Severus

1. After Didius Julianus had been slain, Severus, a man of African origin, obtained the empire. His city was Leptis; his father was Geta; his more distant ancestors were Roman knights before citizenship was granted to all; his mother was Fulvia Pia; his great-uncles Aper and Severus were of consular rank; his paternal grandfather was Macer, his maternal grandfather Fulvius Pius. He himself was born when Erucius Clarus, for the second time, and Severus were consuls, on the sixth day before the Ides of April. In his earliest boyhood, before he was steeped in Latin and Greek letters — in which he became most learned — he played no other game among the boys than that of "judges," in which he himself, with the fasces and axes carried before him, would sit surrounded by a band of boys and pass judgment. In his eighteenth year he declaimed in public. Afterwards he came to Rome for the sake of study, and sought and obtained the broad stripe from the deified Marcus, with the favour of his kinsman Septimius Severus, then already twice consul.

When he had come to Rome, he chanced upon a host who at that very hour was reading the imperial life of Hadrian, which he seized upon as an omen of his future good fortune. He had another omen of empire too: having been invited to an imperial banquet and come in a Greek cloak when he ought to have come in a toga, he received a toga of state belonging to the emperor himself. That same night he dreamed that he was clinging to the teats of a she-wolf, like Remus or Romulus; he sat too, by chance, in the imperial chair, which had been carelessly placed by a servant, not knowing that this was not permitted; and as he slept in a stable a serpent coiled itself about his head and, his companions waking and crying out, departed without harm.

2. His youth was full of follies, and sometimes of crimes too. He was tried on a charge of adultery and was acquitted by the proconsul Julianus, whom he both succeeded in the proconsulship, and whose colleague he was in the consulship, and whom likewise he succeeded in the empire. He performed the quaestorship diligently, the military tribunate being omitted. After the quaestorship he received Baetica by lot, and from there made his way to Africa, in order to settle his domestic affairs upon the death of his father. But while he was in Africa, Sardinia was assigned to him in place of Baetica, because the Moors were laying Baetica waste. So, having performed the quaestorship in Sardinia, he received an appointment as legate to the proconsul of Africa; and during this legateship, when a certain townsman of his own, a man of Leptis, with the fasces going before him, embraced him — a mere plebeian — as an old comrade, he had the man beaten with rods, with this proclamation from the herald: "A man of the plebs, do not rashly embrace a legate of the Roman people." From which it came about that the legates were carried even in a vehicle, who before had gone on foot. Then, in a certain African city, when in his anxiety he had consulted an astrologer and the man, having cast the hour, had seen mighty things, he said to him: "Set forth your own nativity, not another's." And when Severus had sworn that it was his own, the astrologer told him all the things that afterwards came to pass.

3. He gained the tribunate of the plebs when the emperor Marcus decreed it to him, and he discharged it most strictly and most energetically. He then took to wife Marcia, of whom he kept silent in the history of his private life, but to whom afterwards, when emperor, he set up statues. He was designated praetor by Marcus, not as one of the white-robed candidates of the imperial favour but among the throng of competitors, in the thirty-second year of his age. Then, being sent to Spain, he dreamed first that he was bidden to restore the temple of Augustus at Tarraco, which was already falling into ruin; then that from the summit of a very high mountain he looked down upon the whole world and upon Rome, while the provinces sang in harmony with lyre or voice or flute. He gave games in his absence. He was then put in command of the Fourth Legion, the Scythian, near Massilia. After this he made for Athens, for the sake of study and of the sacred rites and of the public works and antiquities. There, when he had suffered certain injuries from the Athenians, he became their enemy, and, now emperor, took his revenge by diminishing their privileges. He then received the province of Lugdunum as legate; and when, having lost his wife, he wished to marry another, he made inquiry into the nativities of marriageable women, being himself most skilled in astrology; and when he heard that there was a certain woman in Syria whose nativity was such that she would be joined to a king, he sought her as his wife — Julia, namely — and obtained her through the intervention of friends; and by her he was at once made a father.

