Alexander Severus

1. When Varius Heliogabalus had been killed — for I prefer to call him so rather than Antoninus, since that pest displayed nothing of the Antonines, and the name has been erased from the records by the authority of the senate — Aurelius Alexander, born in the city of Arca, son of Varius, grandson of Varia, and cousin of Heliogabalus himself, received the imperial power as a remedy for the human race; he had already been named Caesar by the senate, on the death, of course, of Macrinus. He took the name Augustus as well, with the further provision that he should assume on a single day, at the senate's offer, the name of Father of his Country, the proconsular power, the tribunician authority, and the right of bringing a fifth motion before the senate. And lest this heaping-up of honours all at once should seem rash, I shall set out the reasons for which the senate was compelled to do it and he to endure it; for it suited neither the dignity of the senate to confer everything at once, nor a good prince to seize so many dignities together. The soldiers had by now grown accustomed both to make emperors for themselves by hasty judgment and likewise to change them readily, sometimes alleging in their own defence that they had done it because they did not know that the senate had named a prince. For they had made Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus and Avidius Cassius, and earlier Lucius Vindex and Lucius Antonius, and Severus himself, emperors, when the senate had already named Julianus prince; and this had sown civil wars, in which it was inevitable that the soldier, armed against the enemy, should perish in parricidal fashion.

2. For this reason, then, there was haste that Alexander should receive everything at once, as though he were already a seasoned emperor. There was added to this the excessive inclination of both senate and people after that disaster which had not only stained the name of the Antonines but had even dishonoured the Roman empire. So at last all the badges and titles and powers were decreed amid rivalry. He, then, was the first of all to receive at once all the insignia and the kinds of honour, the name of Caesar pleading in his favour, which he had earned some years before, and still more his life and character pleading for him, since he had won great favour by the fact that Heliogabalus had tried to kill him and could not, the soldiers resisting and the senate opposing. And these things are small, except that he showed himself worthy to be preserved by the senate, to be desired safe by the soldiers, and to be named prince by the verdict of all good men.

3. Alexander, then, whose mother was Mamaea (for so most say), having been steeped from earliest boyhood in good arts, both civil and military, never let a single day pass of his own accord on which he did not exercise himself both in letters and in warfare. For in his early boyhood he had as tutors Valerius Cordus and Titus Veturius and Aurelius Philippus, his father's freedman, who afterward committed his life to writing; a Greek grammarian in his native land, Neho; the rhetorician Serapio; the philosopher Stilio; at Rome the grammarian Scaurinus, son of Scaurinus, a most celebrated teacher; the rhetoricians Julius Frontinus and Baebius Macrianus and Julius Granianus, whose declamations are still in circulation today. But in Latin he made no great progress, as is plain from his own speeches which he delivered in the senate, and from his addresses to the soldiers or to the people. Nor did he greatly love Latin eloquence; but he loved men of letters intensely, and even stood somewhat in awe of them, lest they should write anything harsh about him. And so those whom he saw fit for the purpose he wished to learn from his own instruction each several thing that he did, in public and in private, in case they themselves had not been present, and he asked that, if these things were true, they should commit them to writing.

4. He forbade men to call him "Lord," and ordered letters to be written to him as to a private man, the name of emperor alone being kept. He removed the gems from the shoes and clothes that Heliogabalus had used. He wore, as he is also painted, a white robe, not gold-embroidered, and ordinary mantles and togas. With his friends he lived so intimately that they often had a common seat, and he would go to their banquets, while he kept some about him daily even unbidden; and he was greeted as one of the senators, with the curtain drawn back and the ushers removed, or with only those present who served at the doors — whereas formerly it had not been permitted to greet the prince, since men could not see him. And his body was such that, besides the comely and manly grace which we still see today both in painting and in statues, there was in him the strength of a military stature, the health of a soldier who knew the power of his own body and always tended it. He was, moreover, beloved by all men, and was called by some "the Dutiful," and by all assuredly held holy and useful to the state. The following oracle fell to him in the temple of the goddess of Praeneste, when Heliogabalus was plotting against him: "If you should break through the harsh fates, you shall be Marcellus."

5. He received the name Alexander because he had been born in a temple dedicated to Alexander the Great at the city of Arca, when by chance his father had gone there on the festal day of Alexander with his wife, to fulfil a solemn rite; an argument for which is that this Alexander, son of Mamaea, has his birthday on the same day on which the Great Alexander departed from life. The name of Antoninus, offered him by the senate, he refused, although he was more nearly joined in kinship to Caracalla than that supposititious one; since, as Marius Maximus says in his Life of Severus, Severus, while still a private man and of no very great station, married a noble woman of the East, whose horoscope he had learned to be such that she should be the wife of an emperor — and from this kinship sprang this Alexander, whose true cousin through his mother was Varius Heliogabalus. He refused also the name "the Great" offered him, as it were to a second Alexander, by the senate's decision.

6. It is worth while to read again the speech in which he refused the names Antoninus and the Great offered him by the senate. But before I bring this forward I shall weave in the acclamations of the senate by which it was decreed. From the records of the city: On the day before the Nones of March, when a crowded senate had assembled in the curia — that is, in the Temple of Concord, a duly inaugurated temple — and Aurelius Alexander Caesar Augustus had been asked to come there, and had at first refused, because he knew that his honours were to be debated, but afterward had come, this acclamation was made: "Innocent Augustus, may the gods preserve you! Emperor Alexander, may the gods preserve you! The gods have given you to us; may the gods preserve you! The gods have snatched you from the hands of an impure man; may the gods make you everlasting! You too endured an impure tyrant; you too grieved that the impure and obscene one lived. The gods have rooted him out; the gods have preserved you. The infamous emperor has been duly condemned; happy are we in your rule, happy the state! The infamous one was dragged with the hook as an example for fear. The luxurious emperor has been justly punished; the defiler of honours has been justly punished. May the immortal gods grant Alexander life; the judgments of the gods appear from this."

7. And when Alexander had given thanks, this was acclaimed: "Antoninus Alexander, may the gods preserve you! Antoninus Aurelius, may the gods preserve you! Antoninus Pius, may the gods preserve you! We beg you to take up the name of Antoninus; grant to good emperors that you be called Antoninus. Purify the name of the Antonines; what that man defiled, do you purify; restore the name of the Antonines to its wholeness. Let the blood of the Antonines acknowledge itself; avenge the wrong done to Marcus, avenge the wrong done to Verus, avenge the wrong done to Bassianus. Worse than Commodus was Heliogabalus alone, neither emperor nor Antoninus nor citizen nor senator nor noble nor Roman. In you is our safety, in you our life. That it may be a delight to live, grant life to Alexander of the Antonines; that it may be a delight to live, let him be called Antoninus. Let Antoninus dedicate the temples of the Antonines. Let Antoninus conquer the Parthians and the Persians; let the consecrated man receive the sacred name, let the chaste man receive the sacred name. May the gods acknowledge the name of Antoninus; may the gods preserve the honour of the Antonines. In you all things, through you all things. Antoninus, hail!"

8. And after the acclamations Aurelius Alexander Caesar Augustus said: "I give you thanks, Conscript Fathers, not now for the first time, but for the name of Caesar, and for my life preserved, and for the name of Augustus added, and for the office of Supreme Pontiff, and for the tribunician power, and for the proconsular command — all of which, by a new precedent, you have conferred upon me in a single day." And as he spoke, this was acclaimed: "These you have accepted; accept the name of Antoninus. Let the senate deserve it, let the Antonines deserve it. Antoninus Augustus, may the gods preserve you, may the gods preserve you as Antoninus. Let the name of Antoninus be restored to the coinage; let Antoninus consecrate the temples of the Antonines." Aurelius Alexander Augustus said: "Do not, I beg you, Conscript Fathers, do not summon me to this necessity of a contest, that I be forced to do justice to so great a name — when even this very name, though foreign, yet seems to weigh heavy; for these distinguished names are burdensome. For who would call Cicero dumb? who Varro unlearned? who Metellus impious? And — may the gods avert it — who would endure a man who did not measure up to his name, living in the most illustrious appearance of dignities?"

9. Again the things above were acclaimed, and again the emperor said: "How great the name, or rather by now the very divinity, of the Antonines has been, your Clemency remembers. If you ask of piety, what is more holy than Pius? If of learning, what wiser than Marcus? If of innocence, what more guileless than Verus? If of courage, what braver than Bassianus? For of Commodus I do not wish to make mention, who was the worse for this very thing, that with such a character he held the name of Antoninus. Diadumenus, however, had neither the time nor the years, and incurred this name through his father's contrivance." Again it was acclaimed as above, and again the emperor said: "Surely you remember lately, Conscript Fathers, that when that filthiest of all things — not of bipeds only but of quadrupeds too — bore the name of Antoninus, and in baseness and luxury outdid the Neros, the Vitellii, the Commodi, what was the groan of all, when through the assemblies of the people and the men of honour there was one voice, that this man was impiously called Antoninus, and that so great a name was violated by this pest." And as he spoke, it was acclaimed: "May the gods forbid the evils! Under your rule we do not fear these things; with you as our leader we are secure of these. You have conquered the vices, you have conquered the crimes, you have conquered the disgraces. You will adorn the name of Antoninus. This at least we know; we presume well. We approved you from your boyhood, and now we approve you."

