had lost the affection of the
army, and taught him to improve their discontent to his own advantage.
It is easy for faction and calumny to shed their poison on the
administration of the best of princes, and to accuse even their virtues
by artfully confounding them with those vices to which they bear the
nearest affinity. The troops listened with pleasure to the emissaries of
Maximin. They blushed at their own ignominious patience, which, during
thirteen years, had supported the vexatious discipline imposed by an
effeminate Syrian, the timid slave of his mother and of the senate. It
was time, they cried, to cast away that useless phantom of the civil
power, and to elect for their prince and general a real soldier,
educated in camps, exercised in war, who would assert the glory, and
distribute among his companions the treasures, of the empire. A great
army was at that time assembled on the banks of the Rhine, under the
command of the emperor himself, who, almost immediately after his return
from the Persian war, had been obliged to march against the barbarians
of Germany. The important care of training and reviewing the new levies
was intrusted to Maximin. One day, as he entered the field of exercise,
the troops either from a sudden impulse, or a formed conspiracy, saluted
him emperor, silenced by their loud acclamations his obstinate refusal,
and hastened to consummate their rebellion by the murder of Alexander
Severus.

The circumstances of his death are variously related. The writers, who
suppose that he died in ignorance of the ingratitude and ambition of
Maximin, affirm, that, after taking a frugal repast in the sight of the
army, he retired to sleep, and that, about the seventh hour of the day,
a part of his own guards broke into the imperial tent, and, with many
wounds, assassinated their virtuous and unsuspecting prince. If we
credit another, and indeed a more probable account, Maximin was invested
with the purple by a numerous detachment, at the distance of several
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 legio