4. By the Gauls, on account of his strictness and his sense of honour and his self-restraint, he was loved as no one else was. Then he governed the Pannonias with proconsular authority; after this he obtained by lot the proconsulship of Sicily; and at Rome he received a second son. In Sicily he was put on trial, as though he had consulted seers or Chaldaeans about the empire; but by the praetorian prefects, before whom he had been given to be heard, he was acquitted — Commodus now coming to be hated — and his accuser was sent to the cross. He held his first consulship with Apuleius Rufinus, Commodus designating him among very many. After the consulship he was for about a year unoccupied; then, by the support of Laetus, he was set over the army of Germany. As he was setting out for the German armies he bought spacious gardens, although before he had had a very small house at Rome and a single estate in Venetia. And once, in these very gardens, when he was feasting on a frugal meal as he lay on the ground with his sons, and apples had been set before them, his elder son, who was then five years old, was dividing them with too generous a hand among the little boys who were his playmates; and when his father rebuked him, saying, "Divide more sparingly, for you do not possess the wealth of kings," the five-year-old boy answered, "But I shall possess it." Having set out for Germany, he so conducted himself in that legateship that he heaped up still further the fame and renown he had won before.

5. And up to this point he carried on his military career as a private man. After this, by the German legions — when it was heard that Commodus had been slain, but that Julianus was reigning to the hatred of all — being urged by many, though resisting, he was hailed emperor at Carnuntum on the Ides of August; and he gave the soldiers more sesterces than any prince had ever given. Then, having secured the provinces he was leaving behind him, he hastened his march to Rome, all giving way to him wherever he went, since now both the Illyrian armies and the Gallic, at the compulsion of their leaders, had sworn allegiance to him; for he was received by all as the avenger of Pertinax. At that same time, at the instigation of Julianus, Septimius Severus was declared a public enemy by the senate, and envoys were sent to the army in the senate's name, to bid the soldiers, by the senate's command, to forsake him. And Severus indeed, when he heard that envoys had been sent by the authority of a consenting senate, was at first greatly alarmed; but afterwards he so contrived it, by bribing the envoys, that they spoke on his behalf before the army and went over to his side. When Julianus learned this, he had a decree of the senate passed concerning the sharing of the empire with Severus — whether truly or by guile is uncertain — though he had already before sent certain men, known as murderers of generals, to kill Severus, just as he had sent men to kill Pescennius Niger, who had himself taken up the empire against him at the urging of the Syrian armies. But Severus, having escaped the hands of those whom Julianus had sent to kill him, sent letters to the praetorians and gave the signal either to desert or to kill Julianus, and was straightway obeyed. For Julianus was slain in the Palatium, and Severus was invited to Rome; thus, by a thing that has fallen to no other man's lot, Severus was made victor by a nod alone, and hastened to Rome in arms.

6. When Julianus had been slain, while Severus still remained in his camp and tents, coming as though through hostile country, the senate sent a hundred senators as envoys to him to offer congratulations and entreaty. These met him at Interamna and saluted him under arms, with armed men standing about, and were searched lest they should have any weapon; and on the next day, when the whole household retinue of the court came to meet him, he gave the envoys seven hundred and twenty gold pieces apiece and sent them on ahead, granting them permission, if any wished, to remain and return to Rome with him. He at once made Flavius Juvenalis praetorian prefect, the same whom Julianus too had taken on as his third prefect.

Meanwhile at Rome there was great alarm among the soldiers and citizens, because Severus was coming in arms against them, since they had judged him a public enemy. To this was added that he learned that Pescennius Niger had been hailed emperor by the Syrian legions; whose edicts and letters to the people and senate he intercepted through those who had been sent, so that they should neither be posted up before the people nor read in the senate-house. At the same time he thought too of making Clodius Albinus his colleague, to whom, at the instance of Commodus, the rank of Caesar already seemed assured; but, fearing those very men of whom he rightly held this judgment, he sent Heraclitus to secure the Britains and Plautianus to seize the children of Niger. When Severus had come to Rome, he ordered the praetorians to come out to meet him unarmed, in their tunics; and he summoned them thus to his tribunal, with armed men set all about them.

