fects
betrayed 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 splendor 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 dissastified
dissatisfied people, with their usual candor, accused at once his
indolent tameness and his excessive severity. [44]

[Footnote 42: Dion, l. lxxxviii. p. 1350. Elagabalus reproached his
predecessor with daring to seat himself on the throne; though, as
Praetorian praefect, he could not have been admitted into the senate
after the voice of the crier had cleared the house. The personal favor
of Plautianus and Sejanus had broke through the established rule.
They rose, indeed, from the equestrian order; but they preserved the
praefecture, with the rank of senator and even with the annulship.]

[Footnote 43: He was a native of Caesarea, 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.]

[Footnote 44: Both Dion and Herodian speak of the virtues and vices of
Macrinus with candor 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.]

His rash ambition had climbed a height where it was difficult to stand
with firmness, and impossible to fall without instant destruction.
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,