Again the emperor: "Nor do I, Conscript Fathers, fear to take that name venerable to all on the ground that I dread my life may sink into these vices, so that we should be ashamed of the name; but in the first place it displeases me to assume the name of another family, and in the second I believe I am being burdened."

10. And as he spoke, it was acclaimed as above, and again he said: "For if I take the name of Antoninus, I can take that of Trajan too, and of Titus, and of Vespasian." And as he spoke, it was acclaimed: "As Augustus, so also Antoninus." And the emperor: "I see, Conscript Fathers, what moves you to add this name to me. Augustus first — first is he the founder of this empire, and into his name we all succeed as it were by a kind of adoption or hereditary right. The Antonines themselves were called Augusti. Antoninus the first, again, called Marcus, and likewise Verus, by right of adoption; but in Commodus it was hereditary, in Diadumenus assumed, in Bassianus affected, in Aurelius ridiculous." And as he spoke, it was acclaimed: "Alexander Augustus, may the gods preserve you! May the immortal gods favour your modesty, your prudence, your innocence, your chastity. From this we understand what you will be; from this we approve you. You will make the senate choose princes well; you will make the senate's judgment the best. Alexander Augustus, may the gods preserve you! Let Alexander Augustus dedicate the temples of the Antonines. Our Caesar, our Augustus, our emperor, may the gods preserve you! May you conquer, may you flourish, may you reign for many years."

11. The emperor Alexander said: "I understand, Conscript Fathers, that I have obtained what I wished, and I count it received, both giving and feeling very great thanks, and I shall strive that this name too, which we have carried into the empire, be such that it is desired by others as well, and offered by the good judgments of your loyalty." After this it was acclaimed: "Great Alexander, may the gods preserve you! If you have rejected the name of Antoninus, take up the surname of the Great. Great Alexander, may the gods preserve you!" And when they said this more than once, Alexander Augustus said: "It was easier, Conscript Fathers, for me to take the name of the Antonines, for I should have been paying something to kinship or to the consecration of an imperial name. But why should I take the name of the Great? For what great thing have I yet done — when Alexander took it after great deeds, and Pompey after great triumphs? Be at peace, then, venerable Fathers, and do you yourselves, magnificent as you are, reckon me one of yourselves, rather than thrust upon me the name of the Great."

12. After this it was acclaimed: "Aurelius Alexander Augustus, may the gods preserve you!" and the rest in the customary form. The senate being dismissed, since many other things too had been done that day, he withdrew home as if in triumph, and appeared far more illustrious for not having received the alien names than if he had received them; and from this he won a reputation for firmness and full gravity, since the whole senate could not persuade one man — or rather one young man. But although, at the senate's request, he could not be persuaded to take up the names either of Antoninus or of the Great, yet because of his immense vigour of spirit and his wonderful and singular firmness against the insolence of the soldiers, the name of Severus was given him by the soldiers. This won him great reverence at the time and great glory among posterity, since it came to this, that he received a name from the virtue of his spirit, inasmuch as he was the only one found to cashier mutinous legions, as will be shown in its place, and to punish very severely soldiers who chanced to commit anything that seemed unjust, as we shall also declare in their proper places.

13. He had these omens of empire: first, that he was born on the day on which the Great Alexander is said to have died; next, that his mother gave him birth in Alexander's temple; third, that he received his very name; then besides, that a certain old woman offered to his mother an egg of purple colour, laid by a dove, on the same day on which he was born; from which the soothsayers said that he would indeed be emperor, but not for long, and would come quickly to the imperial power. Then besides, that a portrait of the emperor Trajan, which hung over his father's marriage-bed, fell into his cradle while he was being born in the temple. To these was added that a nurse named Olympias was given him, the name by which Alexander's mother was called; and a foster-father, Philippus, came forward by chance, one of the country folk, which was the name of the father of Alexander the Great. It is said that on the first day of his birth a star of the first magnitude was seen the whole day long at Arca Caesarea, and the sun was crowned about his father's house with a shining circle. When the soothsayers were commending his birthday, they said he would hold the highest power, for this reason, that the victims had been brought from that estate which belonged to the emperor Severus, and which the tenants had made ready in his honour. A laurel born in the house beside a peach tree within a single year overtopped the peach tree, whence the diviners said that the Persians would be conquered by him.

14. His mother, the day before she bore him, dreamed that she gave birth to a little purple serpent; his father the same night saw in dreams that he was being borne to heaven on the wings of the Roman Victory that stands in the senate-house. He himself, while still very small, when he consulted a seer about the future, is said to have received these verses — and first indeed by the lots: "There awaits you the empire of heaven and earth" — by which it was understood that he would be reckoned even among the gods; "there awaits you the empire which holds the empire," from which it was understood that he would be prince of the Roman empire — for where is empire, except among the Romans, that "holds the empire"? These things have been handed down from Greek verses. He himself, when at his father's urging he turned his mind from philosophy and music to other arts, was illumined by the lots of Vergil in this fashion:

"Others shall hammer the breathing bronze more softly — I believe it well — shall draw living faces out of marble, shall plead causes better, and trace the courses of the sky with the rod, and tell the rising stars; but you, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with your sway — these shall be your arts — to impose the law of peace, to spare the conquered and to war down the proud."

There were many other signs by which it was established that he was to be prince of the human race. He had an excessive fire in his eyes, oppressive to those who looked too long; a most frequent divining of the mind; a singular memory for things, which Acholius reported was helped by mnemonic art. And when as a boy he had come to the empire, he did everything together with his mother, so that she too seemed to rule equally — a holy woman, but avaricious and greedy for gold and silver.

15. When, therefore, he began to act as Augustus, he first removed from the state and from offices and duties all the judges whom that impure man had advanced from the basest class of men; next he purged the senate and the equestrian order; then the tribes themselves and those who rely on military privileges; and he purged his own Palace and his whole retinue, casting out from court service all the obscene and infamous, nor did he suffer anyone to be among the Palatines except a needful man. He then bound himself by oath to keep no supernumerary — that is, no idle attendant — lest he burden the state with food-allowances, saying that an emperor was a public evil who fed, out of the vitals of the provincials, men unnecessary and useless to the state. He ordered that thievish judges should never be seen in any cities, and that, if they were seen, they should be deported by the governors of the provinces. He carefully inspected the grain-supply of the soldiers, and visited with capital punishment the tribunes who had taken anything from the soldiers by withholding rations. He directed that business and lawsuits should first be handled and arranged by the heads of the bureaus and the most learned jurists and men faithful to himself — of whom the first then was Ulpian — and so be referred to him.

16. He enacted laws on the rights of the people and the treasury, both temperate and unlimited, and consecrated no constitution without twenty jurists and most learned, wise, and likewise most eloquent men, no fewer than fifty, so that there should be no fewer opinions in council than would make up a decree of the senate; and that indeed in such a way that a vote should be taken on the opinion of each, and what each had said should be written down, time however being given for inquiry and reflection before they spoke, lest they be forced to speak unconsidered on weighty matters. He had, moreover, this custom: if he was dealing with law or with business, he summoned only the learned and eloquent; but if with military matters, military men, veterans and elders of good service and skilled in places and wars and camps, and all men of letters, and especially those who knew history, asking what, in such cases as were in dispute, the ancient emperors, Roman or of foreign nations, had done.

17. Encolpius, whom he used as a most intimate friend, used to relate that he, if ever he had seen a thievish judge, kept his finger ready to gouge out his eye; so great a hatred held him of those of whom it had been proved before him that they had been thieves. Septimius adds, who pursued his life not slightly, that Alexander felt such loathing for those judges who had laboured under a reputation for theft, even if they had not been condemned, that, if by some chance he saw them, in his agitation of spirit he would vomit the bile of his stomach, his whole face flaming, so that he could say nothing. For when a certain Septimius Arabianus, notorious for the charge of thefts and already acquitted under Heliogabalus, had come among the senators to greet the prince, he exclaimed: "O Marnas, O Jupiter, O immortal gods! Arabianus not only lives, but even comes into the senate; perhaps he even hopes something of me; does he judge me so foolish, so stupid?" Now the prince was greeted by name, that is, "Hail, Alexander."