7. Then, having entered Rome under arms, with armed soldiers, he ascended the Capitol; from there he proceeded in the same dress to the Palatium, with the standards of which he had stripped the praetorians carried before him reversed, not upright. Throughout the whole city, then, the soldiers lodged in the temples, in the porticoes, in the buildings of the Palatine, as though in stables; and the entry of Severus was hateful and terrifying, since the soldiers seized things without paying, threatening the city with devastation. On another day, surrounded not only by armed soldiers but also by his friends, he came into the senate; in the senate-house he gave an account of his having taken up the empire, alleging as a cause that Julianus had sent men known for the murder of generals to kill him. He also had a decree of the senate passed that it should not be lawful for an emperor to put a senator to death without consulting the senate. But while he was in the senate, the soldiers in a mutiny demanded ten thousand sesterces apiece from the senate, after the example of those who had escorted Augustus Octavianus to Rome and had received as much; and although Severus had wished to check them and could not, he nevertheless soothed them and, adding a largesse, dismissed them. Then he conducted a censorial funeral for the image of Pertinax and consecrated him among the gods, appointing a flamen and the Helvian fellowship of priests, who had been the Marcian; he ordered himself too to be called Pertinax, although afterwards he wished that name abolished as though it were an ill omen.

8. He next paid off the debts of his friends; he gave his daughters, with dowries, in marriage to Probus and Aetius; and when he had offered the prefecture of the city to his son-in-law Probus, the latter declined and said that it seemed to him less to be prefect than to be the son-in-law of an emperor. But he at once made both his sons-in-law consuls and enriched both. On another day he came to the senate and consigned the friends of Julianus, who had been accused, to proscription and death. He heard very many cases; and judges accused by the provincials, when the matters were proved, he punished severely. To the grain-supply, which he had found very small, he attended so well that on departing this life he left a store of seven years for the Roman people.

He set out to confirm the state of the East, saying as yet nothing openly about Niger; yet he sent legions to Africa, lest Niger, by way of Libya and Egypt, should seize Africa and press the Roman people hard by a scarcity of grain. He left Domitius Dexter prefect of the city in place of Bassus, and set out within thirty days of his coming to Rome. Having left the city, he suffered at the Saxa Rubra a great mutiny on the part of the army over the place chosen for pitching camp. His brother Geta met him there at once, whom he bade to govern the province entrusted to him, though Geta was hoping for something else. The children of Niger, brought to him, he held in the same honour as his own. He had indeed sent a legion to occupy Greece and Thrace before Pescennius should seize them; but Niger already held Byzantium. Niger, wishing to seize Perinthus too, killed very many of the army, and on that account was declared a public enemy by Aemilianus; and when he summoned Severus to a partnership, he was scorned. He did indeed promise Niger a safe exile, if he wished it; but Aemilianus he did not pardon. Aemilianus, then, defeated in the Hellespont by the generals of Severus, fled first to Cyzicus and from there to another city, in which he was slain by their order. The forces of Niger likewise were routed by these same generals.

9. On hearing this, Severus sent a letter to the senate as though the affair were finished; then he engaged Niger and slew him near Cyzicus, and carried his head about on a spear. After this he sent the sons of Niger, whom he had kept with the care due to his own children, into exile with their mother. He sent a letter to the senate concerning the victory, and did not put any of the senators who had been of Niger's party to death, save one. With the people of Antioch he was the more angry, because they had both laughed at him while he was administering affairs in the East and had also helped Niger with provisions; and so he took many things from them. From the people of Neapolis in Palestine too he took away the right of citizenship, because they had long been in arms for Niger. Many besides the senatorial order who had followed Niger he punished cruelly; he afflicted with injuries and losses many cities also of that same party; and he put to death those senators who had served with Niger under the title of generals or tribunes.

