Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/189

Rh ration. He assumed the name and ensigns of Alexander, formed a Macedonian phalanx of guards, persecuted the disciples of Aristotle, and displayed with a puerile enthusiasm the only sentiment by which he discovered any regard for virtue or glory. We can easily conceive^ that after the battle of Narva, and the conquest of Poland, Charles the twelfth (though he still wanted the more elegant accomplishments of the son of Phihp) might boast of having rivalled his valour and magnanimity : but in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance of the Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a great number of his own and of his father's friends.

After the extinction of the house of Severus, the Roman world remained three days without a master. The choice of the army (for the authority of a distant and feeble senate was little regarded) hung in anxious suspense ; as no candidate presented himself whose distinguished birth and merit could engage their attachment and unite their suffrages. The decisive weight of the pretorian guards elevated the hopes of their prefects ; and these powerful ministers began to assert their legal claim to fill the vacancy of the imperial throne. Adventus, however, the senior prefect, conscious of his age and infirmities, of his small reputation, and his smaller abilities, resigned the dangerous honour to the crafty ambition of his colleague Macrinus, whose well-dissembled grief removed all suspicion of his being accessary to his master's death. The troops neither loved nor esteemed his character. They cast their eyes around in search of a competitor; and at last yielded with reluctance to his promises of unbounded liberality and indulgence. A short time after his accession, he conferred on his son Diadumenianus, at the