115 GORDIANUS, MARCUS ANTONIUS AFRICANUS. 



GORDON, SIR JOHN WATSON, R.A. 



H6 



practice has been since chiefly confined. One of the first and best of 

 bis English pictures was the ' Village Festival,' exhibited in 1847, and 

 purchased by Mr. Vernon, for presentation, with the rest of his fine 

 collection, to the nation. Mr. Goodall's subsequent pictures have been 

 'Hunt the Slipper' (1849); 'Woodman's Home' (1850); 'Raising 

 the May Pole' (1851); 'The Last Load 1 (1852); 'An Episode of the 

 Happier Days of Charles I.' (1853); 'The Swing' (1854); 'The 

 Arrest of a Peasant Royalist Brittany, 1793' (1855); and 'Cranmer 

 at the Traitors' Gate' (1856). 



Mr. Goodall's success was recognised by his election as an associate 

 of the Royal Academy in 1852, despite the growing disinclination of 

 that always sufficiently exclusive body to admit within its ranks any 

 painters who have not been trained in its schools. Mr. Goodall's style 

 is pleasing and refined, and he is a careful as well as an able painter ; 

 but his progress has scarcely, it must bo confessed, been as groat as his 

 early proficiency promised. His later pictures suggest the need of a 

 somewhat more vigorous and masculine style, and a more self-reliant 

 and independent tone of thought. 



GORDIA'NUS, MAKCUS ANTONIUS AFRICANUS, born under 

 the reign of the first Antoninus, of one of the most illustrious and 

 wealthy families of Rome, made himself very popular during his 

 quatorship by his munificence and the great sums which he spent in 

 providing games and other amusements for the people. He also culti- 

 vated literature, and wrote several poems, among others one in which 

 he celebrated the virtues of the two Antonines. Being entrusted with 

 the government of several provinces, he conducted himself so as to 

 gaiu general approbation. He was proconsul of Africa in 237, when 

 an insurrection broke out in that province against Maximinus, on 

 account of his exactions, and the insurgents saluted Gordianus as 

 emperor. He prayed earnestly to be excused on account of his great 

 age, being then past eighty, and to be allowed to die in peace ; but 

 the insurgents threatening to kill him if be refused, he accepted the 

 perilous dignity, naming his son Gordianus as his colleague, and both 

 made their solemn entry into Carthage in the midst of universal 

 applause. The senate cheerfully confirmed the election, proclaiming 

 the two Gordiani as emperors, and declaring Maximinus and his son 



Coin of GorJiar.us the Elder. 

 Briluh Museum. Actual uze. Copper. Weight 274 grains. 



Coin of Gordianus the Younger. 



Brituh Museum. Actual Ue. Copper. Weight 369J giaina. 

 The inscription on the obterse of the two medals is the same. 

 to be enemies to the country. Meantime however Capillianus, governor 

 of Mauritania, collected troops in favour of Maximinus, and marched 

 against Carthage. The younger Gordianus came out to oppose him, 

 but was defeated and killed, and his aged father, on learning the sad 

 tidings, strangled himself. Their reign had not lasted two months 

 altogether, yet they were greatly regretted, because of their personal 

 qualities, and the bopts which the people had founded on them. The 

 younger Gordianus was forty-six years of age, was well informed, and 

 had written several work*. He is charged with being too much addicted 

 to women. The senate, on hearing the news of their death, elected 

 Balbinus and Maximus in their place to oppose the ferocious Maximinus. 



. 



. QORDIA'NUS, MARCUS ANTONIUS PIUS, grandson by his 

 mother of the elder Gordianus, and nephew of Qordianus the younger, 

 was twelve years of age when he was proclaimed Cxsar by general 

 acclamation of the people of Rome, after news bad arrived of the death 

 of the two Gordiani in Africa. The senate named him colleague of 

 the two new emperors, Maximus and Balbinus ; but in the following 

 year (A.D. 238, according to Blair and other chronologists) a mutiny 

 of the pnetorian soldiers took place at Rome, Balbinus and Maximus 

 .were murdered, and the boy Qordianus was proclaimed emperor. 

 Hi* disposition was kind and amiable, but at the beginning of hia 



BIOO. LIV. YOU III. 



reign he trusted to the insinuations of a certain Maurus, and other 

 freedmen of the palace, who abused his confidence, and committed 

 many acts of injustice. In the second year of his reign a revolt broke 

 out in Africa, where a certain Sabinianus was proclaimed emperor, 

 but the insurrection was soon put down by the governor of Mauritania. 