Then he performed many exploits around Arabia, the Parthians too being reduced to subjection, and likewise the Adiabeni, all of whom had taken Pescennius's side; and on this account, on his return, a triumph being decreed, he was hailed as Arabicus, Adiabenicus, Parthicus. But he refused the triumph, lest he should seem to triumph over a civil victory; and he declined too the name Parthicus, lest he should provoke the Parthians.

10. As he was returning to Rome, however, after the civil war with Niger, another civil war, that of Clodius Albinus, was announced, who had rebelled in Gaul; for which reason the sons of Niger were afterwards put to death together with their mother. Albinus, then, he straightway judged a public enemy, together with those who had written to him, or written back, in too friendly a tone; and as he was marching against Albinus, on the way, at Viminacium, he hailed his elder son Bassianus as Caesar, conferring on him the name Aurelius Antoninus, in order to remove his brother Geta from the hope of empire which the latter had conceived. And the name of Antoninus he conferred on his son for this reason, that he had dreamed that an Antoninus would succeed him. Hence some think that Geta too was called Antoninus, so that he also might succeed to the empire; while some think that the son was called Antoninus because Severus himself wished to pass into the family of Marcus.

And at first indeed the generals of Severus were defeated by the troops of Albinus. Then, in his anxiety, when he consulted them, he learned from the Pannonian augurs that he himself would be victorious, but that his adversary would neither come into his power nor escape, but would perish beside water. Many friends of Albinus, deserting him, at once came over; many of his generals were captured,

11. against whom Severus took vengeance. Meanwhile, after many varied actions in Gaul, Severus first fought against Albinus most successfully at Tinurtium; though he there incurred great danger through the fall of his horse, so that he was believed dead from the blow of a lead missile, so that another man was already all but chosen emperor by the army. At that time, on reading the proceedings that had been carried out in praise of Clodius Celsinus, who was a man of Hadrumetum and a kinsman of Albinus, Severus, angry with the senate as though it had bestowed this honour on Albinus, decided that Commodus should be enrolled among the gods, as though by this means he might take vengeance on the senate; and he was the first among the soldiers to proclaim Commodus a god, and wrote this to the senate, adding an oration on his victory. He then ordered the bodies of those senators who had been killed in the war to be scattered. Then, when the body of Albinus was brought to him, almost lifeless, he ordered the head to be cut off and carried to Rome, and reported this in a letter. Albinus was defeated on the eleventh day before the Kalends of March. The rest of his body he ordered to be exposed before his own house and to be seen for a long time; and besides, sitting on his horse above the corpse of Albinus, he drove it, and, as it shied in terror and broke loose, urged it on to trample boldly. Others add that he ordered the same corpse to be thrown into the Rhone, together with that of Albinus's wife and children.

12. When countless men of Albinus's party had been killed — among them many chief men of the state and many illustrious women — the goods of all were confiscated and swelled the treasury; then many nobles of the Spaniards and the Gauls too were slain. In short, he gave the soldiers as much pay as no prince had given; and he left even to his own sons, from this proscription, as much as no emperor had left, since he had made a great part of the gold throughout the Gauls, the Spains, and Italy imperial property; and then for the first time the procuratorship of private affairs was established. Many indeed after Albinus, keeping faith with him, were overcome in war by Severus. At the same time, too, the Arabian legion was reported to have gone over to Albinus.