18. If anyone bowed his head or said anything too flattering, like a flatterer, he was either cast out, if the quality of his rank allowed, or laughed at with a great guffaw, if his dignity could not be subjected to a graver affront. When greeted, he offered a seat to all the senators, and indeed admitted to the greeting no men except the honourable and those of good repute; and he ordered it to be proclaimed by a herald — as is said in the Eleusinian rites, that none should enter except one who knows himself innocent — that no one should greet the prince who knew himself to be a thief, lest at some time, being detected, he be subjected to capital punishment. The same man forbade himself to be adored, although Heliogabalus had already begun to be adored in the manner of the kings of the Persians. This too was his opinion, that thieves alone complain of poverty, while they wish to cover the crimes of their life. Likewise he used to add a well-known saying about thieves, and indeed in Greek, which in Latin means this: "He who has stolen much and given little to his supporters will be safe." Which in Greek runs thus: "He who steals much and gives a little will escape."

19. He appointed a praetorian prefect for himself by the senate's authority; he received the prefect of the city from the senate; he made another praetorian prefect, who had even fled to avoid being made one, saying that those should be placed in the state who were unwilling, not those who canvassed for it. He never made a senator without the counsel of all the senators present, so that he was created by the votes of all, the highest men giving testimony; and if either the witnesses or those who gave their opinions had deceived, they were afterward thrust down into the lowest rank, the condemnation of citizens being imposed, as men proved guilty of falsehood, with no proposal of any indulgence. Likewise he made no senators except on the recommendation of the highest men in the Palace, saying that he ought to be a great man who made a senator. Likewise he never reduced freedmen to the equestrian rank, asserting that the equestrian order was the seed-bed of senators.

20. He was of so great moderation that no one was ever removed from his side; that he showed himself courteous and affable to all; that he visited his friends when they were sick, not only of the first or second rank but even the lower; that he desired what they felt to be told him freely by all, and, when it had been told, listened, and, when he had listened, mended and corrected it as the matter required; and if anything had been less than well done, he himself even confuted it, and that without pride and without bitterness of heart. He always offered a seat to all except those whom a too frequent reputation for thefts had touched. He always asked after the absent. In short, when both his mother Mamaea and his wife Memmia — daughter of the consular Sulpicius, granddaughter of Catulus — often reproached him with too great affability and said, "You have made your power softer and the empire more contemptible," he answered: "But safer and more lasting." In short, no day ever passed on which he did not do something gentle, civil, or dutiful, but in such a way that he did not overturn the treasury.

21. He ordered condemnations to be very rare, but did not pardon those that had been made. He assigned the taxes of the cities to their own public works. He practiced public lending at four percent, so that to most of the poor he gave money without interest to buy fields, to be repaid from the produce. To his praetorian prefects he added senatorial dignity, so that they both were and were called Most Illustrious — which before had been either rare or for a long time not at all the case, to such a degree that if any of the emperors wished to give a successor to a praetorian prefect, he would send him the broad stripe through a freedman, as Marius Maximus says in the life of many. But Alexander wished praetorian prefects to be senators for this reason, that no one who was not a senator should judge a Roman senator. He knew his soldiers everywhere in such a way that he kept in his bedchamber registers containing both the number and the terms of service of those serving; and always, when he was alone, he reviewed both their accounts and their number and their ranks and their pay, so as to be most fully prepared for everything. In short, when anything was being done among the soldiers, he could even name the names of many; and as to those to be promoted, he made notes for himself and read through all the records, and did so even with the days noted equally, and by whose suggestion each had been promoted to what post. He so aided the provisioning of the Roman people that, when Heliogabalus had overturned the grain-supply, he replaced it in its station with grain bought with his own money.

22. To merchants, that they might willingly flock to Rome, he gave the greatest exemption. The oil which Severus had given to the people, and which Heliogabalus had reduced by handing the prefecture of the grain-supply to the basest men, he restored whole. The right of transferring lawsuits, which that impure one had abolished, he restored to all. He established very many works of mechanical skill at Rome. To the Jews he kept their privileges. He suffered the Christians to exist. To the pontiffs and the Board of Fifteen and the augurs he yielded so much that he allowed certain cases concerning the sacred rites, settled by himself, to be reheard and decided otherwise. The governors of provinces whom he found to be praised not falsely by factions he kept always with him in his carriage on his journeys and aided with gifts, saying that thieves were to be driven from the state and impoverished, but the upright to be kept and enriched. When the Roman people sought cheapness from him, he asked through the crier what commodity they thought dear; they at once cried out beef and pork. Then he did not indeed proclaim a fixed cheapness, but ordered that no one should kill a sow with young, none a suckling pig, none a cow, none a calf; and within two years, or nearly one, there was so much pork and beef that, whereas the pound had been at eight small coins, a pound of either meat was brought down to two or one.

23. He heard the cases of the soldiers against the tribunes in such a way that, if he found any of the tribunes in a crime, he punished him according to the quality of the deed, with no proposal of indulgence. About all men he always made inquiry through faithful men of his own, and did this through men whom no one knew, saying that all could be corrupted by plunder. His slaves he always kept in slaves' dress, his freedmen in the dress of the freeborn. He cast eunuchs out of his service and ordered them to serve his wife as slaves; and whereas Heliogabalus had been the chattel of eunuchs, he reduced them to a fixed number, and made them care for nothing in the Palace except the women's baths; and whereas Heliogabalus had set very many eunuchs over the accounts and procuratorships, he took even their former dignities away from them. He used to say that eunuchs were a third kind of human being, not to be seen nor kept in use by men, and scarcely even by noble women. One of them who had sold smoke about him and had taken a hundred gold pieces from a certain soldier, he ordered to be raised on a cross along that road by which there was very frequent traffic of his own slaves to the imperial suburbs.

24. He made very many provinces into ones governed by legates of praesidial rank, and arranged proconsular ones by the senate's will. He forbade mixed baths to be exhibited at Rome, which indeed had been forbidden before, but Heliogabalus had permitted to be done. He forbade the tax on pimps and harlots and male prostitutes to be paid into the sacred treasury, but assigned it to public expenses, for the restoration of the theatre, the Circus, the Amphitheatre, and the Stadium. He had it in mind to forbid male prostitutes, which Philip afterward did, but he feared that, by forbidding a public disgrace, he might turn it into private lusts, since men, driven by frenzy, demand the unlawful the more when it is forbidden. He established a most beautiful tax on breeches-makers, linen-weavers, glass-workers, furriers, locksmiths, silversmiths, goldsmiths, and the rest of the crafts, and from it ordered the baths, both those which he himself had founded and the earlier ones, to be furnished for the people's use; he also assigned woods to the public baths. He added oil too for the lamps of the baths, whereas before they had both not been opened before dawn and were closed before sunset.

25. Some have handed down in writing that his reign was bloodless, which is the contrary of the truth. For he was called Severus by the soldiers for his austerity, and in his punishments he was rather harsh in certain cases. He restored the works of former princes; he himself established many new ones, among them baths of his own name beside those that had been Nero's, with water brought in which is now called the Alexandrine; he made a grove for his baths out of his own private dwellings, which he had bought, by pulling down the buildings. He was the first among princes to call a bathing-basin "Ocean," whereas Trajan had not done this, but had assigned basins to days. He completed and adorned the baths of Antoninus Caracalla with added porticoes. He was the first to establish Alexandrine marble-work of two marbles, that is, porphyry and Lacedaemonian stone, in the Palace, the avenues being decorated with this kind of marbling. He set up many colossal statues in the city, artists being sought out from everywhere. He had very many coins struck with the likeness of Alexander, and indeed some of electrum, but most of gold. He forbade his mother and his wife to be greeted by infamous women. He held many public assemblies in the city,

26. after the manner of the tribunes and consuls of old. He gave the people a largess three times, a donative three times, and added a meat-dole to the people. He reduced the interest of moneylenders to one-third payments, taking thought even for the poor. He at first forbade senators, if they lent money, to take interest, unless they took something by way of a gift; afterward, however, he ordered them to take half a percent, but the gift he abolished. He set up in the Forum of Trajan statues of the highest men, brought together from everywhere. Paulus and Ulpian he held in great honour, whom some say were made prefects by Heliogabalus, others by himself. For Ulpian is said to have been both counsellor of Alexander and master of the bureau; yet both are said to have been assessors of Papinian. He had established the Alexandrine Basilica between the Campus Martius and the Saepta of Agrippa, a hundred feet wide and a thousand feet long, so that the whole was to hang upon columns. But this he could not finish, being forestalled by death. He fittingly adorned the Iseum and the Serapeum, with statues added, both Delian and all the mystic ones. To his mother Mamaea he was uniquely dutiful, so that at Rome in the Palace he made apartments of Mamaea's name, which the ignorant crowd today call "ad Mammam," and at Baiae a palace with a pool, which is still reckoned today under Mamaea's name. He made too at Baiae other magnificent works in honour of his kinsfolk, and astonishing pools, the sea being let in. The bridges which Trajan had made he restored in almost every place, and even made some new ones, but to the restored ones he kept the name of Trajan.

