veral
miles from the head-quarters; and he trusted for success rather to
the secret wishes than to the public declarations of the great army.
Alexander had sufficient time to awaken a faint sense of loyalty among
the troops; but their reluctant professions of fidelity quickly vanished
on the appearance of Maximin, who declared himself the friend and
advocate of the military order, and was unanimously acknowledged emperor
of the Romans by the applauding legions. The son of Mamaea, betrayed
and deserted, withdrew into his tent, desirous at least to conceal his
approaching fate from the insults of the multitude. He was soon followed
by a tribune and some centurions, the ministers of death; but instead
of receiving with manly resolution the inevitable stroke, his unavailing
cries and entreaties disgraced the last moments of his life, and
converted into contempt some portion of the just pity which his
innocence and misfortunes must inspire. His mother, Mamaea, whose pride
and avarice he loudly accused as the cause of his ruin, perished with
her son. The most faithful of his friends were sacrificed to the first
fury of the soldiers. Others were reserved for the more deliberate
cruelty of the usurper; and those who experienced the mildest treatment,
were stripped of their employments, and ignominiously driven from the
court and army. [6]

[Footnote 5: Hist. August. p. 135. I have softened some of the most
improbable circumstances of this wretched biographer. From his
ill-worded narration, it should seem that the prince's buffoon having
accidentally entered the tent, and awakened the slumbering monarch, the
fear of punishment urged him to persuade the disaffected soldiers to
commit the murder.]

[Footnote 6: Herodian, l. vi. 223-227.]

The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were
all dissolute and unexperienced youths, [7] educated in the purple, and
corrupted by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious
voice of flattery. The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a different
source, the fear of contempt. Though he depended on the attachment of
the soldiers, who loved him for virtues like their own, he was conscious
that his mean and barbarian origin, his savage appearance, and his total
ignorance of the arts and institutions of civil life, [8] formed a very
unfavorable contrast with the amiable manners of the unhappy Alexander.
He remembered, that, in his humbler fortune, he had often