in a strange costume as at Emesa, to the great
disgust of the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him to adopt his cousin
Alexander, a youth of much more promise, who took the name of Severus.
The soldiers were charmed with him; Elagabalus became jealous, and was
going to strip him of his honors; but this angered the Praetorians, so
that they put the elder Emperor to death in 222.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER SEVERUS.]

Alexander Severus was a good and just prince, whose mother is believed
to have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of the
Divine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved
virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our
Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with
that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of
mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level.
He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good
and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the Praetorians in 235.

These guards had all the power, and set up and put down Emperors so
rapidly that there are hardly any names worth remembering. In the
unsettled state of the empire no one had time to persecute the
Christians, and their numbers grew and prospered; in many places they
had churches, with worship going on openly, and their Bishops were known
and respected. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, who was actually
a Christian, though he would not own it openly, when he was at Antioch,
joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive the
Holy Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have
done open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple,
and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put
off his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called the
Seculae, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, with
all their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splendor, in honor of
this being Rome's thousandth birthday.

Soon after, another general named Decius was chosen by the army on the
German frontier, and Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wanted
to be an old-fashioned Roman; he believed in the gods, and thought the
troubles of the empire came of forsaking them; and as the Parthians
molested the East, and the Goths and Germans the North, and the soldiers
seemed more ready to kill thei