27. He had it in mind to give a particular kind of dress to all the offices and to all the dignities, so that they might be distinguished by their dress, and to all the slaves, so that they might be recognized among the people, that there might be no seditious man, and at the same time lest slaves should be confounded with the freeborn; but this displeased Ulpian and Paulus, who said there would be very many brawls if men were easily moved to wrongs; so he then determined it was enough that Roman knights should be distinguished from senators by the quality of the stripe. He permitted that within the city, for the sake of cold, the old should use cloaks, although that kind of garment had always been for travelling or for rain; yet matrons within the city he forbade to use cloaks, but permitted it on a journey. He was more given to Greek than to Latin eloquence, and not ungraceful in verse, and inclined to music, skilled in mathematics, and so much so that at his command the mathematicians publicly set up their notices at Rome and professed to teach. He was also most skilled in soothsaying, a great bird-watcher, so that he surpassed both the Vascones of the Spaniards and the augurs of the Pannonians. He practiced geometry. He painted wonderfully, sang nobly — but never with any witness save his own boys — and wrote in verse the lives of the good princes; he played on the lyre, the flute, the organ, and even the trumpet, which indeed as emperor he never showed; he was a first-rate wrestler. In arms he was great, so much so that he waged many wars and gloriously.

28. He entered the consulship three times only, the ordinary consulship; and at the first market-period he always substituted others for himself. He was a most severe judge against thieves, calling them guilty of daily crimes and condemning them most fiercely, and naming them alone the enemies and foes of the state. The notary who had reported a false summary of a case in the imperial council he deported, the sinews of his fingers being cut so that he could never write. When a certain man of honourable rank but sordid life, and once accused of thefts, had by excessive canvassing aspired to military command — for this reason, that he had been admitted through the canvassing of friendly kings — he was at once detected in theft, his patrons being present, and, ordered to be heard by the kings, was condemned, the matter being proved; and when it was asked of the kings what they did to thieves among them, they answered: "The cross." At their answer he was raised on the cross. So both was the canvasser condemned with his patrons as sponsors, and Alexander's clemency, which he especially guarded, was preserved. He set up colossal statues, both standing nude and equestrian, to the deified emperors in the Forum of the Deified Nerva, which is called Transitorium, all with inscriptions and bronze columns containing the order of their deeds, after the example of Augustus, who set up in his forum the marble statues of the highest men with their deeds added. He wished to seem to draw his origin from the Roman race, because he was ashamed to be called a Syrian, chiefly because at a certain festal time, as they are wont, the men of Antioch, the Egyptians, and the Alexandrians had provoked him with little gibes, calling him a Syrian arch-synagogue-leader and arch-priest.

29. Before I speak of his wars and expeditions and victories, I shall discuss a few things about his daily and domestic life. This was his manner of living. First, if there was opportunity — that is, if he had not slept with his wife — in the morning hours, in his lararium, in which he kept the deified princes (but only the choicest, and the holier souls, among whom were Apollonius and, as a writer of his own times says, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and others of this kind), and the images of his ancestors, he performed a divine service. If he could not do this, he was either carried about, or fished, or walked, or hunted, according to the quality of the place. Then, if the hour permitted, he gave very much attention to public business, for the reason that both military and civil affairs, as was said above, were handled through friends — but holy, faithful, and never venal — and when handled they were confirmed, unless something new pleased him too. And indeed, if necessity compelled, he gave attention to business before light and prolonged it into a long hour, nor did he ever grow weary or sit down peevish or angry, but with a face ever even and cheerful at everything. For he was of great prudence, and one on whom no one could impose, and one who, if anyone wished to try him cleverly, once perceived, made him pay the penalty.

30. After public business, whether military or civil, he gave greater attention to Greek reading, reading Plato's books On the Republic. When he read Latin, he read nothing more than Cicero's On Duties and On the Republic, sometimes also orations and poets, among whom Serenus Sammonicus, whom he himself had known and loved, and Horace; he read too the life of Alexander, whom he especially imitated, although in him he condemned drunkenness and cruelty toward friends — though both are defended by good writers, whom he more often trusted. After reading he gave attention to the wrestling-school, or the ball-court, or running, or gentler exercises, and thence, anointed, he bathed, so that he used the hot baths either never or rarely, but the swimming-pool always, and in it stayed nearly a whole hour; and he would drink, fasting, cold Claudian water, to nearly a pint. On leaving the baths he took much milk and bread, then eggs and honeyed wine; and refreshed by these, he sometimes went in to luncheon, sometimes deferred food until dinner, though he more often lunched; and he frequently used Hadrian's "four-remedy," of which Marius Maximus speaks in his books when he discusses the life of Hadrian.

31. The afternoon hours he always gave to signing and reading letters, so that the secretaries of correspondence, of petitions, and of records always stood by — sometimes even, if they could not stand because of ill health, they sat — while the clerks and those who carried the bureau read everything over, so that Alexander added with his own hand if anything was to be added, but from the opinion of him who was held the more eloquent. After the letters he admitted all his friends at once, and spoke with all equally, and never saw anyone alone except his prefect — namely Ulpian, always his assessor for his singular justice; but when he employed the other prefect, he ordered Ulpian too to be summoned. Vergil he called the Plato of the poets, and kept his image with the likeness of Cicero in his second lararium, where also were those of Achilles and of great men. But Alexander the Great he consecrated among the best and the deified in the greater lararium.

32. He never did a wrong to any of his friends or companions, nor even to his masters or the chiefs of the offices, but to the prefects he always deferred, asserting that he who deserved to suffer a wrong from an emperor ought to be condemned, not dismissed. If ever he gave a successor to anyone present, he always added this: "The state thanks you," and rewarded him so that, become a private man, he could live honourably according to his station — with these gifts indeed: fields, oxen, horses, grain, iron, funds for building a house, marbles for adorning it, and the workmen which the plan of building required. Gold and silver he rarely divided among any save a soldier, saying it was a wickedness for a public steward to turn to his own delights and his people's that which the provincials had given. The gold of the merchants and the crown-gold he remitted at Rome.

33. He made at Rome fourteen curators of the city, but men of consular rank, whom he ordered to hear city business with the prefect of the city, so that all or a great part should be present when the proceedings were held. He established corporations of all the wine-sellers, the lupine-sellers, the boot-makers, and in general of all the crafts, and gave them defenders from among themselves, and ordained which trades belonged to which judges. To stage-performers he never gave gold, never silver, scarcely any money. The precious garments which Heliogabalus had given he took away, and the soldiers whom they call "show-soldiers" he adorned not with precious but with handsome bright garments. Nor did he assign much gold and silk to standards or to royal display, saying that empire lay in virtue, not in adornment. The shaggy cloaks of Severus and the plain tunics, or the long-sleeved and the purple but not large ones, he recalled to his own use.

34. At a banquet he knew no gold; he always had cups of moderate size but bright; the weight of two hundred pounds of silver never exceeded his service. Dwarfs and she-dwarfs and fools and tuneful catamites and all musical entertainers and pantomimes he gave to the people; those who were of no use he thought should each be fed by the several cities, lest they be burdened in the guise of beggars. The eunuchs whom Heliogabalus had both kept in foul counsels and promoted he gave to his friends, with this proviso added, that if they did not return to good morals, they might be killed without the authority of a judgment. The infamous women, of whom he had detected an infinite number, he ordered to be made public, all the male prostitutes being deported, some even drowned in shipwreck, with whom that disaster had had a most deadly intimacy. No one of his servants had a gilded garment even at a public banquet. When he banqueted among his own, he employed either Ulpian or learned men, that he might have literary discourse, with which he said he was refreshed and fed. When he banqueted privately, he had even a book on the table and read — but Greek rather; the Latin poets, however, he read often. Public banquets he conducted with the same simplicity as private ones, except that the number of couches and the multitude of guests increased, by which he was offended, saying that he was eating in the theatre and the Circus.