 In the following year Gordianus, being consul with Claudius Pom- 

 peianus, married Furia Sabina Tranquillina, daughter of Misitheus, a 

 man of the greatest personal merit, who was then placed at the head 

 of the emperor's guards. Misitheus disclosed to Gordknus the dis- 

 graceful conduct of Maurus and his friends, who were immediately 

 deprived of their offices and driven away from court. From that 

 moment Gordianus placed implicit trust ia his father-in-law, on whom 

 the senate conferred the title of Guardian of the Republic. In the 

 next year news came to Rome that the Persians under Sapor had 

 invaded Mesopotamia, had occupied Nisibis and Carrhje, entered 

 Syria, and, according to Capitolinus, had taken Antioch. Gordianus, 

 resolving to march in person against this formidable enemy, opened 

 the temple of Janus, according to an ancient custom which had been 

 long disused, and, setting out from Rome at the head of a choice 

 army, took his way by Illyricum and Mcesia, where he defeated the 

 Goths and Sarmatians, and drove them beyond the Danube. In the 

 plains of Thrace however he encountered another tribe, the Alani, 

 from whom he experienced a check, but they having also retired towards 

 the north, Gordianus crossed the Hellespont and landed in Asia, whence 

 he proceeded to Syria, delivered Antioch, defeated the Persians in 

 several battles, retook Nisibis and Carrhse, and drove Sapor back into 

 his own dominions. The senate voted him a triumph, and also a 

 statue to Misitheus, to whose advice much of the success of the 



Coin of Gordianus Pius. 



British Museum. Actual size. Copper. Weight 228 grains. 

 emperor was attributed. Unfortunately however that wise counsellor 

 died in the following year, under the consulship of Arrianus and 

 Pappus, not without suspicions of foul play being raised against 

 Philippus, an officer of the guards, who succeeded him in the com- 

 mand. In the year after, A.D. 244, Gordianus advanced into the 

 Persian territory, and defeated Sapor on the banks of the Chaboras; 

 but while he was preparing to follow him, the traitor Philippus, who 

 had contrived to spread discontent among the soldiers by attributing 

 their privations to the inexperience of a boyish emperor, was pro- 

 claimed by the army his colleague in the empire. Gordianus consented; 

 but soon after, Philippus, wishing to reign alone, caused him to be 

 murdered. A monument was raised to him by the soldiers, with an 

 inscription, at a place called Zaitha, twenty miles east of the town of 

 Circesiura, not far from the left bank of the Euphrates, which con- 

 tinued to be seen until it was destroyed by Licinius, who assumed to 

 be a descendant of Philippus. Gordianus was about twenty years old 

 when he died ; his body, according to Eutropius, was carried to Rome, 

 and he was numbered among the gods. His short reign was a 

 prosperous one for Rome. 



GORDON, SIR JOHN WATSON, R.A., was born in Edinburgh 

 towards the close of the last century, and received his professional 

 education in the Trustees Academy, of which Mr. John Graham waa 

 then master. After coyiug for awhile with history and poetry, Gordon 

 devoted himself exclusively to portrait-painting. The whole of his 

 professional life has been spent in Edinburgh, where he may be said 

 to have supplied the place of Raebum in public estimation. During 

 his tolerably long career, Gordon has painted almost all the leading 

 lawyers, ministers, doctors, professors, and merchants of Edinburgh, 

 and indeed almost every emineut Scotchman wherever resident His 

 portraits of his countrymen are something unique in their way, and 

 as thoroughly characteristic as the heads of Titian's Venetian senators 

 and merchants, or Rembrandt's burgomasters. Raeburn painted the 

 poetic phase of the Scottish physiognomy to perfection ; Gordon has 

 with equal success painted its prosaic. His portraits are intensely 

 realistic. The keen, shrewd, hard, Scottish face he depicts with a 

 direct and homely verity, beyond the reach even of the daguerreotype; 

 for, besides the literal rendering, he gives the mental characteristics, 

 the lurking humour or stern decision of purpose, with unmistakeable 

 faithfulness. The technical merits of his portraits are answerable to 

 their intellectual character. His drawing is always careful and always 

 correct. His chiar-oscuro and colour are true and unaffected, and if, 

 not to be ranked with those of Titian, Rembrandt, and Vandyke, or 

 even Reynolds and Raeburu, they surpass those of most other portrait- 

 painters. Gordon paints with a firm touch, and good impa^to ; and 

 whilst not neglecting details, always subordinates them indeed every 

 part of tho picture to the head. As wo have said, he has paiuted most 



(i 



