sions. The emperors chosen by the army had perished with ignominy; those elected by the senate were seated on the throne. The long discord between the civil and military powers was decided by a war, in which the former had obtained a complete victory. The soldiers must now learn a new doctrine of submission to the senate; and whatever clemency was affected by that politic assembly, they dreaded a slow revenge, coloured by the name of discipline, and justified by fair pretences of the public good. But their fate was still in their own hands; and if they had courage to despise the vain terrors of an impotent republic, it was easy to convince the world, that those who were masters of the arms, were masters of the authority, of the state.

guards, actuated either by curiosity or a sinister | cated to each other their complaints and apprehenmotive, audaciously thrust themselves into the house, and advanced by degrees beyond the altar of Victory. Gallicanus, a consular, and Mæcenas, a prætorian senator, viewed with indignation their insolent intrusion: drawing their daggers, they laid the spies, for such they deemed them, dead at the foot of the altar, and then advancing to the door of the senate, imprudently exhorted the multitude to massacre the prætorians, as the secret adherents of the tyrant. Those who escaped the first fury of the tumult took refuge in the camp, which they defended with superior advantage against the reiterated attacks of the people, assisted by the numerous bands of gladiators, the property of opulent nobles. The civil war lasted many days, with infinite loss and confusion on both sides. When the pipes were broken that supplied the camp with water, the Prætorians were reduced to intolerable distress; but in their turn they made desperate sallies into the city, set fire to a great number of houses, and filled the streets with the blood of the inhabitants. The emperor Balbinus attempted, by ineffectual edicts and precarious truces, to reconcile the factions at Rome. But their animosity, though smothered for a while, burnt with redoubled violence. The soldiers, detesting the senate and the people, despised the weakness of a prince, who wanted either the spirit or the power to command the obedience of his subjects.'

After the tyrant's death, his formidDiscontent of the prætorian able army had acknowledged, from guards. necessity rather than from choice, the authority of Maximus, who transported himself without delay to the camp before Aquileia. As soon as he had received their oath of fidelity, he addressed them in terms full of mildness and moderation; lamented, rather than arraigned, the wild disorders of the times, and assured the soldiers, that of all their past conduct, the senate would remember only their generous desertion of the tyrant, and their voluntary return to their duty. Maximus enforced his exhortations by a liberal donative, purified the camp by a solemn sacrifice of expiation, and then dismissed the legions to their several provinces, impressed, as he hoped, with a lively sense of gratitude and obedience. But nothing could reconcile the haughty spirit of the prætorians. They attended the emperors on the memorable day of their public entry into Rome; but amidst the general acclamations, the sullen dejected countenance of the guards sufficiently declared that they considered themselves as the object, rather than the partners, of the triumph. When the whole body was united in their camp, those who had served under Maximin, and those who had remained at Rome, insensibly communi

|

|

Balbinus.

When the senate elected two princes, Massacre of it is probable that, besides the declar- Maximus and ed reason of providing for the various emergencies of peace and war, they were actuated by the secret desire of weakening by division the despotism of the supreme magistrate. Their policy was effectual, but it proved fatal both to their emperors and to themselves. The jealousy of power was soon exasperated by the difference of character. Maximus despised Balbinus as a luxurious noble, and was in his turn disdained by his colleague as an obscure soldier. Their silent discord was understood rather than seen ;" but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the prætorian camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden they were alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Igno- July 15. rant of cach other's situation or designs, for they already occupied very distant apartments, afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt, stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of Rome, with a design of inflicting a slow and cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a 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.*

A. D. 238.

By the

Mesopotamia, and threatened Antioch. persuasion of his father-in-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 præfect. 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 A. D. 243, in the præfecture, was an Arab by Arts of Philip. 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 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 Murder of Gor 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.f

They carried him to the camp, and unanimously | vigour and ability. The Persians had invaded 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." Innocence and vir- As the third Gordian was only ninetues of Gordian. teen 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 unexperienced 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 Administration introduced Misitheus to the favour of of Misitheus. 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 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 misfortune of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labour to conceal the truth.b

A. D. 240.

The Persian war,

The life of Misitheus had been spent A. D. 242. in the profession of letters, not of arms; yet such was the versatile genius of that great man, that, when he was appointed prætorian præfect, he discharged the military duties of his place with

z Quintius Curtius (1. x. 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 Quintius 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.

a Hist. August. p. 161. From some hints in the two letters, I should expect 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.

b Duxit uxorem filiam Misithei, quem causâ eloquentiæ dignum parentela sua putavit; et præfectum statim fecit; post quod, non puerile jam et contemptibile videbatur imperium.

c Hist. August. p. 162. Aurelius Victor. Porphyrius in Vit. Plotin.

dian, A.D. 244. March.

