by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he more properly styled himself, of the empress's husband." which distinguished It may seem probable the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been adorned by fancy and blackened by prejudice.60 Yet, Contempt confining ourselves to the public scenes displayed before the of decency Roman people, and attested by grave and contemporary the Roman historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of any tyrants. other age or country. The licence of an eastern monarch is secluded from the eye of curiosity by the inaccessible walls of his seraglio. The sentiments of honour and gallantry have introduced a refinement of pleasure, a regard for decency, and a respect for the public opinion, into the modern courts of Europe; but the corrupt and opulent nobles of Rome gratified every vice that could be collected from the mighty conflux of nations and manners. Secure of impunity, careless of censure, they lived without restraint in the patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites. The emperor, in his turn, viewing every rank of his subjects with the same contemptuous indifference, asserted without control his sovereign privilege of lust and luxury. tents of The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can Disconreadily discover some nice difference of age, character, or the army. station, to justify the partial distinction. The licentious soldiers who had raised to the throne the dissolute son of Caracalla, blushed at their ignominious choice, and turned with disgust from that monster to contemplate with pleasure the opening virtues of his cousin Alexander, the son of Mamæa. The crafty Mæsa, sensible that her grandson Elagabalus must inevitably destroy himself by his own vices, had provided another and surer support of her family. Embracing a favourable moment of fondness and devotion, she had persuaded the young emperor to adopt Alexander and to invest him with Alexander the title of Cæsar, that his own divine occupations might declared be no longer interrupted by the care of the earth. In the D. 221. Severus Cæsar, A.D. Hierocles enjoyed that honour; but he would have been supplanted by one Zoticus, had he not contrived by a potion to enervate the powers of his rival, who, being found on trial unequal to his reputation, was driven with ignominy from the palace. Dion, 1. lxxix. [c. 15, 16] p. 1363, 1364. A dancer was made præfect of the city, a charioteer præfect of the watch, a barber præfect of the provisions. These three ministers, with many inferior officers, were all recommended enormitate membrorum. Hist. August. p. 105. [Lampr. Heliogab. c. 12.] 60 Even the credulous compiler of his Life, in the Augustan History (p. 111) [Lampr. Heliogab. c. 30, fin.], is inclined to suspect that his vices may have been exaggerated. • Wenck has justly observed that Gibbon should have reckoned the influence of Christianity in this great change. In the most savage times and the most corrupt courts, since the introduction of Christianity, there have been no Neros or Domitians, no Commodus or Elagabalus. -M. emperor, and his life might depend on the slightest suspicion or the most casual circumstance. Malice or fanaticism had suggested to an African, deeply skilled in the knowledge of futurity, a very dangerous prediction, that Macrinus and his son were destined to reign over the empire. The report was soon diffused through the province; and when the man was sent in chains to Rome, he still asserted, in the presence of the præfect of the city, the faith of his prophecy. That magistrate, who had received the most pressing instructions to inform himself of the successors of Caracalla, immediately communicated the examination of the African to the Imperial court, which at that time resided in Syria. But, notwithstanding the diligence of the public messengers, a friend of Macrinus found means to apprise him of the approaching danger. The emperor received the letters from Rome; and, as he was then engaged in the conduct of a chariotrace, he delivered them unopened to the Prætorian præfect, directing him to despatch the ordinary affairs, and to report the more important business that might be contained in them. Macrinus read his fate and resolved to prevent it. He inflamed the discontents of some inferior officers, and employed the hand of Martialis, a desperate soldier, who had been refused the rank of centurion. The devotion of Caracalla prompted him to make a pilgrimage from Edessa to the celebrated temple of the Moon at Carrhæ. He was attended by a body of cavalry; but having stopped on the road for some necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful distance, and Martialis, approaching his person under a pretence of duty, stabbed him with a dagger. The bold assassin was instantly killed by a Scythian archer of the Imperial guard. Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced human nature, and whose reign accused the patience of the Romans.39 The grateful soldiers forgot his vices, remembered only his partial liberality, and obliged the senate to prostitute their own dignity and that of religion by grant Imitation of Alexander. ing him a place among the gods. Whilst he was upon earth Alexander the Great was the only hero whom this god deemed worthy his admiration. He assumed the name and ensigns of Alexander, formed a Macedonian phalanx of guards, persecuted the disciples of Aristotle, and displayed, with a puerile enthusiasm, the only sentiment by which he discovered any regard for virtue or glory. We can easily conceive that, after the battle of Narva and the conquest of Poland, Charles the Twelfth (though he 39 Dion, 1. lxxviii. [c. 5] p. 1313. Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 13] p. 168. a Carrhæ, now Harran, between Edessa and Nisibis, famous for the defeat of Crassus the Haran from whence Abra ham set out for the land of Canaan. ( ( still wanted the more elegant accomplishments of the son of Philip) might boast of having rivalled his valour and magnanimity; but in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance of the Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a great number of his own and of his father's friends. 