s of Italy, they were terrified by the
silence and desolation that prevailed. The villages and open towns had
been abandoned, the bridges destroyed, the cattle driven away, the
provisions removed, the country made a desert. The people had gathered
into the walled cities, which were plentifully provisioned and
garrisoned. The purpose of the senate was to weaken Maximin by famine
and retard him by siege.

The first city assailed was Aquileia, It was fully provisioned and
vigorously defended, the inhabitants preferring death on their walls to
death by the tyrant's order. Yet Rome was in imminent danger. Maximin
might at any moment abandon the siege of a frontier city and march upon
the capital. There was no army capable of opposing him. The fate of Rome
hung upon a thread.

The hand of an assassin cut that thread. The severity of the weather,
the growth of disease, the lack of food, had spread disaffection through
Maximin's army. Ignorant of the true state of affairs, many of the
soldiers feared that the whole empire was in arms against them. The
tyrant, vexed at the obstinate defence of Aquileia, visited his anger on
his men, and roused a stern desire for revenge. The end came soon. A
party of Praetorian guards, in dread for their wives and children, who
were in the camp of Alba, near Rome, broke into sudden revolt, entered
Maximin's tent, and killed him, his son, and the principal ministers of
his tyranny.

The whole army sympathized with this impulsive act. The heads of the
dead, borne on the points of spears, were shown the garrison, and at
once the gates were thrown open, the hungry troops supplied with food,
and a general fraternization took place. Joy in the fall of the tyrant
was universal throughout the empire, the two new emperors entered Rome
in a triumphal procession, people and nobles alike went wild with
enthusiasm, and the belief was entertained that a golden age was to
succeed the age of iron that had come to an end. Yet within three months
afterwards both the new emperors were massacred in the streets of Rome,
and the hoped-for era of happiness and prosperity vanished before the
swelling tide of oppression, demoralization, and decline.

_THE DEEDS OF CONSTANTINE._

In the century that followed the reign of Maximin great changes came
upon the empire of Rome. The process of decline went steadily on. The
city of Rome sank in importance as the centre of the empire. The armies
were recruited from