the senate waited to see whether Alexander would not assume it as
a family name.]

In the civil administration of Alexander, wisdom was
enforced by power, and the people, sensible of the public felicity,
repaid their benefactor with their love and gratitude. There still
remained a greater, a more necessary, but a more difficult enterprise;
the reformation of the military order, whose interest and temper,
confirmed by long impunity, rendered them impatient of the restraints of
discipline, and careless of the blessings of public tranquillity. In the
execution of his design, the emperor affected to display his love, and
to conceal his fear of the army. The most rigid economy in every other
branch of the administration supplied a fund of gold and silver for the
ordinary pay and the extraordinary rewards of the troops. In their
marches he relaxed the severe obligation of carrying seventeen days'
provision on their shoulders. Ample magazines were formed along the
public roads, and as soon as they entered the enemy's country, a
numerous train of mules and camels waited on their haughty laziness. As
Alexander despaired of correcting the luxury of his soldiers, he
attempted, at least, to direct it to objects of martial pomp and
ornament, fine horses, splendid armor, and shields enriched with silver
and gold. He shared whatever fatigues he was obliged to impose, visited,
in person, the sick and wounded, preserved an exact register of their
services and his own gratitude, and expressed on every occasion, the
warmest regard for a body of men, whose welfare, as he affected to
declare, was so closely connected with that of the state. [73] By the
most gentle arts he labored to inspire the fierce multitude with a sense
of duty, and to restore at least a faint image of that discipline to
which the Romans owed their empire over so many other nations, as
warlike and more powerful than themselves. But his prudence was vain,
his courage fatal, and the attempt towards a reformation served only to
inflame the ills it was meant to cure.

[Footnote 73: It was a favorite saying of the emperor's Se milites magis
servare, quam seipsum, quod salus publica in his esset. Hist. Aug. p.
130.]

The Praetorian guards
were attached to the youth of Alexander. They loved him as a tender
pupil, whom they had saved from a tyrant's fury, and placed on the
Imperial throne. That amiable prince was sensible of the obligation; but
as his gratitude was restrai