. Rome : its rise and fall ; a text-book for high schools and colleges. man of the murderedprince. 235. Reign of Alexander Severus ( 222-235). —Severusrestored the virtues of the Age of the Antonines. Hisadministration was pure and energetic; but he strove invain to resist the corrupt and downward tendencies of thetimes. He was assassinated, after a reign of fourteenyears, by his seditious soldiers, who were angered by hisefforts to reduce them to discipline. They invested withthe imperial purple an obscure officer named Maximin, aThracian peasant, whose sole recommendation for thisdignity
. Rome : its rise and fall ; a text-book for high schools and colleges. man of the murderedprince. 235. Reign of Alexander Severus ( 222-235). —Severusrestored the virtues of the Age of the Antonines. Hisadministration was pure and energetic; but he strove invain to resist the corrupt and downward tendencies of thetimes. He was assassinated, after a reign of fourteenyears, by his seditious soldiers, who were angered by hisefforts to reduce them to discipline. They invested withthe imperial purple an obscure officer named Maximin, aThracian peasant, whose sole recommendation for thisdignity was his gigantic stature and great strength of 378 ROME AS AN EMPIRE. limbs. Rome had now sunk to the lowest possible degra-dation. We may pass rapidly over the next fifty years ofthe empire. 236. The Thirty Tyrants ( 251-268). — Maximin wasfollowed swiftly by Gordian, Philip, and Decius, and thencame what is called the Age of the Thirty imperial sceptre being held by weak emperors, theresprung up, in every part of the empire, competitors for the. Triumph of Sapor over throne — several rivals frequently appearing in the field atthe same time. The barbarians pressed upon all the fron-tiers, and thrust themselves into all the provinces. Theempire seemed on the point of falling to But a 1 It was during this period that the emperor Valerian ( 253-260),in a battle with the Persians before Edessa, in Mesopotamia, wasdefeated and taken prisoner by Sapor, the Persian king. A large rocktablet (see cut above), still to be seen near the Persian town of Shiraz, isbelieved to commemorate the triumph of Sapor over the unfortunateemperor. THE EMPIRE UNDER COMMODUS. 379 fortunate succession of five good emperors—Claudius,Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus ( 268-284)—re~stored for a time the ancient boundaries and again forcedtogether into some sort of union the fragments of the shat-tered state. 237. The Fall of Palmyra ( 273). — T
Size: 2123px × 1177px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidromeitsrisefallt00myer
