the rapine and cruelty of war.
The soldiers themselves, among whom this sacrilegious plunder was
distributed, received it with a blush; and hardened as they were in
acts of violence, they dreaded the just reproaches of their friends and
relations. Throughout the Roman world a general cry of indignation was
heard, imploring vengeance on the common enemy of human kind; and at
length, by an act of private oppression, a peaceful and unarmed province
was driven into rebellion against him.

The procurator of Africa was a servant worthy of such a master, who
considered the fines and confiscations of the rich as one of the most
fruitful branches of the Imperial revenue. An iniquitous sentence
had been pronounced against some opulent youths of that country, the
execution of which would have stripped them of far the greater part
of their patrimony. In this extremity, a resolution that must either
complete or prevent their ruin, was dictated by despair. A respite of
three days, obtained with difficulty from the rapacious treasurer, was
employed in collecting from their estates a great number of slaves and
peasants blindly devoted to the commands of their lords, and armed with
the rustic weapons of clubs and axes. The leaders of the conspiracy, as
they were admitted to the audience of the procurator, stabbed him with
the daggers concealed under their garments, and, by the assistance
of their tumultuary train, seized on the little town of Thysdrus, and
erected the standard of rebellion against the sovereign of the Roman
empire. They rested their hopes on the hatred of mankind against
Maximin, and they judiciously resolved to oppose to that detested tyrant
an emperor whose mild virtues had already acquired the love and esteem
of the Romans, and whose authority over the province would give weight
and stability to the enterprise. Gordianus, their proconsul, and
the object of their choice, refused, with unfeigned reluctance, the
dangerous honor, and begged with tears, that they would suffer him to
terminate in peace a long and innocent life, without staining his feeble
age with civil blood. Their menaces compelled him to accept the Imperial
purple, his only refuge, indeed, against the jealous cruelty of Maximin;
since, according to the reasoning of tyrants, those who have been
esteemed worthy of the throne deserve death, and those who deliberate
have already rebelled.

The family of Gordianus was one of the most illustrious of the Roma