Having thus grievously avenged the defection of Albinus, with very many slain and his family also extinguished, he came in anger to Rome, to both the people and the senators. He praised Commodus in the senate and in the public assembly, called him a god, and said that he had displeased only men of ill repute — so that it was most manifest that he was raving. After this he discoursed on his own clemency, though he was most cruel and put to death the senators written below:

13. He killed without trial these noble men: Mummius Secundinus, Asellius Claudianus, Claudius Rufus, Vitalius Victor, Papius Faustus, Aelius Celsus, Julius Rufus, Lollius Professus, Aurunculeius Cornelianus, Antonius Balbus, Postumius Severus, Sergius Lustralis, Fabius Paulinus, Nonius Gracchus, Masticius Fabianus, Casperius Agrippinus, Ceionius Albinus, Claudius Sulpicianus, Memmius Rufinus, Casperius Aemilianus, Cocceius Verus, Erucius Clarus, Aelius Stilo, Clodius Rufinus, Egnatuleius Honoratus, Petronius the Younger, the Pescennii — Festus, Veratianus, Aurelianus, Materianus, Julianus, and Albinus — the Cerellii — Macrinus, Faustinianus, and Julianus — Herennius Nepos, Sulpicius Canus, Valerius Catullinus, Novius Rufus, Claudius Arabianus, Marcius Asellio. The slayer, then, of these so great and so illustrious men — for many of them were of consular rank, many of praetorian, all certainly men of the highest standing — is held by the Africans to be a god. Cincius Severus he falsely accused of having attacked him with poison,

14. and so killed him. Then he threw Narcissus, the strangler of Commodus, to the lions. Many besides, men of obscure standing, he put to death, apart from those whom the violence of battle carried off.

After this, wishing to commend himself to men, he transferred the postal service from private persons to the imperial treasury. He then had Bassianus Antoninus hailed by the senate as Caesar, with the imperial insignia decreed. Then, roused by report of a Parthian war, he set up statues himself to his father, his mother, his grandfather, and his former wife. Plautianus, once his closest friend, when his way of life became known, he so held in hatred that he declared him a public enemy and, taking down his statues throughout the world, marked him with grievous injury, being angry chiefly because the man had placed his own statue among the likenesses of the kindred and relations of Severus. To the Palestinians he remitted the penalty they had incurred on account of Niger. Afterwards he was again reconciled with Plautianus, and, entering the city as though in ovation, made for the Capitol — although in the course of time he killed even him.

To his younger son Geta he gave the toga of manhood; to his elder he joined the daughter of Plautianus as wife. Those who had declared Plautianus a public enemy were deported. Thus in all things there is ever change, as though by a natural law. He then designated his sons consuls. He buried his brother Geta. Thence he set out to the Parthian war, after giving a gladiatorial show and a largesse to the people. Amid these things he killed many, on charges either true or feigned; and most were condemned for having jested, others for having kept silent, others for having said many things in a figurative way, such as: "Behold, an emperor true to his name — truly Pertinax, truly Severus!"

15. There was indeed common talk that Septimius Severus was courting a Parthian war, drawn on by desire of glory and not by any necessity. At length, having ferried his army across from Brundisium and continued his march, he came into Syria and drove back the Parthians. But afterwards he returned into Syria, in order to prepare himself and make war upon the Parthians. Meanwhile, at the instigation of Plautianus, he was pursuing the remnants of Pescennius's party, so that he attacked even some of his own friends as though they had plotted against his life. Many too he put to death, as though they had consulted Chaldaeans or seers about his safety, suspecting above all every man fit for empire, since he himself had as yet only little sons, and believed or heard this said by those who augured the empire for themselves. At length, when several had been put to death, Severus excused himself and after their deaths denied that he had ordered done what had been done. This Marius Maximus relates especially concerning Laetus: that when his sister from Leptis had come to him, scarcely able to speak Latin, and the emperor was much ashamed of her, he gave her son the broad stripe and her many gifts, and bade the woman return to her native land — and indeed with her son, who shortly afterwards departed this life.

