were
alternately the scene of his cruelty and rapine, a victim of the foulest
superstitions of the East, and arrogant and vainglorious as he was savage.
His tyranny became unendurable, and he was murdered by an agent of the
praetorian prefect, A.D. 217, Opilius Macrinus, who became the next
emperor.

(M1108) Macrinus was only elevated to the purple by promising rich
donations to the soldiers, for his rank was only that of a knight. He
undertook to restore discipline in the army, and the licentious soldiery
found a new candidate for the empire in the person of Avitus, of the
family of Severus, a beautiful boy of seventeen, who officiated as priest
of the sun in Syria, and whose name in history, from the god he served, is
called Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus. But Macrinus was at the head of a
formidable force, and fought his rival with bravery, but without success.
The battle was decided against him, and he was overtaken in flight and put
to death, A.D. 218.

(M1109) With Elagabalus is associated the most repulsive and loathsome
reign of all the emperors. He was guilty of the most shameless
obscenities, and the most degrading superstitions. He painted and dressed
himself like an Oriental prince; he banqueted in halls hung with cloth of
gold, and enriched with jewels; he slept on mattresses stuffed with down
found only under the wings of partridges; he dined from tables of pure
gold; he danced in public, arrayed in the garb of a Syrian priest; and he
collected in his capital all the forms of idolatry and all the hideous
abominations which even Grecian paganism despised. This wretch, who
insulted every consecrated sentiment, was murdered after a reign of little
more than three years, A.D. 222, and his body was thrown into the Tiber,
and his memory branded with infamy by the Senate.

(M1110) The praetorians, who now controlled the State, offered the purple
to his cousin, Alexander Severus, grand-nephew of Septimius Severus, an
emperor who adorned those degenerate times, and who resembled the great
Aurelius in the severity of his virtues. His prime minister--the prefect of
the praetorian guards--was the celebrated Ulpian, the greatest of Roman
jurists, and next to him in dignity and power was the historian, Dion
Cassius, consul, governor in Africa, and legate in Dalmatia.

(M1111) The great labors of Alexander Severus were to quell the mutinous
spirit of the praetorian guards, who reveled in the spoil of the empire; to
subd