Alexander Seve'rus

Alexander Seve'rus, a Roman emperor, born in 205 A.D., was the cousin and adopted son of Heliogabalus, whom he succeeded in 222. The excellent education which he received from his mother, Julia Mamæa, rendered him one of the best princes in an age when virtue in a monarch was reckoned more dangerous than vice. He sought the society of the learned; Paulus and Ulpianus were his counsellors; Plato and Cicero were, next to Horace and Virgil, his favourite authors. Although a pagan, he reverenced the doctrines of Christianity, and often quoted that saying: 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' Beloved as he was by the citizens on account of his equity, he soon became an object of hatred to the unruly pretorian guards. His first expedition (231-33), against Artaxerxes, king of Persia, was happily terminated by a speedy overthrow of the enemy. But during one which he undertook in 234 against the Germans on the Rhine, to defend the frontiers of the empire from their incursions, an insurrection broke out among his troops, headed by Maximinus, in which Alexander was murdered, along with his mother, not far from Mainz (235).