OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE,

295

from all parts of the empire. Three successful chap.

campaigns against the Germans , and the Sarma-__

tians, had raised their fame, confirmed theirdiscipline, and even increased their numbers, byfilling the ranks with the flower of the barbarianyouth. The life of Maximin had been spent inwar, and the candid severity of history cannotrefuse him the valour of a soldier, or even theabilities of an experienced general . 11 It mightnaturally be expected, that a prince of such acharacter, instead of suffering the rebellion togain stability by delay, should immediately havemarched from the banks of the Danube to thoseof the Tyber, and that his victorious army, in-stigated by contempt for the senate, and eager togather the spoils of Italy , should have burnedwith impatience to finish the easy and lucrativeconquest. Yet as far as we can trust to the ob-scure chronology of that period , 1 it appears that

h In Herodian , 1. vii, p. 249, and in the Augustan history, we havethree several orations of Maximin to his army, on the rebellion of Africa and Rome . M. de Tillemont has very justly observed, that they nei-ther agree with each other, nor with truth Histoire des Empereura,tom. iii, p. 799.

1 The carelessness of the writers of that age leaves us in a singularperplexity. 1. We know that Maximus and Balbinns were killed dur-ing the Capitoline games. Herodian , I. viii, p. 285. The authority ofCensorinus (de Die Natali, c. 18) enables us to fix those games, withcertainty, to the year 238, but leaves us in ignorance of the month orday. 2. The election of Gordian by the senate is fixed, with equalcertainty, to the 27th of May; but we are at a loss to discover, whe-ther it was in the same or the preceding year. Tillemont and Mura-tori, who maintain the two opposite opinions, bring into the field a de-sultory troop of authorities, conjectures, and probabilities The oneseems to draw out, the other to contract, the series of events betweenthose periods, more than can be well reconciled to reason and history.Yet it is necessary to choose between them.