23 To him succeeded AURELIUS ALEXANDER, a very young man, who was named Caesar by the army, and Augustus by the senate. Having undertaken a war with the Persians, he defeated their king Xerxes with great glory. He enforced military discipline with much severity, and disbanded whole legions that raised a disturbance. He had for his adviser, or secretary of state, Ulpian, the compiler of the law. He was also in great favour at Rome. He lost his life in Gaul, in a tumult of the soldiery, in the thirteenth year and eighth day of his reign. He testified great affection for his mother Mammaea.
1 Se civilissimum praebuit.] Civilis, applied to a person, properly signifies that he "behaves as a citizen ought to behave towards his fellow citizens," and may often be rendered "polite, affable, courteous." Civilitas has two senses; one derived from this sense of civilis, and the other "the art of governing, or directing affairs in a civitas, or free state." Both these words occur frequently in Eutropius; I have endeavoured always to give them that sense which the passages where they are found seemed to require.
2 A town on the Baetis or Guadalquivir, not far from Seville. It was also the birth-place of Hadrian.
3 So Tzschucke writes the word. As it was a later name of Media, it should rather, it would appear, be written Medena, as Cellarius gives it in his edition of Sextus Rufus, c. 16.
4 Gratia salutandi.] "For the sake of saluting or paying his respects to them."
5 Domitia Paullina.Glareanus.
6 Boionius.] This name is supposed by Casaubon ad Capitolin. Vit. T. Anton. c. 3 and by Mad. Dacier ad Aurel. Vict. de Caes. c. 16, to be derived from Boionia Procilla, Titus Antoninus's grandmother, who had made him her heir.
7 Consecratus.] See note on vii. 13.
8 The Sallentines were a people of Calabria in Italy; the name of this king was Malennius, according to Capitolinus, Vit. M. Anton. c. 1.
9 Genere.] Both having been adopted by Antoninus Pius; see Capitolinus, Vit. Ant. P. c. 4. Hence Verus is called the brother of Marcus by Aurelius Victor de Caes. c. 16; by Jamblichus ap. Photium, p. 242; by Capitolinus Vit. Veri, c. 4 and 11; and by Orosius, vii. 15.Tzschucke.
10 The territory inhabited by the Veneti, in which both Concordia and Altinum were situate, distant from each other about thirty-one miles.
11 Casu morbi.] Glareanus interprets casu by eventu. Casus morbi seems to be much the same as the simple morbus, or morbus subitus. In c. 12 occurs casus pestilentiae.
12 Quantum nulla memoria fuit.] The same words are used by Capitolinus, c. 17. The meaning seems to be, that there had been no war with the Germans equally formidable.
13 See c. 10.
14 A town in Upper Pannonia, on the Danube, where Haimburg or Petronel now stands. See Mannert, T. iii. p. 740; also Cluverius and Cellarius.
15 The title of Caesar was now given to the person next in dignity to the emperor, and who was intended to succeed him.
16 Murrhina.] What substance murrha, was is unknown. It has been thought to be porcelain, but is now generally supposed to have been some kind of stone.
17 He wished, as Tzschucke observes, to have the month of August called Commodus, and that of September, Herculius. See Lamprid. Vit. Comm. c. 11.
18 The praetors had been accustomed to publish each his own edict, as to the method in which he intended to administer justice for his year. The edicts were of course often very different; but by this perpetual edict a uniform course of proceeding was laid down. See note on C. Nep. Life of Cato, c. 2.
19 Opus lavacri, quae Antoninianae appellantur.] The change of gender and number, as Tzschucke observes, makes the reader suspect that something must be wrong. Cellarius supplies thermae.
20 More frequently written Osrhoene.
21 A Syrophoenician deity at Emesa; hence he himself was called Heliogabalus. He was made emperor through the artifices of his grandmother, Julia Moesa, who pretended that he was the son of Caracalla.