The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

An Emperor of Gothic origin, who was originally a shepherd, and owed his elevation entirely to his physical power and stature. He stood eight feet high, and was muscular in proportion. Serving with Alexander Severus on the Rhine, he excited a mutiny in the troops, in which Alexander and his mother were assassinated, and he himself declared Emperor by the soldiers. His reign was marked by mad severity, cruelty, and rapacity, and was fiercely closed by a band of Prætorians, who broke into his tent and slew him, having first put an end to his son before his eyes. He was a rare monster. It is related that his thumb was of the girth of a woman’s wrist; he could wear his wife’s bracelet as a ring: his eyes were inordinately large; with a kick, he could break the leg of a horse; and his appetite corresponded with his muscular development. [From the marble in the Capitoline Museum at Rome.]