Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/464

450 during life, more praise than respect, and from posterity more fame than esteem. Essay by M. Thomas.

politician, and a virtuous woman; who, though her ambition was gratified by seeing him seated on the throne, chiefly by her conduct and courage, strove to counteract the bad counsels of his mother, and to bring him back to common sense and duty. She saw that the Romans would not long bear such a shameful yoke, and to retain the sovereignty, in that case, to her family, she engaged the emperor, who still retained his respect for her, to adopt his cousin Alexander Severus for his successor. Thus did the wisdom of Mœsa second her ambition; and, while Heliogabalus and his mother were massacred by the soldiers, she attained a happy old age, universally loved and respected, and the emperor Alexander Severus, her grandson, had her placed in the list of divinities. F. G.

also equal genius and courage; and, above all, she educated her son for the throne, in the same manner as Fenelon afterwards educated the duke of Burgundy, rendering him at the same time a man of virtue and sensibility, Severus thought so highly of his mother, that he did nothing without her counsel, and paid more deference to it than to that of any other person. This princess having heard of Origen, wished to see him, and