Many think this man was fathered by Gordian, when, as a youth, he was being
prepared
by a grown woman for a wife.
Aurelius Victor - Caesars
Before he emerged to be saluted, he partook of a little bread, lest, with his strength consumed as a result of the blood around his heart being cold, he be interrupted and too little meet the needs of the business of state, which he used to pursue with, to outward appearance, the unbelievable diligence of the best paterfamilias.
6.
He lacked an appetite for glory and ostentation, and was so mild that he commented to the senate, which was pursuing men who had plotted against him, that men desirous of evil must not be [152] investigated in his actual presence, lest, if many should be discovered, the extent to which he was in odium become apparent.
7.
Accordingly, it was at Lorii, his country-estate, twelve thousand paces from the city, that he was consumed by a fever a few days after twenty-three years of imperium.
8.
In his honor were decreed temples, priests, and countless other things.
9.
Moreover, he was so gentle that when, through suspicion of a shortage of grain, he was being pelted with stones by the Roman commons, after the supply had been exposed to view, he preferred to placate rather than punish the sedition.
16
Marcus Aurelius Antonius ruled eighteen years. 2. He showed himself to be of all virtues and of celestial character, and was thrust before public calamities like a defender. For indeed, if he had not been born to those times, surely, as if with one fall, all of the Roman state would have collapsed. 3. Since there was never rest from arms, and wars were raging through all Oriens, Illyricum, Italy, and Gallia, and there were earthquakes not without the destruction of cities, inundations of rivers, numerous plagues, species of locusts which infested fields, there is almost nothing by which mortals are accustomed to be vexed with the most serious difficulties that is able to be described which did not rage while he was ruling. 4. I believe that it has been bestowed by divine providence that, when the law of the universe or nature produces † or something else unknown to men, they are appeased by the counsels of honest men as by the remedies of medicine. 5. With a new kind of benevolence, he admitted his own kinsmen, Lucius Annius Verus, to a share of imperium. This is the Verus who, while journeying between Altinum and Concordia, died, in the eleventh year of imperium, as a result of a surge of blood, a disorder which the Greeks call [apoplexy]. 6. He was a poet, mostly of tragedies, studious, of a rugged and lascivious character. [153] 7. After his demise, Marcus Antoninus controlled the state alone. From the beginning of his life, he was extremely placid, so much so that from infancy he changed his expression neither from joy nor sorrow. Of philosophy and Greek literature he was a student <most expert>. 8. He allowed more illustrious men and his ministers alike to host banquets in the same splendor as did he himself. 9. When, with the treasury exhausted, he did not have the funds which he applied to the soldiers and did not wish to inflict anything on the provincials or senate, he removed by a confiscation made in the Forum of Trajan material of regal splendor, golden vases, crystalline and murrine goblets, and his own wife's silken and golden apparel, numerous ornaments of gems, and through two continuous months an auction was held and much gold was collected. 10. After a victory, however, he refunded the purchase prices to buyers who wished to return what had been bought. 11. In his time, Cassius, seizing a tyranny, was killed. 12. He himself was consumed by disease at Bendobona in the fifty-ninth year of his life. 13. When the announcement about his death reached Rome, with the city convulsed with public lamentation, the senate gathered in the senate house, wrapped in mourning garb, weeping. 14. And what is scarcely believable about Romulus, all in common consent presumed that Marcus had been received into heaven. In his honor temples, columns, and many other things were decreed.
17
Aurelius Commodus, son of Antoninus, and himself called Antoninus, ruled thirteen years. 2. What he was going to become, in the very beginning, he revealed. For when [154] he was being advised by his father in his will not to allow the barbarians, who were now exhausted, to regain strength, he had responded that, although negotiations could be completed over a period of time by a live man, nothing could to be completed by a dead man. 3. He was quite fierce with sexual desire and greed, with cruelty, faithful to no one, and more savage toward those whom he had exalted with most splendid honors and enormous gifts. 4. So depraved was he that he often battled with gladiatorial weapons in the amphitheater. 5. Nevertheless, Marcia, of freedman stock, prevailed on this man by her beauty and meretricious arts, and, when she had thoroughly gained control of his mind, offered a drink of poison to him when he was emerging from the bath. Finally, his throat crushed by a very strong wrestling instructor who had been let loose on him, he expired in the thirty-second year of his life.
