Troops and Senate had been happily united in the elevation of Alexander, and all the epithets of Imperial dignity were at once conferred on him. The title of Severus he accepted from the soldiers, but he declined the name of Antoninus, which the Senate pressed on him, since that revered name had been so impiously disgraced by his predecessors. He spontaneously discarded the womanly silks and jewels of his cousin, covered the rough shirts of Severus with the Roman toga, and gave equal attention to manly exercises, the lessons of his tutors, and the wise counsels of his mother. He thus grew into a handsome and virile youth, with the piercing black eyes of his race, but with a moderation of temper that delighted his Stoic teachers. When we read the account of his career in the “Historia Augusta”--an account that might have been written by a Xenophon or a Fénelon for the edification of a young prince--we are tempted to feel that, either the gossipy Lampridius had for the moment a more serious object than the entertainment of Rome, or Alexander Severus was more virtuous than the circumstances required. Mamæa is described by the same writer as “holy, but avaricious.” Avarice was a not inopportune vice. Elagabalus had squandered the treasury on his follies; the troops, encouraged by him and by Caracalla, were becoming more and more exacting; while Mamæa had, by lightening the taxes, spared the Empire a substantial share of its contribution. In these circumstances it was prudent to cultivate a close concern about money, and no single writer ventures to say that the Empress--the Senate had at once entitled her Augusta--spent much on her personal service or pleasure. It is said that her zeal for the accumulation of money was carried to a stage of offensiveness. But it was necessary for her murderers to detect or invent some vice in extenuation of their foul deed, and the position in which the charge is found in the historians reveals that it came from that tainted source. “Avarice” means little more than that she would not yield to the improper demands of a demoralized army.