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The thirteen years during which Alexander Seve- Rus held the empire of the world, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the sands of the African desert to the Baltic, afford a good resting-place whereupon we may establish ourselves at ease, and look around us. On this platform we may both of us dismiss all alarms you as a philosopher, and I as a Christian; for the young man in whose hand is our life is mild in temper; and though firm, he is just and reasonable. He is such, on the whole, as one should wish the Master of mankind to be. For the philosopher, he cares little; he is not jealous of you, like a Domitian: he is a man of affairs, although also a man of mind; and he knows that, think what you may, you have not courage either to act or to suffer so as to give him any trouble. Toward me he has some uneasy thoughts; nevertheless he will not be induced, even by reasonable apprehensions of danger to the Roman State, to do violence to the spirit of Roman law; although its letter might warrant his taking that course: he will not hurt, much less attempt to exterminate, good citizens whose only fault is a strange pertinacity in the matter of their superstition. Alexander Severus was not a mindless despot; therefore the philosopher is safe while he lives: and as he was not a Marcus Aurelius, the Christian may freely breathe. Besides, this Emperor no softling himself is not ashamed to take counsel of his mother; and she, although indiscreetly frugal, is a wise woman, who, having trained her son for empire, took care to screen him from the vices of the times, and to hold off not merely the corruption that would have enfeebled his youth, but the fanaticism that mighthave inflamed his ripening manhood. It is even suspected that Mammasa, either in Syria or at Rome, had come to know...
