to trace the successive steps of the secret conspiracy and open
sedition, which were at length fatal to Gordian. A sepulchral monument
was erected to his memory on the spot [50] where he was killed, near the
conflux of the Euphrates with the little river Aboras. [51] The fortunate
Philip, raised to the empire by the votes of the soldiers, found a ready
obedience from the senate and the provinces. [52]

[Footnote 49: Hist. August. p. 162. Aurelius Victor. Porphyrius in Vit
Plotin. ap. Fabricium, Biblioth. Graec. l. iv. c. 36. The philosopher
Plotinus accompanied the army, prompted by the love of knowledge, and by
the hope of penetrating as far as India.]

[Footnote 50: About twenty miles from the little town of Circesium, on
the frontier of the two empires. * Note: Now Kerkesia; placed in the
angle formed by the juncture of the Chaboras, or al Khabour, with the
Euphrates. This situation appeared advantageous to Diocletian, that he
raised fortifications to make it the but wark of the empire on the side
of Mesopotamia. D'Anville. Geog. Anc. ii. 196.--G. It is the Carchemish
of the Old Testament, 2 Chron. xxxv. 20. ler. xlvi. 2.--M.]

[Footnote 51: The inscription (which contained a very singular pun) was
erased by the order of Licinius, who claimed some degree of relationship
to Philip, (Hist. August. p. 166;) but the tumulus, or mound of earth
which formed the sepulchre, still subsisted in the time of Julian. See
Ammian Marcellin. xxiii. 5.]

[Footnote 52: Aurelius Victor. Eutrop. ix. 2. Orosius, vii. 20. Ammianus
Marcellinus, xxiii. 5. Zosimus, l. i. p. 19. Philip, who was a native of
Bostra, was about forty years of age. * Note: Now Bosra. It was once the
metropolis of a province named Arabia, and the chief city of Auranitis,
of which the name is preserved in Beled Hauran, the limits of which meet
the desert. D'Anville. Geog. Anc. ii. 188. According to Victor, (in
Caesar.,) Philip was a native of Tracbonitis another province of
Arabia.--G.]

We cannot forbear transcribing the ingenious, though somewhat fanciful
description, which a celebrated writer of our own times has traced
of the military government of the Roman empire. What in that age was
called the Roman empire, was only an irregular republic, not unlike
the aristocracy [53] of Algiers, [54] where the militia, possessed of
the sovereignty, creates and deposes a magistrate, who is styled a Dey.
Perhaps, indeed, it may be laid down as a general rule, that a mi