35. Orators and poets who did not declaim panegyrics to him — which, after the example of Pescennius Niger, he thought foolish — but either recited speeches or the deeds of the men of old who were eminent, he heard gladly, yet more gladly if anyone recited to him the praises of Alexander the Great, or of the better princes of the past, or of the great men of the city of Rome. To the Athenaeum he frequently went, to hear both Greek and Latin rhetoricians or poets. He heard, too, forensic orators reciting the cases which they had pleaded either before himself or before the prefects of the city. He presided over contests, especially the Herculean, in honour of the Great Alexander. He never saw anyone alone after noon or in the morning hours, for the reason that he had learned that many things had been falsely said about him — particularly Verconius Turinus. When he had held him as an intimate, the man had so sold everything, even by inventing, that he disgraced the empire by representing Alexander as a foolish man whom he held in his power and whom he persuaded of many things; and so he had persuaded everyone

36. that he did everything at his nod. At last he caught him out by this device: he sent in a certain man to ask something of himself publicly, but secretly to demand of Turinus as it were his support, that he might secretly suggest it to Alexander on his behalf. When this had been done, and Turinus had promised his support and said that he had told the emperor certain things, when he had told him nothing, but it depended on his still obtaining it — selling the outcome — and when Alexander had again ordered the man to be admitted, and Turinus, as though busy with something else, had nodded assent but yet had said nothing within, and what was sought had been obtained, and Turinus had received from him who had obtained his suit huge rewards, the smoke being sold: then Alexander ordered him to be accused, and when everything had been proved by witnesses — both those in whose presence he had received what, and those in whose hearing he had promised what — he ordered him to be bound to a stake in the Forum Transitorium and, smoke being applied, which he had ordered to be made of stubble and damp wood, he killed him, the herald crying: "By smoke is punished he who sold smoke." And lest he should seem to have been too cruel for one cause only, he inquired most diligently before he condemned him, and found that Turinus had often, even in lawsuits, taken from both parties when he sold the outcome, and from all who had received either commands or provinces.

37. He frequented the spectacles, with the utmost thrift in giving, saying that stage-players and hunters and charioteers were to be fed as our slaves or huntsmen or muleteers or pleasure-makers. His banquet was neither sumptuous nor too sparing, but of the highest elegance, yet in such a way that clean table-cloths were sent in, more often bordered with scarlet, but never gilded, although Heliogabalus had already begun to have these, and earlier, as some declare, Hadrian had had them. This was his daily provision for a banquet: of wine, thirty pints for the whole day; of fine bread, thirty pounds; of second bread, for giving away, fifty pounds — for he always gave with his own hand to the servants of the banquet both bread and portions of vegetables, meat, or pulse, playing the head of the household with a thoroughly old-fashioned gravity. There were assigned also thirty pounds of various meats, and two cocks. A goose was added on festal days; but on the Kalends of January, the Hilaria of the Mother of the Gods, the Games of Apollo, the Feast of Jove, the Saturnalia, and festal days of this kind, a pheasant, so that sometimes even two were set out, with two cocks added. He had a hare daily, frequent game, but this he shared with his friends, and especially those whom he knew did not have it of themselves; nor did he send any such gifts to the rich, but always took them from these. He had daily also four pints of honeyed wine without pepper, two with pepper; and, not to insert at length everything which Gargilius, a writer of that time, has pursued one by one, everything was furnished him both to measure and to reason. To fruits he was very greatly indulgent, so that a second course was often set before him, whence even a joke arose, that Alexander had not a second table but a second course. He himself was stuffed with very much food, with wine neither sparingly nor abundantly, but sufficiently; he always used cold pure water, and in summer water seasoned with rose and wine — which alone of the various kinds of Heliogabalus's seasonings he had retained.

38. And since mention has been made of little hares, because he had a hare daily, a poetic joke arose, for the reason that many say that those who eat a hare are handsome for seven days, as even an epigram of Martial signifies, which he wrote against a certain Gellia of this kind:

"When you send me a hare, Gellia, you always charge me: 'For seven days, Marcus, you will be handsome.' If you speak truth, if you charge truth, Gellia, you, Gellia, have never eaten a hare."

But these verses Martial composed against a woman who was deformed; and the poet of Alexander's times said these against him:

"That you see our king to be handsome, handsome whom the Syrian stock brought forth — hunting does it, and the eaten hare, from which he gets a continual hare."

When one of his friends had brought these verses to him, he is said to have answered in Greek verses to this effect:

"That you think your king handsome, out of a common little tale, you wretch — if you think it true, I am not angry; only I would have you eat the little hares, that you become, your soul's ills driven off, nor envy the handsome with malice of mind."

39. Since he had military friends, to preserve the custom of Trajan, who had instituted drinking after the second course up to five cups, he offered his friends one cup only, in honour of Alexander the Great, and that a smaller one, unless someone — which was allowed — freely asked for a larger. His use of love was moderate in this; of male prostitutes he was so free that, as we said above, he wished to bring a law for their abolition. He made public granaries in all the regions, to which those might bring their goods who had no private storehouses. He added baths to all the regions which by chance did not have them; for even today many are called "Alexander's." He made too most beautiful houses, and gave these to his friends, especially men of integrity. He reduced the public revenues to this, that those who under Heliogabalus had paid ten gold pieces should pay a third part of a gold piece — that is, a thirtieth part. And then for the first time half-gold-pieces were coined; then too, when the tax had fallen to a third part of a gold piece, third-pieces, Alexander saying that there would even be quarter-pieces, since less could not be; which indeed, already coined, he kept in the mint, waiting, in case he could reduce the tax, to issue these too; but when he could not, because of public necessities, he ordered them to be melted down, and only third-pieces and whole pieces to be coined. The double, triple, quadruple, and tenfold pieces, and even larger ones up to pound-weight and hundredfold pieces, which Heliogabalus had invented, he ordered to be melted down and not to circulate in anyone's use; and from this the name of "bullion" was given to these, since he said that this was rather a cause of largess to the emperor, if, when he could give many smaller pieces, he were compelled, in giving ten or more, to give thirty and fifty and a hundred in one piece.

40. Silk garments he himself rarely had; all-silk he never wore, half-silk he never gave away. He envied no one his riches; he aided the poor; men of honour, whom he saw to be truly poor and not through luxury or pretence, he always increased with many advantages — fields, slaves, animals, flocks, farming-tools. In his storehouses he never suffered a garment to be beyond a year, and ordered it to be at once expended; every garment which he gave away he himself inspected. All the gold, all the silver, he frequently weighed. He gave away greaves and breeches and footwear among military garments. Of the most brilliant purple he was a most rigorous exactor — not for his own use, but for matrons, if any could or would, and at least for selling — so that what is now commonly called Probian is today called Alexandrine purple, for the reason that Aurelius Probus, set over the dye-works, had discovered that kind of murex. He himself often used a scarlet cloak; in the city, however, he was always in a toga, and in the cities of Italy; the bordered and embroidered toga he never received except as consul, and that indeed the one taken from the temple of Jove, which the praetors or consuls also received. He took the bordered toga even when he performed sacrifices, but in the place of supreme pontiff, not of emperor. He was a seeker of good linen, and indeed pure, saying: "If linen garments exist for this reason, that they may have nothing rough, what need is there of purple in linen?" To add gold he judged even madness, since to roughness was added stiffness. He always used bands. He had white breeches, not scarlet, as men were wont before.

41. The gems he had he sold and brought the gold into the treasury, saying that gems were of no use to men, but that royal matrons ought to be content with one hair-net and earrings and a pearl necklace and a crown with which they might sacrifice, and a single mantle sprinkled with gold and a robe which should have no more than six ounces of gold. In short, in his own times he exercised a censorship over his own conduct; great men imitated him, and most noble matrons his wife. The court service he reduced to this, that there should be as many men in each office as necessity demanded, so that the fullers and clothiers and bakers and cup-bearers and all the camp-servants received food-allowances, not dignity, as that pest had ordained, but single allowances, scarcely double. And since he had not more than two hundred pounds of silver in his service, nor more servants, he received silver and servants and coverlets, when he gave a feast, from his friends, which is still done today, if a feast is given by the prefects in the emperor's absence. He never had theatrical pleasures at a banquet, but his greatest delight was that either puppies should play with little pigs, or partridges should fight among themselves, or little golden orioles fly up and down. He had indeed in the Palace one kind of pleasure by which he was especially delighted and by which he relieved his public cares. For he had established aviaries of peacocks, pheasants, cocks, ducks, and even partridges, and with these he was vehemently delighted, especially with the doves, of which he is said to have had as many as twenty thousand; and lest their feeding should burden the grain-supply, he kept tributary slaves to feed them from eggs and chicks and squabs.

42. He frequently used both his own baths and those of the ancients with the people, and especially in summer, returning to the Palace in bathing-dress, having this alone of the imperial: that he received a scarlet mantle. He never had a courier except his own slave, saying that men of great rank ought not to run except in a sacred contest. Cooks, bakers, fullers, and bath-attendants he had only of his own slaves, so that if any were lacking, he bought one. Under him one palace physician received a salary, and all the rest, up to six, received two or three food-allowances, so that they obtained single fine ones, the others variously. When he promoted judges, after the example of the ancients, as Cicero too teaches, he equipped them with both silver and necessaries, so that the governors of provinces received twenty pounds of silver, six she-mules, two he-mules, two horses, two forensic robes, two for domestic use, one for the bath, a hundred gold pieces, single cooks, single muleteers, and, if they had no wives, single concubines — as many as they could not be without — to give back, when their administration was laid down, the she-mules, he-mules, horses, muleteers, and cooks, but to keep the rest for themselves if they had done well, to give back fourfold if ill, besides condemnation either for embezzlement or for extortion.

