In such a democratic work, people with no ancestors, such as these Africans and Syrians, had more chance of success than rigid men of irreproachable bearing, like the aristocratic emperors. But the innate viciousness of the imperial system revealed itself for the tenth time. Alexander Severus was assassinated by the soldiers on the 19th of March, 235. It was clear that the army would tolerate none but tyrants. The empire had fallen successively from the Roman aristocracy to provincial officers, now it passed to subordinate officers and military assassins. Whereas, until the time of Commodus, the murdered emperors are intolerable monsters, it is now the good emperor, the man who desires to restore some kind of discipline and represses the crimes of the army, who is inevitably marked for death.[j] Still, it cannot be denied that there was need of strong, able commanders on the eve of the barbarian invasions. With all his virtues, Alexander was a weakling, unfit to rule at such a time. With his death the military revolution entered upon a third stage. It became more than ever necessary to strengthen the imperial office, because, it having been decided that the emperor should be a soldier, the choice of the soldiers, rival claimants of the office were threatening, by their civil strife, to break up the Roman world into a multitude of warring states.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[41] Herodian[d] tells us of a list of those destined to be put to death taken by a child, and read by Marcia, as in the case of Domitian. But he is a very inaccurate writer, and Dion[e], who was a senator and in Rome at the time, could hardly have been ignorant of the circumstance if it were true.
[42] [During this reign the disciplined legions under able commanders still protected the frontiers. Most of the empire was peaceful and prosperous. The government still carried on great public works and benevolently succoured the afflicted. The Christians were tolerated, and those of the sect who were in prison were released. The great official machine was little disturbed by the caprices of the emperor.]
[43] Severus, not content with expressing his veneration and respect for the memory of M. Aurelius, had the folly to pretend to be his son. “What most amazed us,” says Dion,[e] “was his saying that he was the son of Marcus and brother of Commodus.”
[44] [Tarantus was a nickname given to Caracalla after his death. It was the name of a gladiator of ignoble aspect.]
[45] The Life of Alexander, by Lampridius, in the Augustan History,[f] is, as Gibbon observes, “the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.” [The best rulers had to bear the charge of avarice.]
[46] [The substitution of the Syro-Phœnician sun-god by Elagabalus naturally recalls the monotheistic reformation of Amenhotep IV (Khun-aten) in Egypt more than sixteen centuries before. In Amenhotep’s day, Syrian influence predominated at the Egyptian court, as it did at Rome in the beginning of the third century A.D. That the culminating result of this should have been so much the same in both cases is a matter that seems to call for at least passing notice.]