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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
217
CHAP. VII.
_____person. The grateful intelligence of the death of the Gordians, was quickly followed by the assurance that the senate, laying aside all hopes of pardon or accommodation, had substituted in their room two emperors, with whose merit he could not be unacquainted. Revenge was the only consolation left to Maximin, and revenge could only be obtained by arms. The strength of the legions had been assembled by Alexander from all parts of the empire. Three successful campaigns against the Germans and the Sarmatians, had raised their fame, confirmed their discipline, and even increased their numbers, by filling the ranks with the flower of the barbarian youth. The life of Maximin had been spent in war ; and the candid severity of history cannot refuse him the valour of a soldier, or even the abilities of an experienced general[1]. It might naturally be expected, that a prince of such a character, instead of suffering the rebellion to gain stability by delay, should immediately have marched from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber; and that his victorious army, instigated by contempt for the senate, and eager to gather the spoils of Italy, should have burned with impatience to finish the easy and lucrative conquest. Yet as far as we can trust to the obscure chronology of that period[2], it appears that the operations of some foreign war deferred the Itahan expedition till the ensuing spring. From the prudent conduct of Maximin we may learn that the
_____person. The grateful intelligence of the death of the Gordians, was quickly followed by the assurance that the senate, laying aside all hopes of pardon or accommodation, had substituted in their room two emperors, with whose merit he could not be unacquainted. Revenge was the only consolation left to Maximin, and revenge could only be obtained by arms. The strength of the legions had been assembled by Alexander from all parts of the empire. Three successful campaigns against the Germans and the Sarmatians, had raised their fame, confirmed their discipline, and even increased their numbers, by filling the ranks with the flower of the barbarian youth. The life of Maximin had been spent in war ; and the candid severity of history cannot refuse him the valour of a soldier, or even the abilities of an experienced general[1]. It might naturally be expected, that a prince of such a character, instead of suffering the rebellion to gain stability by delay, should immediately have marched from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber; and that his victorious army, instigated by contempt for the senate, and eager to gather the spoils of Italy, should have burned with impatience to finish the easy and lucrative conquest. Yet as far as we can trust to the obscure chronology of that period[2], it appears that the operations of some foreign war deferred the Itahan expedition till the ensuing spring. From the prudent conduct of Maximin we may learn that the
- ↑ In Herodian, 1. vii. p. 249, and in the Augustan History, we have three several orations of Maximin to his army, on the rebelUon of Africa and Rome. M. de Tillemont has very justly observed, that they neither agree with each other, nor with truth. Histoire des Empereurs, torn. iii. p. 799.
- ↑ The carelessness of the writers of that age leaves us in a singular perplexity. 1. We know that Maximus and Balbinus were killed during the capitoline games. Herodian, lib. viii. p. 285. The authority of Censorinus (de Die Natali, c. 18.) enables us to fix those games with certainty to the year 238, but leaves us in ignorance of the month or day. 2. The election of Gordian by the senate is fixed, with equal certainty, to the twenty-seventh of May ; but we are at a loss to discover whether it was in the same or the preceding year. Tillemont and Muratori, who maintain the two opposite opinions, bring into the field a desultory troop of authorities, conjectures, and probabilities. The one seems to draw out, the other to contract the series of events, between those periods, more than can be well reconciled to reason and history. Yet it is necessary to choose between them.
