waited before
the door of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance
by the insolence of their slaves. He recollected too the friendship of
a few who had relieved his poverty, and assisted his rising hopes. But
those who had spurned, and those who had protected, the Thracian, were
guilty of the same crime, the knowledge of his original obscurity. For
this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several
of his benefactors, Maximin published, in characters of blood, the
indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude. [9]

[Footnote 7: Caligula, the eldest of the four, was only twenty-five
years of age when he ascended the throne; Caracalla was twenty-three,
Commodus nineteen, and Nero no more than seventeen.]

[Footnote 8: It appears that he was totally ignorant of the Greek
language; which, from its universal use in conversation and letters, was
an essential part of every liberal education.]

[Footnote 9: Hist. August. p. 141. Herodian, l. vii. p. 237. The latter
of these historians has been most unjustly censured for sparing the
vices of Maximin.]

The dark and sanguinary soul of the tyrant was open to every suspicion
against those among his subjects who were the most distinguished by
their birth or merit. Whenever he was alarmed with the sound of treason,
his cruelty was unbounded and unrelenting. A conspiracy against his life
was either discovered or imagined, and Magnus, a consular senator, was
named as the principal author of it. Without a witness, without a trial,
and without an opportunity of defence, Magnus, with four thousand of his
supposed accomplices, was put to death. Italy and the whole empire
were infested with innumerable spies and informers. On the slightest
accusation, the first of the Roman nobles, who had governed provinces,
commanded armies, and been adorned with the consular and triumphal
ornaments, were chained on the public carriages, and hurried away to the
emperor's presence. Confiscation, exile, or simple death, were esteemed
uncommon instances of his lenity. Some of the unfortunate sufferers he
ordered to be sewed up in the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be
exposed to wild beasts, others again to be beaten to death with clubs.
During the three years of his reign, he disdained to visit either Rome
or Italy. His camp, occasionally removed from the banks of the Rhine to
those of the Danube, was the seat of his stern despotism, which trampled
on every