43. He enacted innumerable laws. He permitted all senators to have carriages and wagons silvered at Rome, thinking it pertained to Roman dignity that the senators of so great a city should use these. Whatever consuls he created, whether ordinary or suffect, he named by the senate's vote, reducing their expense, and he established the market-periods according to the old order. The candidate quaestors he ordered to give games to the people out of their own money, but in such a way that after the quaestorship they should receive praetorships and thereafter govern provinces. He instituted treasurers, however, who should give games out of the chest of the treasury, and those sparer. He had it in mind to distribute games throughout the whole year, so that for thirty days a show should be given to the people, but why he did not do this is held in secret. He went up to the Capitol every seventh day, when he was in the city,

44. and frequented the temples. He wished to make a temple to Christ and to receive him among the gods. This Hadrian too is said to have thought of, who had ordered temples to be made in all the cities without images, which today, because they have no divinities, are called Hadrian's — which he was said to have prepared for this purpose; but he was prevented by those who, consulting the sacred rites, had found that all would become Christians if he did this, and the other temples would have to be deserted. In jests he was most charming, in conversation lovable, in banquets courteous, so that each asked what he wished. He was attentive to collecting gold, careful in saving it, anxious in finding it, but without the ruin of anyone. He did not wish to be called a Syrian, but Roman from his ancestors, and had painted a genealogy of his race by which it was shown that his line descended from the Metelli. To rhetoricians, grammarians, physicians, soothsayers, mathematicians, mechanics, and architects he established salaries and decreed lecture-halls, and ordered students, with food-allowances, to be given — the sons of the poor, provided only they were freeborn. Even in the provinces he showed much regard to forensic orators, and gave food-allowances to many whom it was established were pleading without fee. He confirmed the laws of the contest and himself observed them most diligently; he often attended theatrical spectacles. He wished to restore the Theatre of Marcellus. To many cities which were disfigured after earthquakes he gave funds out of the revenues for the restoration of works both public and private. In the temples, indeed, beyond four or five pounds of silver, he never placed even a little drop of gold or a little leaf of it, murmuring the verse of Flaccus and of Persius: "What does gold do amid holy things?"

45. He had military expeditions, of which I shall discourse in their order. But first I shall tell his custom regarding things to be kept silent or to be revealed. The secrets of wars were kept silent, but the days of marches were publicly announced, so that an edict was posted two months before, in which was written: "On such a day, at such an hour, I shall depart from the city, and, if the gods will, I shall stay at the first halt"; then in order the halts, then the standing-camps, then where the grain was to be received; and this indeed up to the point where one came to the barbarian borders. For from there silence was kept, and all gave heed that the barbarians should not know the Roman arrangement. It is certain, moreover, that he never failed of what he had announced, saying that he did not wish his arrangements to be sold by court-attendants, which had been done under Heliogabalus, when everything was sold by the eunuchs — that kind of men who desire all things in the court to be secret for this reason, that they alone may seem to know something and may have a means of seeking either favour or money. And since mention has fallen on the publishing of arrangements: when he had wished to give governors to provinces, or to make commanders, or to appoint procurators — that is, accountants — he posted their names, exhorting the people that, if anyone had any charge, he should prove it with manifest facts, and if he had not proved it, he should undergo capital punishment; and he used to say it was grave that, when the Christians and the Jews did this in proclaiming the priests who were to be ordained, it should not be done in the case of the governors of provinces, to whom both the fortunes and the lives of men were committed.

46. To assessors he established salaries, although he often said that those should be promoted who could administer the state of themselves, not through assessors, adding that military men had their own administrations, men of letters their own, and therefore each ought to do what he knew. Treasures found he gave to those who had found them; and if they were great, he added to these the men whom he had in his own offices. He reckoned with himself and had written down to whom he had given what; and if he knew that any had either asked nothing or not much, whence they might increase their resources, he summoned them and said: "What is this, why do you ask nothing? Do you wish me to become your debtor? Ask, lest as a private man you complain of me." Now he gave these things in benefits which would not wound his good name: the goods of the punished, but never with gold, silver, or gems, for all that he placed in the treasury; he gave the headships of civil places, not of soldiers; he gave those administrations which pertained to procuratorships. The accountants he changed quickly, so that none completed a year, and these, even if they were good, he hated, calling them a necessary evil. But governors and proconsuls and legates he never made for a benefit, but for a judgment, either his own or the senate's.

47. The soldiers, in time of expedition, he so arranged that in the halts they should receive food-allowances, and not carry rations for seventeen days, as they are wont, except in barbarian territory, although even there mules and camels aided them, saying that he was preserving the soldiers more than himself, because the public safety lay in them. He himself visited the sick soldiers through the tents, even the lowest, and conveyed them in wagons, and aided them with all necessaries; and if by chance they had laboured rather seriously, he distributed them through the cities and fields to the more honourable heads of households and the holier matrons, repaying the expenses they had made, whether those soldiers had recovered or perished.

48. When a certain Ovinius Camillus, a senator of an ancient family but most effeminate, had wished to rebel, aspiring to tyranny, and it had been announced to him and at once proved, he asked him to the Palace and gave him thanks for having of his own accord taken up the care of the state, which is laid upon good men against their will. Then he came before the senate, and called the man, fearful and consumed by the rot of so great a conscience, a partner in empire; he received him into the Palace, admitted him to a banquet, furnished him with imperial ornaments and better ones than he himself used, and when a barbarian expedition had been announced, urged either that the man himself go if he wished, or that he set out with him. And when he himself made the journey on foot, he invited the man to the labour, whom, after five miles hesitating, he ordered to sit on a horse; and when after two halts he was wearied even by the horse, he put him in a wagon — this too the man rejecting, whether from fear or in truth, and even abdicating empire and ready to die — and he dismissed him, commended to the soldiers, by whom Alexander was uniquely loved, and ordered him to go safe to his estates, in which he lived a long time, but afterward was killed by the emperor's command; and because the man was of military temper, he was killed by soldiers. I know that the common crowd thinks this story which I have woven to be Trajan's; but neither did Marius Maximus so set it forth in his life, nor Fabius Marcellinus, nor Aurelius Verus, nor Statius Valens, who committed his whole life to writing. On the contrary, both Septimius and Acholius and Encolpius and the rest of the writers of his life declared such things about him — which I have added for this reason, lest anyone follow the rumour of the crowd rather than history, which is assuredly found truer than the rumour of the crowd.

49. He never suffered the honours of the right of the sword to be sold, saying: "It is inevitable that he who buys should also sell. I do not suffer merchants of powers, and those whom, if they plunder, I cannot condemn; for I blush to punish that man who bought and sold." Pontificates and the offices of the Board of Fifteen and the augurate he made by codicils, so that they were proposed in the senate. Dexippus said that he married the daughter of a certain Macrinus, and that the man was named Caesar by him; but when Macrinus wished to kill Alexander by treachery, the plot being detected, the man himself was slain and his wife cast off. The same writer says that Antoninus Heliogabalus was Alexander's uncle, not the son of a sister of his mother. When the Christians had occupied a certain place which had been public, and the cooks contended that it was owed to them, he wrote back that it was better that, however the god might be worshipped there, it should be so, than that it should be handed over to the cooks.

50. Since, therefore, so great and so excellent an emperor was such at home and abroad, he entered upon the Parthian expedition, which he conducted with such discipline, such reverence for himself, that you would say not soldiers but senators were passing. Wherever the legions made their march, the tribunes were silent, the centurions modest, the soldiers lovable; and the provincials, for these so many and so great goods, looked up to him as a god. And indeed the very soldiers so loved the young emperor as a brother, as a son, as a parent — clothed honourably, even shod for grace, nobly armed, even furnished with horses and seemly saddles and bridles — so that whoever had seen Alexander's army would understand the Roman state. He laboured, indeed, to seem worthy of that name, nay, to surpass that Macedonian, and used to say that there ought to be a great difference between the Roman Alexander and the Macedonian. He had made for himself, in short, silver-shielded and gold-shielded troops; he had made too a phalanx of thirty thousand men, whom he had ordered to be called phalangites, and with whom he did much in Persia; which indeed was of six legions of like arms, but, after the Persian war, of greater pay.

