probability and the common
standard of the character of Alexander Severus. The abilities of that
amiable prince seem to have been inadequate to the difficulties of his
situation, the firmness of his conduct inferior to the purity of his
intentions. His virtues, as well as the vices of Elagabalus, contracted
a tincture of weakness and effeminacy from the soft climate of Syria,
of which he was a native; though he blushed at his foreign origin, and
listened with a vain complacency to the flattering genealogists, who
derived his race from the ancient stock of Roman nobility. The pride and
avarice of his mother cast a shade on the glories of his reign; an by
exacting from his riper years the same dutiful obedience which she had
justly claimed from his unexperienced youth, Mamaea exposed to public
ridicule both her son's character and her own. The fatigues of the
Persian war irritated the military discontent; the unsuccessful event
* degraded the reputation of the emperor as a general, and even as
a soldier. Every cause prepared, and every circumstance hastened, a
revolution, which distracted the Roman empire with a long series of
intestine calamities.

The dissolute tyranny of Commodus, the civil wars occasioned by his
death, and the new maxims of policy introduced by the house of Severus,
had all contributed to increase the dangerous power of the army, and to
obliterate the faint image of laws and liberty that was still impressed
on the minds of the Romans. The internal change, which undermined the
foundations of the empire, we have endeavored to explain with some
degree of order and perspicuity. The personal characters of the
emperors, their victories, laws, follies, and fortunes, can interest us
no farther than as they are connected with the general history of the
Decline and Fall of the monarchy. Our constant attention to that
great object will not suffer us to overlook a most important edict of
Antoninus Caracalla, which communicated to all the free inhabitants
of the empire the name and privileges of Roman citizens. His unbounded
liberality flowed not, however, from the sentiments of a generous mind;
it was the sordid result of avarice, and will naturally be illustrated
by some observations on the finances of that state, from the victorious
ages of the commonwealth to the reign of Alexander Severus.

The siege of Veii in Tuscany, the first considerable enterprise of the
Romans, was protracted to the tenth year, much l