16. So, as the summer was now drawing to a close, having entered Parthia, he reached Ctesiphon, the king being driven off, and captured it at almost the winter season, because in those regions wars are better conducted in winter — though the soldiers lived on the roots of herbs and from this contracted diseases and sicknesses. Wherefore, since with the Parthians resisting, and with the soldiers' bowels also loose from the unaccustomed food, he could not go further, he nevertheless held on, captured the town, put the king to flight, killed very many, and earned the name Parthicus. On this account too the soldiers named his son Bassianus Antoninus, who had already been called Caesar and was now in his thirteenth year, partner in the empire. Geta also, his younger son, they named Caesar, calling him too Antoninus, as most record in their writings. For the occasion of these titles he gave the soldiers a most lavish donative, all the plunder of the Parthian town being granted to the soldiers, who demanded it. From there he returned victorious into Syria; and he declined the Parthian triumph which the fathers offered him, for this reason: that he could not stand upright in the chariot, being afflicted with gout. He did indeed grant his son leave to triumph; to whom the senate had decreed a Jewish triumph, for the reason that affairs had also been well managed by Severus in Syria.

Then, when he had crossed over to Antioch, having given the toga of manhood to his elder son, he designated him consul along with himself; and they at once entered upon the consulship in Syria. After this, having given the soldiers a more abundant donative,

17. he made for Alexandria; on the way he established very many ordinances for the Palestinians. He forbade, under a heavy penalty, anyone to become a Jew; and he enacted the same concerning the Christians. He then gave the Alexandrians the right of a council, who, without a public council, were living just as they had under the kings before, content with a single judge whom the Caesar should give them; many other ordinances besides he changed for them. Severus himself afterwards always made it plain that this journey had been pleasant to him on account of the religion of the god Serapis, on account of the knowledge of ancient matters, and on account of the novelty of the animals and places; for he carefully inspected Memphis, the statue of Memnon, the pyramids, and the labyrinth.

And since it would be a long task to follow up lesser matters, here are the splendid deeds of his: that, having defeated and killed Julianus, he discharged the praetorian cohorts; that he enrolled Pertinax among the gods against the will of the soldiers; that he ordered the decrees concerning Salvius Julianus to be abolished — which he did not achieve. Finally, he seems to have borne the surname Pertinax not so much by his own choice as from the frugality of his character; for he was held to be the more cruel by the boundless slaughter of many; and when a certain one of his enemies had presented himself to him as a suppliant and had said to him, "What would you have done?" — not softened by so wise a saying, he ordered him to be put to death.

He was, moreover, eager to destroy factions. He hardly ever withdrew from an encounter except as victor.

18. He subdued Abgarus, king of the Persians. He received the Arabs into subjection. He forced the Adiabeni to become tributary. Britain — which is the greatest glory of his empire — he fortified with a wall drawn across the island from one side to the other to the boundary of the Ocean. Whence too he received the name Britannicus. Tripolis, from which he sprang, he rendered most secure by crushing the most warlike peoples, and granted to the Roman people a daily, free, and most abundant supply of oil in perpetuity.

The same man, while he was implacable towards offences, was yet of singular discernment in raising up the industrious. He was sufficiently devoted to the study of philosophy and of speaking, and too eager for learning as well; everywhere an enemy of brigands. He himself composed his own life, both private and public, faithfully, excusing only the single vice of cruelty. Concerning him the senate judged thus: that he ought either not to have been born or not to have died, because he seemed both too cruel and too useful to the commonwealth. At home, however, he was less careful, for he kept his wife Julia, notorious for her adulteries and accused also of conspiracy. The same man, when, being sick in his feet, he was delaying the war, and the soldiers bore this anxiously and had made his son Bassianus, who was with him, Augustus, ordered himself to be lifted up and carried to the tribunal; and then he ordered all the tribunes, centurions, generals, and cohorts by whose authority this had come about to be present, and then his son, who had received the name of Augustus, to be set before him; and when he ordered punishment to be inflicted on all the authors of the deed except his son, and was entreated, with all prostrated before the tribunal, touching his head with his hand, he said: "At last you perceive that it is the head that rules, not the feet." A saying of his too: when fortune had led him from a humble station, through the offices of letters and of military service, to the empire by very many steps, he said: "I have been everything, and it profits nothing."

