He desired, at least, he might be appointed prætorian prefect; his prayer was rejected. Finally, he pleaded for his life. The army in these several judgments, exercised the supreme magistracy." According to the historian, whose doubtful narrative the president De Montesquieu has adopted, Philip, who, during the whole transaction, had preserved a sullen silence, was inclined to spare the innocent life of his benefactor; till, recollecting that his innocence might excite a dangerous compassion in the Roman world, he commanded, without regard to his

* Can the epithet of aristocracy be applied, with any propriety, to the government of Algiers? Every military government floats between the extremes of absolute monarchy and wild democracy. + The military republic of the Mamelukes in Egypt would have afforded M. de Montesquieu (see Considérations sur la Grandeur et la Décadence des Romains, c. 16,) a juster and more noble parallel. The difference was, that the authority of the senate and the people was legal, that of troops, in the administration of public affairs, an illegal exercise of force. Of this the emperors themselves were fully aware; the tyrannical used the army as a support of their government and instru