mismanagement, he gave occasion for discontent. The rebellion broke out, and Severus was murdered, A. D. 235, as was also his mother Mamæa, who accompanied him everywhere, to rule him everywhere. Now again followed a terrible time. It is quite evident that Maximin was animated by an intense revolutionary hatred against everything distinguished as aristocratic, just like the ruthless terrorists in France. All persons of polite education and manners, and especially the senators, were the objects of his passionate fury: it is true that the senators may have been, not a venerable body, but a most contemptible set; yet this is no excuse for cruelty. Maximin disdained to come to Rome; which was a happy thing, as he would have ordered a massacre, just as Caracalla did at Alexandria. He waged war on the banks of the Rhine, of the Upper and Lower Danube, and everywhere, as one may suppose, with success: that he got permanent possession of the country beyond the _limes_, is doubtful. He freed Dacia from the inroads of the barbarians, and carried on war against the Sarmatians, with regard to whom it is not certain whether they dwelt on the banks of the Lower or of the Middle Danube. But while he now was afraid of no one, but put people to death on the first suspicion there arose in Thysdrus, a provincial town in Africa, an outbreak of despair: the ministers of tyranny were murdered, and the two Gordians, father and son, able and brave officers, of whom the father was advanced in years, were proclaimed, either Augustus and Cæsar, or both of them as Augusti. The insurrection was but a shortlived one. Mauretania had taken no share in it; and thus Capellianus, the lieutenant of Maximin, quickly got together an army of Moors, although, properly speaking, these may never have been subjected to the Roman rule, which did not extend beyond the towns on the coasts: there was nothing, however, more easy than to make them take up arms by holding out the hope of booty; for instance, they had once before, in the reign of M. Antoninus, invaded Spain. He marched on Carthage, where, although the Gordians had made a bad use of their time, the younger ventured to go out against him, but was defeated with his incapable troops: they both of them lost their lives. The fate of Carthage, as well as the time that the insurrection lasted, is shrouded in darkness. Eckhel has critically proved, that all these events, down to the deaths of Maximus and Balbinus, must be made to fall between from about the end of March to the end of August: Gibbon’s chronology is certainly incorrect, and it contains impossibilities. Yet the question is still beset with great difficulties, which, however, may be cleared up some day by coins and monuments.