Senate."



GIANT MAXIMIN.



I THE COMING OF MAXIMIN


Many are the strange vicissitudes of history. Greatness has often sunk
to the dust, and has tempered itself to its new surrounding.
Smallness has risen aloft, has flourished for a time, and then has sunk
once more. Rich monarchs have become poor monks, brave conquerors have
lost their manhood, eunuchs and women have overthrown armies and
kingdoms. Surely there is no situation which the mind of man can invent
which has not taken shape and been played out upon the world stage.
But of all the strange careers and of all the wondrous happenings,
stranger than Charles in his monastery, or Justin on his throne, there
stands the case of Giant Maximin, what he attained, and how he attained
it. Let me tell the sober facts of history, tinged only by that
colouring to which the more austere historians could not condescend.
It is a record as well as a story.

In the heart of Thrace some ten miles north of the Rhodope mountains,
there is a valley which is named Harpessus, after the stream which runs
down it. Through this valley lies the main road from the east to the
west, and along the road, returning from an expedition against the
Alani, there marched, upon the fifth day of the month of June in the