populace.

In the space of a few months, six princes had been cut off by the sword.
Gordian, who had already received the title of Caesar, was the only
person that occurred to the soldiers as proper to fill the vacant
throne. They carried him to the camp, and unanimously saluted him
Augustus and Emperor. His name was dear to the senate and people;
his tender age promised a long impunity of military license; and the
submission of Rome and the provinces to the choice of the Praetorian
guards, saved the republic, at the expense indeed of its freedom
and dignity, from the horrors of a new civil war in the heart of the
capital.

As the third Gordian was only nineteen years of age at the time of
his death, the history of his life, were it known to us with greater
accuracy than it really is, would contain little more than the account
of his education, and the conduct of the ministers, who by turns abused
or guided the simplicity of his unexperienced youth. Immediately after
his accession, he fell into the hands of his mother's eunuchs, that
pernicious vermin of the East, who, since the days of Elagabalus, had
infested the Roman palace. By the artful conspiracy of these wretches,
an impenetrable veil was drawn between an innocent prince and his
oppressed subjects, the virtuous disposition of Gordian was deceived,
and the honors of the empire sold without his knowledge, though in a
very public manner, to the most worthless of mankind. We are ignorant
by what fortunate accident the emperor escaped from this ignominious
slavery, and devolved his confidence on a minister, whose wise counsels
had no object except the glory of his sovereign and the happiness of the
people. It should seem that love and learning introduced Misitheus
to the favor of Gordian. The young prince married the daughter of his
master of rhetoric, and promoted his father-in-law to the first offices
of the empire. Two admirable letters that passed between them are
still extant. The minister, with the conscious dignity of virtue,
congratulates Gordian that he is delivered from the tyranny of the
eunuchs, and still more that he is sensible of his deliverance. The
emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the errors of his
past conduct; and laments, with singular propriety, the misfortune of
a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labor to
conceal the truth.

The life of Misitheus had been spent in the profession of letters, not
of arm