40 and cha After the extinction of the house of Severus, the Roman world remained three days without a master. The choice of the Election army (for the authority of a distant and feeble senate was racer of little regarded) hung in anxious suspense; as no candidate Macrinus. presented himself whose distinguished birth and merit could engage their attachment and unite their suffrages. The decisive weight of the Prætorian guards elevated the hopes of their præfects, and these powerful ministers began to assert their legal claim to fill the vacancy of the Imperial throne. Adventus, however, the senior præfect, conscious of his age and infirmities, of his small reputation, and his smaller abilities, resigned the dangerous honour to the crafty ambition of his colleague Macrinus, whose well-dissembled grief removed all suspicion of his being accessory to his master's death." The troops neither loved nor esteemed his character. They cast their eyes around in search of a competitor, and at last yielded with reluctance to his promises of unbounded liberality and indulgence. A.D. 217, A short time after his accession he conferred on his son March 11. Diadumenianus, at the age of only ten years, the Imperial title and the popular name of Antoninus. The beautiful figure of the youth, assisted by an additional donative, for which the ceremony furnished a pretext, might attract, it was hoped, the favour of the army, and secure the doubtful throne of Macrinus. of the The authority of the new sovereign had been ratified by the cheerful submission of the senate and provinces. They Discontent exulted in their unexpected deliverance from a hated tyrant, senate, and it seemed of little consequence to examine into the virtues of the successor of Caracalla. But as soon as the first transports of joy and surprise had subsided, they began to scrutinise the merits of Macrinus with a critical severity, and to arraign the hasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be always chosen in the senate, and the sovereign power, no longer exercised by the whole The fondness of Caracalla for the name and ensigns of Alexander is still preserved on the medals of that emperor. See Spanheim, de Usu Numismatum, Dissertat. xii. Herodian (1. iv. [c. 8, init.] p. 154) had seen very ridiculous pictures, in which a figure was drawn, with one side of the face like Alexander, and the other like Caracalla. "Herodian, 1. iv. [c. 14] p. 169. Hist. August. p. 94. [Capitol. Macr. c. 4.] But Macrinus body, was always delegated to one of its members. was not a senator. 42 The sudden elevation of the Prætorian præfects oetrayed the meanness of their origin; and the equestrian order was still 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 43 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 splendour 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 candour, 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 destrucarmy. tion. 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. and the 42 Dion, 1. lxxix. [c. 1] p. 1350. Elagabalus reproached his predecessor with daring to seat himself on the throne; though, as Prætorian præfect, he could not have been admitted into the senate after the voice of the crier had cleared the house. The personal favour of Plautianus and Sejanus had broke through the established rule. They rose, indeed, from the equestrian order; but they preserved the præfecture with the rank of senator, and even with the consulship. 43 He was a native of Cæsarea, in Numidia, and began his fortune by serving in the household of Plautian, from whose ruin he narrowly escaped. His enemies asserted that he was born a slave, and had exercised, among other infamous professions, that of gladiator. The fashion of aspersing the birth and condition of an adversary seems to have lasted from the time of the Greek orators to the learned grammarians of the last age. "Both Dion and Herodian speak of the virtues and vices of Macrinus with candour and impartiality; but the author of his Life, in the Augustan History, seems to have implicitly copied some of the venal writers employed by Elagabalus to blacken the memory of his predecessor. attempts a tion of the In the management of this necessary reformation, Macrinus proceeded with a cautious prudence which would have restored Macrinus health and vigour to the Roman army in an easy and reformaalmost imperceptible manner. To the soldiers already army. 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.45 One fatal error destroyed the salutary effects of this judicious plan. The numerous army assembled in the East by the late emperor, instead of being immediately dispersed by Macrinus through the several provinces, was suffered to remain united in Syria during the winter that followed his elevation. In the luxurious idleness of their quarters, the troops viewed their strength and numbers, communicated their complaints, and revolved in their minds the advantages of another revolution. The veterans, instead of being flattered by the advantageous distinction, were alarmed by the first steps of the emperor, which they considered as the presage of his future intentions. The recruits, with sullen reluctance, entered on a service whose labours were increased while its rewards were diminished by a covetous and unwarlike sovereign. The murmurs of the army swelled with impunity into seditious clamours; and the partial mutinies betrayed a spirit of discontent and disaffection that waited only for the slightest occasion to break out on every side into a general rebellion. To minds thus disposed the occasion soon presented itself. The empress Julia had experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune. From an humble station she had been raised to greatness, Death of only to taste the superior bitterness of an exalted rank. She was doomed to weep over the death of one of her sons, pretenand over the life of the other. The cruel fate of Caracalla, and though her good sense must have long taught her to expected it, awakened the feelings of a mother and of an empress. at first BasNotwithstanding the respectful civility expressed by the Antoninus. usurper towards the widow of Severus, she descended with a painfu. struggle into the condition of a subject, and soon withdrew herself, by a voluntary death, from the anxious and humiliating dependence.46 Julia Mæsa, her sister, was ordered to leave the court and Antioch. She retired to Emesa with an immense fortune, the fruit of twenty the empress Julia. Education, sions, sianus and "Dion, 1. lxxviii. [c. 28] p. 1336. The sense of the author is as clear as the intention of the emperor; but Mr. Wotton has mistaken both, by understand.ng the distinction, not of veterans and recruits, but of old and new legions. History of Rome, p. 347. Dion, 1. lxxviii. [c. 23] p. 1330. The abridgment of Xiphilin, though less particular, is in this place clearer than the original. |