OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE,

309

Misitheus, who died of a flux, not without very chm\

strong suspicions of poison. Philip, his sue-_

cessor in the prefecture, was an Arab by birth, a . ». 243,and consequently, in the earlier part of his life, Philip,a robber by profession. His rise from so ob-scure a station to the first dignities of the em-pire, seems to prove that he was a bold andable leader. But his boldness prompted himto aspire to the throne, and his abilities wereemployed to supplant, not to serve, his indul-gent master. The minds of the soldiers wereirritated by an artificial scarcity, created by hiscontrivance in the camp; and the distress ofthe army was attributed to the youth and inca-pacity of the prince. It is not in our power totrace the successive steps of the secret conspi-racy and open sedition, which were at lengthfatal to Gordian. A sepulchral monument was Murder oferected to his memory on the spot c where he A.’m'ait,was killed, near the conflux of the Euphrates Marcl ‘*with the little river Aboras. d The fortunatePhilip, raised to the empire by the votes of thesoldiers, found a ready obedience from the se-nate and the provinces.'

We cannot forbear transcribing the ingenious, Form of athough somewhat fanciful description, which a ™pubif c

c About twenty miles from the little town of Circesium, on the fron-tier of the two empires.

d The inscription (which contained a very singular pun) was erasedby the order of Licinius , who claimed some degree of relationship toPhilip (Hist. August, p. 165); but the tumulus, or mound of earth, whichformed the sepulchre, still subsisted in the time of Julian. See Ammi-an, Marcellin. xxiii, 5.

e Aurelius Victor. Eutrop. ix, 2. Orosius, vii, 20. AmmianusMarcellinus, xxiii, 5. Zosimus , 1. i, p. 19. Philip, who was a nativeof Bostra, was about forty years of age.