a swirl in the crowd before him, a little space was cleared, and there
knelt an officer in the Praetorian garb, blood upon his face, blood upon
his bared forearm, blood upon his naked sword. Licinius too had gone
with the tide.

"Hail, Caesar, hail!" he cried, as he bowed his head before the giant.
"I come from Alexander. He will trouble you no more."



III THE FALL OF MAXIMIN


For three years the soldier Emperor had been upon the throne.
His palace had been his tent, and his people had been the legionaries.
With them he was supreme; away from them he was nothing. He had
gone with them from one frontier to the other. He had fought against
Dacians, Sarmatians, and once again against the Germans. But Rome knew
nothing of him, and all her turbulence rose against a master who cared
so little for her or her opinion that he never deigned to set foot
within her walls. There were cabals and conspiracies against the absent
Caesar. Then his heavy hand fell upon them, and they were cuffed, even
as the young soldiers had been who passed under his discipline. He knew
nothing, and cared as much for consuls, senates, and civil laws.
His own will and the power of the sword were the only forces which he
could understand. Of commerce and the arts he was as ignorant as when
he left his Thracian home. The whole vast Empire was to him a huge
machine for producing the money by which the legions were to be
rewarded. Should he fail to get that money, his fellow soldiers
would bear him a grudge. To watch their interests they had raised him