19. He died at Eboracum in Britain, the peoples that seemed hostile to Britain having been subdued, in the eighteenth year of his reign, carried off by a most grievous sickness when already an old man. He left two sons, Antoninus Bassianus and Geta, on whom too he had bestowed his name in honour of Marcus Antoninus. He was laid in the tomb of Marcus Antoninus, whom of all the emperors he so reverenced that he both enrolled Commodus among the gods and judged that the name of Antoninus should be ascribed to all thereafter, like that of Augustus. He himself was enrolled among the gods by the senate, his children acting, who had given him a most magnificent funeral.

His chief public works that remain are the Septizonium and the Severan Baths; and also his Septimian Baths in the region across the Tiber, near the gate of his own name, the structure of which, falling into decay, at once grudged the public their use. The judgment of all concerning him after his death was high, especially because for a long time no good came to the commonwealth from his sons, and afterwards, with many invading the commonwealth, the Roman state was given over to plunder by robbers.

He used such scanty clothing that his tunic too had scarcely any purple, while he covered his shoulders with a shaggy cloak. He was most sparing in food, fond of the beans of his native land, sometimes desirous of wine, often abstaining from meat; he was himself comely, of great stature, with a flowing beard and grey, curly hair, of reverend countenance, with a melodious voice, but with something of an African accent that clung to him into old age; and he was much loved after his death, whether because envy was laid aside or through fear of cruelty.

20. I remember reading in Aelius Maurus, the freedman of Phlegon, Hadrian's freedman, that Septimius Severus, as he was dying, rejoiced beyond all measure that he was leaving two Antonines to the commonwealth with equal empire, after the example of Pius, who left Verus and Marcus Antoninus as his sons to the commonwealth by adoption — this being better, that the one left as rulers of the Roman commonwealth sons by adoption, the other sons begotten of himself. Antoninus Bassianus, namely, he had received from his former marriage, and Geta he had begotten of Julia; but in the former hope much deceived him. For the one his own parricide, the other his own character, denied to the commonwealth. And that sacred name remained good for long in hardly any man; and as I reflect upon it, Diocletian Augustus, it would give me ground enough to say that almost none of the great men left a son both excellent and useful. In short, most either perished without true offspring, or had such offspring that it would have been better to depart from human affairs without posterity.

21. And, to begin with Romulus, he left no children; nor did Numa Pompilius leave any who could be of use to the commonwealth. What of Camillus? Did he have children like himself? What of Scipio? What of the Catos who were great? Now indeed, what shall I say of Homer, Demosthenes, Virgil, Crispus, Terence, Plautus, and all the rest? What of Caesar? What of Tullius, for whom alone it had been better to have no children? What of Augustus, who did not even have a good adopted son, although he had the power of choosing from among all? Trajan himself too was mistaken in choosing his fellow townsman and grand-nephew. But, to pass over the adopted — lest the Antonines, Pius and Marcus, the divinities of the commonwealth, confront us — let us come to those begotten of their own blood. What had been more fortunate for Marcus, had he not left Commodus as his heir? What for Septimius Severus, had he never begotten Bassianus? — who at once, accusing his brother of plots devised against himself, killed him even with the parricidal pretext; who took to wife his own stepmother — and why stepmother? his mother, rather, in whose bosom he had slain her son Geta; who killed Papinianus, the sanctuary of law and the treasury of legal learning, because he had refused to excuse the parricide — and that too a prefect, lest dignity should be wanting to a man great both in himself and in his knowledge. In short, to omit other things, I suppose it came about from this man's character that Severus, a man sterner in all things, nay even more cruel, was reckoned dutiful and worthy of the altars of the gods. He indeed is said, when oppressed by his sickness, to have sent to his elder son that divine oration of Sallust in which Micipsa exhorts his sons to peace — and that in vain . . . and a man only in respect of bodily health. In short, Antoninus lived long in the hatred of the people, and that sacred name was long less loved, although he both gave the people garments — whence he was called Caracalla — and built most magnificent baths. There is indeed at Rome the portico of Severus, setting forth his deeds, built by his son, as very many relate.

