ent civil wars, through which an
Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the throne of his fathers.
Yet, even in the East, the sphere of contention is usually limited to
the princes of the reigning house, and as soon as the more fortunate
competitor has removed his brethren by the sword and the bowstring, he
no longer entertains any jealousy of his meaner subjects. But the Roman
empire, after the authority of the senate had sunk into contempt, was
a vast scene of confusion. The royal, and even noble, families of the
provinces had long since been led in triumph before the car of the
haughty republicans. The ancient families of Rome had successively
fallen beneath the tyranny of the Caesars; and whilst those princes
were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the
repeated failure of their posterity, [1] it was impossible that any idea
of hereditary succession should have taken root in the minds of their
subjects. The right to the throne, which none could claim from birth,
every one assumed from merit. The daring hopes of ambition were set
loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest
of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by
valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime
would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble
and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the
elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the
throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that
august, but dangerous station.

[Footnote 1: There had been no example of three successive generations
on the throne; only three instances of sons who succeeded their fathers.
The marriages of the Caesars (notwithstanding the permission, and the
frequent practice of divorces) were generally unfruitful.]

About thirty-two years before that event, the emperor Severus, returning
from an eastern expedition, halted in Thrace, to celebrate, with
military games, the birthday of his younger son, Geta. The country
flocked in crowds to behold their sovereign, and a young barbarian of
gigantic stature earnestly solicited, in his rude dialect, that he
might be allowed to contend for the prize of wrestling. As the pride of
discipline would have been disgraced in the overthrow of a Roman soldier
by a Thracian peasant, he was matched with the stoutest followers of the
camp, sixteen of whom he successiv