ill in possession of that great office, which commanded with arbitrary
sway the lives and fortunes of the senate. A murmur of indignation was
heard, that a man, whose obscure extraction had never been illustrated
by any signal service, should dare to invest himself with the purple,
instead of bestowing it on some distinguished senator, equal in birth
and dignity to the splendor of the Imperial station. As soon as the
character of Macrinus was surveyed by the sharp eye of discontent,
some vices, and many defects, were easily discovered. The choice of his
ministers was in many instances justly censured, and the dissatisfied
people, with their usual candor, accused at once his indolent tameness
and his excessive severity.

His rash ambition had climbed a height where it was difficult to stand
with firmness, and impossible to fall without instant destruction.
Trained in the arts of courts and the forms of civil business, he
trembled in the presence of the fierce and undisciplined multitude, over
whom he had assumed the command; his military talents were despised, and
his personal courage suspected; a whisper that circulated in the camp,
disclosed the fatal secret of the conspiracy against the late emperor,
aggravated the guilt of murder by the baseness of hypocrisy, and
heightened contempt by detestation. To alienate the soldiers, and to
provoke inevitable ruin, the character of a reformer was only wanting;
and such was the peculiar hardship of his fate, that Macrinus was
compelled to exercise that invidious office. The prodigality of
Caracalla had left behind it a long train of ruin and disorder; and
if that worthless tyrant had been capable of reflecting on the sure
consequences of his own conduct, he would perhaps have enjoyed the
dark prospect of the distress and calamities which he bequeathed to his
successors.

In the management of this necessary reformation, Macrinus proceeded with
a cautious prudence, which would have restored health and vigor to the
Roman army in an easy and almost imperceptible manner. To the soldiers
already engaged in the service, he was constrained to leave the
dangerous privileges and extravagant pay given by Caracalla; but the new
recruits were received on the more moderate though liberal establishment
of Severus, and gradually formed to modesty and obedience. One fatal
error destroyed the salutary effects of this judicious plan. The
numerous army, assembled in the East by the late emperor,