22. The signs of his death were these: he himself dreamed that he was carried off to heaven by four eagles and a jewelled chariot, with some huge human shape flying before; and that, as he was being carried off, he counted out eighty-nine numbers, beyond which years he did not live even a single year more — for he came to the empire an old man. And when he had been set in a great circle of bronze, he stood for a long time alone and forsaken; and when he feared lest he should fall headlong, he saw himself summoned by Jupiter and placed among the Antonines. On a day of the games, when three little Victories of plaster, holding palms, had been set up in the customary way, the middle one, which held a globe with his own name inscribed, was struck by the wind and, falling from the podium where it stood, came to rest upon the ground; but the one inscribed with the name of Geta collapsed and was all broken to pieces; while that which bore the title of Bassianus, losing its palm, scarcely kept its place against the whirl of the wind. Afterwards, when, after seeing the wall near Luguvallum in Britain, he was returning to the nearest station, not only as victor but with peace established for ever, turning over in his mind what omen should meet him, a certain Ethiopian from among the soldiery, of famous repute among the jesters and ever of celebrated haunts, met him with a garland made of cypress; and when he, in anger, ordered him removed from his sight, struck by the omen both of the man's colour and of the garland, the Ethiopian is said to have said, by way of a jest: "You have been everything, you have conquered everything; now, victor, be a god." And when, coming into the city, he wished to perform a sacrifice, he was first led, by the error of a rustic soothsayer, to the temple of Bellona; and then black victims were brought to him. When he had spurned these and was withdrawing to the Palatium, through the carelessness of the attendants the black victims followed the emperor even up to the threshold of the Palatine house.

23. There are notable works of his throughout very many cities; but this is the great thing in his life, that at Rome he restored all the public buildings which were falling into ruin through the defects of the times, almost nowhere inscribing his own name, yet everywhere preserving the inscriptions of the founders. Dying, he left a store of grain for seven years, such that seventy-five thousand pecks could be spent daily; and of oil so much that for five years it would suffice not only for the uses of the city but also for all Italy, which is in need of oil.

His last words are said to have been these: "I received a commonwealth disturbed everywhere; I leave it pacified, even as to the Britons; an old man and sick in my feet, I leave a firm empire to my Antonines — strong, if they shall be good; weak, if they shall be bad." He then ordered the watchword to be given to the tribune: "Let us labour," because Pertinax, when he had been admitted to the empire, had given the watchword, "Let us serve as soldiers." He had then resolved to double the royal Fortune, which is wont to accompany emperors and to be set in their bedchambers, so as to leave each of his sons that most sacred image; but when he saw himself hard pressed in his last hour, he is reported to have ordered that the Fortune should be placed on alternate days in the bedchambers of his sons the emperors — which Bassianus scorned to do before he committed the parricide.

24. His body was conveyed from Britain all the way to Rome with great reverence on the part of the provincials; although some say that it was only a little golden urn containing the remains of Severus, and that this was placed in the tomb of the Antonines, since Septimius had been burned there where he had ended his life. When he built the Septizonium, he thought of nothing else than that his work should meet those coming from Africa. Had not, in his absence, the statue of him been set in the middle by the prefect of the city, he is said to have wished to make an entrance to the Palatine buildings — that is, the royal hall — on that side. And when afterwards Alexander too wished to do this, he is said to have been forbidden by the soothsayers, since, on inquiring of this, he had obtained no favourable omen.