51. The royal gifts he placed in the temples; the gems offered him he sold, judging it womanish to possess gems, which could neither be given to a soldier nor held by a man. When a certain envoy had offered, through himself, to his wife two pearls of great weight and unusual size, he ordered them to be sold; and when they could find no price, lest a bad example should arise from a queen, if she used what could not be bought, he dedicated them to the earrings of Venus. Ulpian he held as guardian, his mother first opposing, then giving thanks, whom he often defended from the soldiers' wrath by interposing his own purple; and therefore he was a supreme emperor, because he ruled the state especially by Ulpian's counsels. In the line of battle and on open expeditions he lunched and dined in open tents, taking soldier's food in the sight of all, while all rejoiced; he went round nearly all the tents, suffered no one to be away from the standards, and if anyone had turned aside from the road into someone's property, according to the quality of the place he was subjected either to the cudgel in his sight, or to the rods, or to condemnation, or, if the man's rank passed beyond all these, to the gravest reproaches, saying: "Do you wish this to be done in your field which you do to another's?" And he often cried aloud, what he had heard and held from certain men, whether Jews or Christians, and ordered it to be said by a herald when he was correcting anyone: "What you do not wish done to yourself, do not to another." This saying he loved so much that he ordered it to be inscribed both in the Palace and on public works.

52. The same man, when he had heard that a certain old woman had been wronged by a soldier, cashiered the man from the service and gave him to her as a slave, because he was a carpenter by craft, that he might feed her; and when the soldiers grieved at this deed, he persuaded all to bear it modestly, and terrified them. His rule was called "bloodless," although he was hard and stern, for this reason — because he killed no senator, as Herodianus, a Greek writer, reports in his books of his own times. But he was of such severity toward the soldiers that he often cashiered whole legions, calling them, from soldiers, "Quirites"; nor did he ever fear his army, for the reason that nothing could be said against his life — that ever tribunes or commanders had taken anything from the pay of the soldiers — saying: "A soldier is not to be feared if he is clothed, armed, shod, and full, and has something in his purse," for the reason that military beggary calls the armed man to every desperation. In short, he suffered tribunes or commanders to have no orderlies, and ordered that before a tribune four soldiers should walk, before a commander six, before a legate ten, and that these should retire to their homes.

53. And that his severity may be recognized, I have thought one military harangue should be inserted which would show his character in military matters. For when he had come to Antioch, and the soldiers gave themselves to women's baths and delights, and it was announced to him, he ordered them all to be arrested and thrown into chains; and when this was found out, a sedition was stirred up by the legion whose comrades had been thrown into chains. Then he mounted the tribunal, and all the prisoners being brought to the tribunal, the soldiers also standing round, and those indeed armed, he began thus: "Fellow-soldiers — if indeed these things which were done by your comrades displease you — the discipline of our ancestors holds the state, which, if it slips away, both the Roman name and the empire we shall lose. These things are not to be done under us which were lately done under that impure beast. Roman soldiers — your comrades, my tent-mates and fellow-soldiers — love, drink, bathe, and indeed conduct themselves after the manner of the Greeks. Shall I endure this longer? And shall I not deliver them to capital punishment?" After this a tumult arose. And again: "Why do you not restrain that voice which is needful in war against the enemy, not against your own emperor? Surely your drill-masters taught you to send forth this against the Sarmatians and Germans and Persians, not against him who has assigned you the grain received from the provincials, the clothing, the pay. Restrain, then, that savage voice, needful for the field and for wars, lest I dismiss you all today with one mouth and one voice as Quirites — and as Quirites uncertain whether, for you are not worthy even to be of the Roman commons, if you do not acknowledge Roman right."

54. And when they roared the more vehemently and even threatened with the sword, "Lay down," he said, "your right hands, to be raised against the enemy if you are brave; for these things do not terrify me. For if you kill one man, the state will not fail us, nor the senate, nor the Roman people, to avenge me upon you." When nonetheless they roared after these words, he cried: "Quirites, depart and lay down your arms." By a wondrous example, their arms laid down, and their military cloaks too laid down, they all withdrew, not to the camp but to various lodgings; and then privately it was understood how much his severity could avail. In short, even the standard-bearers and the bodyguards and those who had surrounded the emperor carried the standards back into the camp, and the people brought the collected arms to the Palace. Yet that legion which he had cashiered, being asked, he restored to its place after thirty days, before he set out for the Persian expedition, and with it fighting he especially conquered; though nevertheless he visited its tribunes with capital punishment, because through their negligence the soldiers at Daphne had given themselves to luxury, or through their connivance the army had made the sedition.

55. With great preparation, therefore, setting out thence against the Persians, he conquered Artaxerxes, a most powerful king, himself going round the wings, exhorting the soldiers, moving exposed to the missiles, doing very much with his own hand, and rousing each soldier to glory by his words; and at last, that so great a king being routed and put to flight, who had come to the war with seven hundred elephants and eighteen hundred scythed chariots and many thousands of horse, he straightway returned to Antioch, and from the spoil which he had snatched from the Persians enriched his army, having ordered both the tribunes and the commanders and the soldiers themselves to keep what they had plundered through the villages. And then for the first time there were Persian slaves among the Romans; whom indeed, because the kings of the Persians take it ill that any of their own should serve anyone, he restored, prices being received, and either gave the price even to those who had taken the slaves with their own hands, or brought it into the treasury.

56. After this he came to Rome, and a most beautiful triumph being celebrated, before the senate he first spoke these words. From the records of the senate, on the seventh day before the Kalends of October: "We have conquered the Persians, Conscript Fathers; there is no need of long eloquence. You ought only to know what their arms were, what their array. First of all, seven hundred elephants, and these towered, with archers and a load of arrows; of these we captured thirty, two hundred lie slain, eighteen we brought in. Of scythed chariots a thousand eight hundred; of these we could bring in two hundred chariots of the slain beasts, but, because it could also be feigned, we forbore to do it. A hundred and twenty thousand of their horse we routed; of the mailed cavalry, whom they call clibanarii, we slew ten thousand in the war, and armed our own with their arms. Many of the Persians we captured and sold. The lands between the rivers — Mesopotamia, that is — neglected by that impure beast, we recovered. Artaxerxes, a most powerful king both in fact and in name, we routed and put to flight, so that the land of the Persians saw him fleeing; and where once the standards of our men had been led, there the king himself, his standards abandoned, fled. These, Conscript Fathers, are the deeds; there is no need of eloquence. The soldiers return rich; no one in victory feels the toil. It is yours to decree a thanksgiving, lest we seem ungrateful to the gods." The acclamation of the senate: "Alexander Augustus, may the gods preserve you! Most great conqueror of the Persians, may the gods preserve you! Truly Parthicus, truly Persicus. Your trophies we too see, your victories we too see. To the young emperor, the Father of his Country, the Supreme Pontiff! Through you we everywhere presume victory. He conquers who rules the soldier. A rich senate, a rich soldiery, a rich Roman people!"

57. The senate being dismissed, he went up to the Capitol, and there, a divine service performed and the Persian tunics placed in the temple, he held an assembly of this kind: "Quirites, we have conquered the Persians, we have brought back rich soldiers. To you we promise a largess; tomorrow we shall give Persian games in the Circus." These things we have found both in the annals and in many writers. But some say that he was betrayed by a slave of his own, and did not conquer the king, but fled lest he should be conquered — which, against the opinion of many, it is undoubted is said by those who have read very many writers. For they say too that he lost his army through hunger, cold, and disease, as Herodianus is author, against the opinion of many. After this, with great glory, the senate accompanying, the equestrian order, and all the people, and women and infants pouring in from all sides, especially the wives of the soldiers, he went up on foot to the Palace, while behind him a triumphal chariot was drawn by four elephants. Alexander was lifted up by men's hands, and was scarcely permitted to walk for the space of four hours, all crying out on every side: "Rome is safe, the state is safe, because Alexander is safe." On another day, the games of the Circus being held, and likewise stage-plays, he then gave a largess to the Roman people; and he instituted "Mamaean" girls and boys, as Antoninus had instituted the "Faustinian."

58. Affairs were happily conducted both in Mauretania Tingitana through Furius Celsus, and in Illyricum through Varius Macrinus, his kinsman, and in Armenia through Junius Palmatus; and from all places laurelled dispatches were brought to him, which, read in the senate and before the people at various times — when too the longed-for ones had come from Isauria — he was adorned with all titles; and to those who had administered the state well consular ornaments were decreed, with priesthoods and grants of land added to those who were poor and already heavy with age. The captives of various nations he gave to his friends, if their boyish or youthful age permitted; but if any were of royal birth or more noble, them he assigned to military service, yet not to high command. The lands alone which were taken from the enemy he gave to the frontier commanders and soldiers, on condition that they should be theirs, if their heirs served, and should never pass to private persons, saying that they would serve more attentively if they were also defending their own lands. He added too animals and slaves, that they might be able to till what they had received, lest through want of men or through old age the lands near the barbarian country should be left without possessors — which he thought most disgraceful.

