Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/14

Rh, was brought from the temple of the sun at Emesa, and proclaimed emperor by the troops. He was a mere child, fourteen years of age, precocious in vice and absurdly bigoted; he spent the whole of his time in the practice of religious ceremonies and ritual observances, in hopes of converting the world to the worship of his Syrian god. He, too, came to an untimely end; he was assassinated by the praetorians by the tacit consent of the senate, and was succeeded by his cousin Alexander Severus, in spite of his youth (he was barely thirteen years old), from A.D. 222 to A.D. 235. Alexander was a good emperor, but his qualities have been exaggerated by Christian writers. Learned, amiable, and careful of the public purse, he seems to have been deficient in military courage, and as the soldiery had long been accustomed to the prodigality of his predecessors, and neither loved nor feared so inoffensive a sovereign, they assassinated him near the frontiers of Germany, and chose as his successor a man after their own heart, the notoriously daring, muscular, and gigantic Maximinus.