We cannot forbear transcribing the Form of a miliingenious, though somewhat fanciful, tary republic. description, which a celebrated writer of our own times has traced of the military government of the Roman empire. "What in that age was called the Roman empire, was only an irregular republic, not unlike the aristocracy of Algiers, where the

ap. Fabricium, Biblioth. Græc. 1. iv. c. 36. The philosopher Plotinus accompanied the army, prompted by the love of knowledge, and by the hope of penetrating as far as India.

d About twenty miles from the little town of Circesium, on the frontier of the two empires.

The inscription (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. xxii. 5.

f Aurelius Victor. Eutrop. ix. 2. Orosius, vii. 20. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 5. Zosimus, 1. i. p. 19. Philip, who was a native of Bostra, was about forty years of age.

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.

h The military republic of the Mamalukes in Egypt, would have

militia, possessed of the sovereignty, creates and spire the superstitious mind with deep and solemn deposes a magistrate, who is styled a Dey. Per- reverence. The long interval between them' exhaps, indeed, it may be laid down as a general rule, ceeded the term of human life; and as none of that a military government is, in some respects, the spectators had already seen them, none could more republican than monarchical. Nor can it be flatter themselves with the expectation of beholding said that the soldiers only partook of the governthem a second time. The mystic sacrifices were ment by their disobedience and rebellions. The performed, during three nights, on the banks of the speeches made to them by the emperors, were they Tyber; and the Campus Martius resounded with not at length of the same nature as those formerly music and dances, and was illuminated with innupronounced to the people by the consuls and the merable lamps and torches. Slaves and strangers tribunes? And although the armies had no regular were excluded from any participation in these naplace or forms of assembly; though their debates tional ceremonies. A chorus of twenty-seven youths, were short, their action sudden, and their resolves and as many virgins, of noble families, and whose seldom the result of cool reflection, did they not parents were both alive, implored the propitious dispose, with absolute sway, of the public fortune? gods in favour of the present, and for the hope of What was the emperor, except the minister of a the rising generation; requesting, in religious violent government, elected for the private benefit hymns, that, according to the faith of their ancient of the soldiers? oracles, they would still maintain the virtue, the felicity, and the empire of the Roman people." The magnificence of Philip's shows and entertainments dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The devout were employed in the rites of superstition, whilst the reflecting few revolved in their anxious minds the past history and the future fate of the empire.

"When the army had elected Philip, who was prætorian præfect 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 præfect; 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 suppliant cries, that he should be seized, stript, and led away to instant death. After a moment's pause the inhuman sentence was executed.

On his return from the East to

Reign of Philip. Rome, Philip, desirous of obliterating
the memory of his crimes, and of captivating the
affections of the people, solemnized the secular
games with infinite pomp and magnificence. Since
their institution or revival by Augustus, they had
been celebrated by Claudius, by Domitian, and by
Severus, and were now renewed the fifth time, on
the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand
years from the foundation of Rome.
Secular games,
A. D. 248. April Every circumstance of the secular
games was skilfully adapted to in-

21.

afforded M. de Montesquieu (see Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains, c. 16.) a juster and more noble parallel.

i The Augustan History (p. 163, 164.) cannot, in this instance, be reconciled with itself or with probability. How could Philip condemn his predecessor, and yet consecrate his memory? How could he order his public execution, and yet, in his letters to the senate, exculpate himself from the guilt of his death? Philip, though an ambitious usurper, was by no means a mad tyrant. Some chronological difficulties have likewise been discovered by the nice eyes of Tillemont and Muratori, in this supposed association of Philip to the empire.

k The account of the last supposed celebration, though in an enlightened period of history, was so very doubtful and obscure, that the alternative seems not doubtful. When the popish jubilees, the copy of the secular games, were invented by Boniface VIII. the crafty pope

Decline of the Roman empire.

Since Romulus, with a small band of shepherds and outlaws, fortified himself on the hills near the Tyber, ten centuries had already elapsed." During the four first ages, the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government: by the vigorous exertion of those virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained, in the course of the three succeeding centuries, an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three hundred years had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who composed the thirty-five tribes of the Roman people, was dissolved into the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile provincials, who had received the name, without adopting the spirit, of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.

The limits of the Roman empire still extended from the Western Ocean to the Tigris, and from

pretended that he only revived an ancient institution. See M. le Chais Lettres sur les Jubiles.

1 Either of a hundred, or a hundred and ten years. Varro and Livy adopted the former opinion, but the infaliible authority of the Sibyl consecrated the latter, (Censorinus de Die Natal. c. 17.) The emperors Claudius and Philip, however, did not treat the oracle with implicit respect.

The idea of the secular games is best understood from the poem of Horace, and the description of Zosimus, 1. ii. p. 167, &c.

n The received calculation of Varro assigns to the foundation of Rome an æra that corresponds with the 754th year before Christ. But

so little is the chronology of Rome to be depended on, in the more early ages, that Sir Isaac Newton has brought the same event as low as the year 627.

