The
young Gordian was adopted by the soldiery. It seems odd that even thus far
the guards should sanction the choice of the senate, having the purposes
which they had; but perhaps Gordian had recommended himself to their favor
in a degree which might outweigh what they considered the original vice of
his appointment, and his youth promised them an immediate impunity. This
prince, however, like so many of his predecessors, soon came to an unhappy
end. Under the guardianship of the upright Misitheus, for a time he
prospered; and preparations were made upon a great scale for the energetic
administration of a Persian war. But Misitheus died, perhaps by poison, in
the course of the campaign; and to him succeeded, as praetorian prefect, an
Arabian officer, called Philip. The innocent boy, left without friends,
was soon removed by murder; and a monument was afterwards erected to his
memory, at the junction of the Aboras and the Euphrates. Great obscurity,
however, clouds this part of history; nor is it so much as known in what
way the Persian war was conducted or terminated.
Philip, having made himself emperor, celebrated, upon his arrival in Rome,
the secular games, in the year 247 of the Christian era--that being the
completion of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome.
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