59. After this, when he was living in great love among the people and the senate, and all hoped for victory and dismissed him unwillingly, he set out for the German war, all escorting him for a hundred and a hundred and fifty miles. It was most grievous to the state and to himself that Gaul was being harried by the ravagings of the Germans; and it increased the shame that, the Parthians being now conquered, that nation hung over the neck of the state which had always seemed subject even to lesser emperors. With great marches, therefore, the soldiers rejoicing, he hastened; but when there too he found mutinous legions, he ordered them to be cashiered. But the Gallic minds, such as they are, hard and dried-up and often grievous to emperors, did not bear the man's excessive severity, far greater after Heliogabalus. At last, while he was living with a few in Britain — or, as others would have it, in Gaul, in a village which has the name Sicilia — not by the verdict of all, but in the manner of brigands, certain soldiers, and especially those who had flourished by Heliogabalus's rewards, since they could not endure a strict prince, killed him. Many say that recruits sent in by Maximinus, who had been given him to train, killed him; many say otherwise. Yet it is established that it was by the soldiers, when they had said many things insultingly against him as against a boy, and against his mother as avaricious and greedy.

60. He reigned thirteen years and nine days. He lived twenty-nine years, three months, and seven days. He did everything by the counsel of his mother, with whom he was killed. The omens of his death were these. When he was celebrating his birthday, a bloodstained victim escaped and — since he bore himself courteously and was mingled with the people — stained his white robe, in which he had been standing. A huge and ancient laurel in the palace of a certain city, from which he was setting out to war, suddenly fell whole. Three fig trees, which bore those figs that are called Alexandrine, suddenly fell before his tent, when the imperial tents had been joined to them. A Druid woman cried out to him in the Gallic tongue, as he was going: "Go, but hope for no victory, nor trust yourself to your soldier." He mounted the tribunal to harangue and to say something auspicious, and began thus: "When the emperor Heliogabalus was killed." This too was an omen, that, about to go to war, he had begun to address the soldiers with a less auspicious speech.

61. But all these things he most vehemently despised, and, having set out to war in the place mentioned above, he was killed thus. He had lunched, as it happened, at a public banquet, as was his wont — that is, in open tents, taking soldier's food, for nothing else was found by the soldiers when they searched the tents; and while he was resting after the meal, about the seventh hour of the day, one of the Germans, who held the office of jester, having entered while all slept, was seen by the emperor alone, who was keeping awake. Alexander said to him: "What is this, comrade? Do you bring any news of the enemy?" But he, terrified with fear and hoping he could not escape, because he had burst into the prince's tent, came to his comrades and exhorted them to slay the strict prince. They, suddenly entering in numbers and armed, cut down the unarmed men who withstood them, and ran the emperor himself through with very many blows. Some say that nothing at all was said, but only that the soldiers cried out "Get out, withdraw," and so the excellent young man was cut down. But all the military equipment which was afterward led into Germany by Maximinus was Alexander's, and most powerful indeed, through Armenians and Osroeni and Parthians and men of every kind.

62. That Alexander despised death is declared both by that fierceness of mind by which he always wore down the soldier, and also by these things. Thrasybulus the mathematician was his most intimate friend. When he had told him that there was a necessity that he should perish by a barbarian sword, at first he rejoiced, because he believed a warlike and imperial death hung over him; then the man argued and showed that all the best men had been cut off by a violent death, saying that Alexander himself, whose name he bore, and Pompey, Caesar, Demosthenes, Tullius, and the rest of the famous men, had not met a quiet death. And he had so much spirit that he thought himself to be likened to the gods, if he should perish in war. But the matter deceived him; for he perished both by a barbarian sword and by the hand of a barbarian jester, yet not in war, but in time of war.

63. The soldiers, and those who had once been cashiered by him, bore his death most grievously and slew the authors of the slaughter. But the Roman people and all the senate, with all the provincials, took it neither more sadly nor more harshly ever — at the same time because the harshness and rusticity of his successor Maximinus, as a military man, to whom with his son the empire was offered after him, seemed to show a graver necessity of fate. The senate enrolled him among the gods; he won a cenotaph in Gaul, at Rome a most ample tomb. Sodal-priests too were appointed, who were called Alexandrini; and there were added festal days in his mother's name and his own, which are still today most religiously celebrated at Rome on his birthday. The cause of his being killed is reported by others to have been this: that his mother, the German war abandoned, wished to return to the East for her own ostentation, and on this account the army was angry. But these things were invented by the lovers of Maximinus, who did not wish it to seem that an excellent emperor had been killed by his own friend against human and divine law.

64. Up to this point the empire of the Roman people had this prince who ruled for a longer time; after him, when others rushed in upon one another in rivalry — some reigning six months, some a year, most for two years, at the most for three — down to those princes who extended the empire more widely, I mean Aurelian and thereafter. About these, if life supports me, we shall publish what shall be ascertained. These things were censured in Alexander: that he did not wish to be a Syrian; that he loved gold; that he was most suspicious; that he found out many taxes; that he wished to be thought a Great Alexander; that he was too severe toward the soldiers; that he conducted by private cares all the things which he had instituted in the state. I know indeed that very many deny that he was named Caesar by the senate, but by the soldiers — who are utterly ignorant of the truth; and they say besides that he was not the cousin of Heliogabalus. Let these, that they may follow us, read the historians of that time, and especially Acholius, who also wrote the itineraries of this prince.

65. You are wont to ask, most great Constantine, what it is that made a man a Syrian and of foreign birth so great a prince, when so many of the Roman race, so many of other provinces, are found base, impure, cruel, abject, unjust, lustful. First of all I can answer, from the opinion of good men, that it was possible by nature, which everywhere is one mother, that a good prince should be born; next, that by fear, because the worst had been killed, this man was made the best. But because the truth must be suggested, I shall unfold to your Clemency and Piety the things I have read. It is known to your Piety, what you have read in Marius Maximus, that a state is better and almost safer in which the prince is bad than one in which the prince's friends are bad; since one bad man can be corrected by very many good ones, but many bad men cannot by any reckoning be overcome by one, however good. And this indeed was said to Trajan himself by Homullus, when the latter said that Domitian had been most wicked but had had good friends, and therefore that man was the more to be hated who entrusted the state to men of worse life, because it is better to suffer one bad man than many.

66. But, to return to the matter, Alexander himself indeed was most excellent and used the counsels of a most excellent mother; and yet he had friends holy and venerable, not malicious, not thievish, not factious, not crafty, not consenting to evil, not enemies of the good, not lustful, not cruel, not deceivers of him, not mockers, not such as would lead him about as if a fool, but holy, venerable, continent, religious, loving their prince, and such as would neither themselves laugh at him nor wish him to be a laughing-stock; who sold nothing, lied in nothing, feigned nothing, never deceived the judgment of their prince but loved him. There is added to this that he had eunuchs neither in his counsels nor in his offices — they who alone ruin princes, while they wish them to live after the manner of nations or the kings of the Persians; who remove them from the people and from friends; who, being go-betweens, often report something other than is answered; who shut in their prince and contrive above all things that he should know nothing; who, since they have been bought and have been slaves, what good, after all, can they taste? In short, this was his own opinion: "I do not suffer chattels bought with bronze to judge concerning the heads of prefects and consuls and senators."

67. I know, emperor, that these things are said with danger before an emperor who has been a slave to such people; but, the state being safe — since you have understood what evil those pests hold and how they encompass princes — you too hold them in such a place that you have not even ordered them to use the cloak, but have delegated them to domestic necessities. There is besides that notable thing, that within the Palace he saw no one except the prefect and Ulpian indeed, nor gave anyone the opportunity either of selling smoke about himself or of speaking ill to him of others — especially after Turinus was killed, who had often sold him as if a fool and madman. There is added to this, that if Alexander found friends and kinsfolk bad, he either punished them, or, if old friendship or relationship did not allow them to be punished, dismissed them from him, saying: "The state is dearer to me than all these."

68. And that you may know what men were in his council: Fabius Sabinus, son of the distinguished Sabinus, the Cato of his time; Domitius Ulpianus, most skilled in law; Aelius Gordianus, parent of the emperor Gordian, a distinguished man; Julius Paulus, most skilled in law; Claudius Venacus, a most ample orator; Catilius Severus, his kinsman, the most learned man of all; Aelius Serenianus, the most holy man of all; Quintilius Marcellus, than whom not even the histories contain a better. By so many and other such men what evil could be thought or done, since they consented to the good? And these indeed the cohort of the wicked had driven off, which had encompassed Alexander in his first days; but by the young man's prudence, the wicked being slain and driven off, this holy friendship grew strong. These are they who made a good prince of a Syrian; and likewise the bad friends, who handed down even to posterity the worst Romans, labouring under their own vices.