Mount Atlas to the Rhine and the Danube. To | pulous cities, and reduced under extensive empires, the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigour were fled. The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions, which alone, after the extinction of every other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors. The strength of the frontiers, which had always consisted in arms rather than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman empire.

CHAP. VIII.

Of the state of Persia after the restoration of the monarchy by Artaxerxes.

The barbarians of

the North.

WHENEVER Tacitus indulges himself the East and of in those beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic transaction of the Germans or of the Parthians, his principal object is to relieve the attention of the reader from a uniform scene of vice and misery. From the reign of Augustus to the time of Alexander Severus, the enemies of Rome were in her bosom-the tyrants, and the soldiers; and her prosperity had a very distant and feeble interest in the revolutions that might happen beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates. But when the military order had levelled, in wild anarchy, the power of the prince, the laws of the senate, and even the discipline of the camp, the barbarians of the North and of the East, who had long hovered on the frontier, boldly attacked the provinces of a declining monarchy. Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions, and, after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman empire. To obtain a clearer knowledge of these great events, we shall endeavour to form a previous idea of the character, forces, and designs of those nations who avenged the cause of Hannibal and Mithridates.

Revolutions of In the more early ages of the world,

Asia. whilst the forest that covered Europe afforded a retreat to a few wandering savages, the inhabitants of Asia were already collected into po

a An ancient chronologist quoted by Velleins Paterculus (1. i. c. 6.) observes, that the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Macedo. nians, reigned over Asia one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years, from the accession of Ninus to the defeat of Antiochus by the Romans. As the latter of these great events happened 289 years before Christ, the former may be placed 2184 years before the same æra. The Astronomical Observations, found at Babylon by Alexander, went fifty years higher.

b In the five hundred and thirty-eighth year of the era of Seleucus, See Agathias, l. ii. p. 63. This great event (such is the carelessness of the Orientals) is placed by Eutychius as high as the tenth year of Com

the seat of the arts, of luxury, and of despotism.
The Assyrians reigned over the East," till the sceptre
of Ninus and Semiramis dropt from the hands of
their enervated successors. The Medes and the
Babylonians divided their power, and were them-
selves swallowed up in the monarchy of the Per-
sians, whose arms could not be confined within the
narrow limits of Asia. Followed, as it is said, by
two millions of men, Xerxes, the descendant of
Cyrus, invaded Greece. Thirty thousand soldiers,
under the command of Alexander, the son of Philip,
who was intrusted by the Greeks with their glory
and revenge, were sufficient to subdue Persia. The
princes of the house of Seleucus usurped and lost
the Macedonian command over the East. About
the same time that, by an ignominious treaty, they
resigned to the Romans the country on this side
Mount Taurus, they were driven by the Parthians,
an obscure horde of Scythian origin, from all the
provinces of Upper Asia. The formidable power
of the Parthians, which spread from India to the
frontiers of Syria, was in its turn subverted by
Ardshir, or Artaxerxes; the founder of a new
dynasty, which, under the name of Sassanides,
governed Persia, till the invasion of the Arabs.
This great revolution, whose fatal influence was
soon experienced by the Romans, happened in the
fourth year of Alexander Severus, two hundred and
twenty-six years after the Christian æra.
Artaxerxes had served with great
reputation in the armies of Artaban,
the last king of the Parthians, and it
appears that he was driven into exile and rebel-
lion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for
superior merit. His birth was obscure, and the
obscurity equally gave room to the aspersions of his
enemies, and the flattery of his adherents. If we
credit the scandal of the former, Artaxerxes sprang
from the illegitimate commerce of a tanner's wife
with a common soldier. The latter represent him
as descended from a branch of the ancient kings of
Persia, though time and misfortune had gradually
reduced his ancestors to the humble station of
private citizens. As the lineal heir of the monarchy,
he asserted his right to the throne, and challenged
the noble task of delivering the Persians from the
oppression under which they groaned above five
centuries since the death of Darius. The Parthians
were defeated in three great battles. In the last of
these their king Artaban was slain, and the spirit of
the nation was for ever broken. The authority of
Artaxerxes was solemnly acknowledged in a great
assembly held at Balch in Khorasan. Two younger

The Persian mo

archy restored by Artaxerxes.

modus; and by Moses of Chorene, as low as the reign of Philip. Ammianus Marcellinus has so servilely copied (xxiii. 6.) his ancient materials, which are indeed very good, that he describes the family of the Arsacides as still seated on the Persian throne in the middle of the fourth century.

c The tanner's name was Babec; the soldier's, Sassan: from the former Artaxerxes obtained the surname of Babegan, from the latter all his descendants have been styled Sassanides.

d D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale. Ardshir.

e Dion Cassius, 1. lxxx. Herodian, 1. vi. p. 207. Abulpharagius Dynast. p. 80.