32. The carelessness of the writers of that age leaves us in
a singular perplexity. 1. We know that Maximus and Balbinus
were killed during the Capitoline games. Herodian, 1. viii.
p. 285. The authority of Censorinus (de Die Natali, c. 18)
enables us to fix those games with certainty to the year
238, but leaves us in ignorance of the month or day. 2. The
election of Gordian by the senate is fixed, with equal
certainty, to the 27th of May; but we are at a loss to
discover whether it was in the same or the preceding year.
Tillemont and Muratori, who maintain the two opposite
opinions, bring into the field a desultory troop of
authorities, conjectures, and probabilities. The one seems
to draw out, the other to contract, the series of events
between those periods, more than can be well reconciled to
reason and history. Yet it is necessary to choose between
them.