made room for the most grotesque of all monarchs, the unspeakable
Heliogabalus with his foul mind and his painted face. He in turn was
cut to pieces by the soldiers, and Severus Alexander, a gentle youth,
scarce seventeen years of age, had been thrust into his place.
For thirteen years now he had ruled, striving with some success to put
some virtue and stability into the rotting Empire, but raising many
fierce enemies as he did so-enemies whom he had not the strength nor the
wit to hold in check.

And Giant Maximin--what of him? He had carried his eight feet of
manhood through the lowlands of Scotland, and the passes of the
Grampians. He had seen Severus pass away, and had soldiered with his
son. He had fought in Armenia, in Dacia, and in Germany. They had made
him a centurion upon the field when with his hands he plucked out one by
one the stockades of a northern village, and so cleared a path for the
stormers. His strength had been the jest and the admiration of the
soldiers. Legends about him had spread through the army and were the
common gossip round the camp fires--of his duel with the German axeman
on the Island of the Rhine, and of the blow with his fist which broke
the leg of a Scythian's horse. Gradually he had won his way upwards,
until now, after quarter of a century's service he was tribune of the
fourth legion and superintendent of recruits for the whole army.
The young soldier who had come under the glare of Maximin's eyes, or had
been lifted up with one huge hand while he was cuffed by the other,
had his first lesson from him in the discipline of the service.

It was nightfall in the camp of the fourth legion upon the Gallic shore
of the Rhine. Across the moonlit water, amid the thick forests which
stretched away to the dim horizon, lay the wild untamed German tribes.
Down on the river bank the light gleamed upon the helmets of the Roman