18
Helvius Pertinax ruled eighty-five days. Compelled to imperium, he drew "Resister and Submitter" as a sort of cognomen. 2. Having risen from a humble origin, he advanced to the urban prefecture, was made imperator, and, by the viciousness of Julianus, was cut down with many wounds at the age of sixty-seven. His head was carried about the entire city. 3. By this death, there perished a man who is an example of human vicissitude, who, through all types of labor, reached the heights, to such a degree that he was called the "Pillar of Fortune. " 4. For he was the product of a freedman father among the Ligurians on a humble estate of Lollius Getianus, in whose prefecture it was most happily fated that he become a client, and he became a teacher of the letters which are taught by grammarians. He was more pleasing than beneficial, hence men called him by the Greek name ["Smooth-talk"]. 5. Never was he drawn to vengeance by injuries he had received. He was a lover of simplicity, he presented himself as a common man by means of his speech, his dining, and his demeanor. 6. To him [155]in death was decreed the name "Divine;" for his praise, there was acclaimed with repeated ovations until voices failed: "With Pertinax in control, we lived secure, we feared no one. To a dutiful father! To the father of the senate! To the father of all good men! "
19
Didius Julianus, by birth of Mediolanum, ruled seven months. He was a man of the nobility, very skilled in law, factious, reckless, eager to rule. 2. At this time, near Antioch, Niger Pescennius and, at Sabaria in Pannonia, Septimius Severus were made Augusti. 3. By this Severus, Julianus was led to the secret baths of the palace and, with his neck stretched out in the fashion of the condemned, was decapitated and his head placed on the rostra.
20
Septimius Severus ruled eighteen years. 2. He eliminated Pescennius, a man of utter baseness. Under him Albinus, too, who in Gallia had made himself Caesar, was slain near Lugdunum. 3. Severus left as successors his own sons, Bassianus and Geta. 4. In Britannia he extended a wall over a distance of thirty-two thousand paces, from sea to sea. 5. Of all the men who had lived before him, he was the most warlike. He was relentless in character, persevering to the end toward everything to which he had turned his attention. To whom he was well disposed, he exhibited a goodwill singular and abiding. He was thrifty when it came to his needs, lavish in largess. 6. Toward friends and enemies he was equally passionate, inasmuch as he enriched Lateranus, Cilo, Anullinus, Bassus, and several others -- and with buildings worthy of note, particular examples of which we see which are called the "House of the Parthians" and the "House of Lateranus. " 7. To no one, in his reign, did he permit offices to be sold. 8. He was sufficiently educated in Latin literature, erudite in the Greek language, more at ease with Punic eloquence, [156] inasmuch as he was born near Leptis in the province Africa. 9. When he was unable to endure the pain of all his limbs, especially of his feet, in place of a drug, which was being denied him, he too avidly fell upon a meal large and of very much meat; since he was unable to digest this, he was overcome by the indisposition and breathed his last. 10. He lived sixty-five years.
21
Aurelius Antonius Bassianus Caracalla, Severus' son, was born at Lugdunum and ruled alone six years. 2. He was called by the name Bassianus from his maternal grandfather. But since he had brought very many garments from Gallia and had made ankle-length tunics and forced the urban population to enter dressed in such clothing for the purpose of saluting him, he was from this garment given the cognomen Caracalla. 3. His own brother Geta he destroyed, on account of which he was punished with madness by the railing of the Dirae, who, not without merit, are called Furies. From this madness he later recovered. 4. After he viewed the body of Alexander of Macedon, he ordered himself to be called "the Great" and "Alexander," having been drawn by the intrigues of flatterers to the point that, with fierce expression and neck turned toward his left shoulder (which he had noted in Alexander's face), he reached the point of conviction and persuaded himself that he was of very similar countenance. 5. He could not control sexual desire, for in fact he married his own stepmother. 6. While making a trip to Carrhae, near Edessa, he retired to nature's obligations and was killed by a soldier who was following him as if for the purpose of attendance. 7. He lived almost thirty years. His body was brought back to Rome.
22
Macrinus, with his son Diadumenus, were made imperatores by the army, ruled fourteen months, and were cut down by the same army, because Macrinus began to check military luxury and increased pay.
23
[157] Aurelius Antonius Varius, also called Heliogabalus, son of Caracalla from a cousin, Soemea, who had been secretly defiled, ruled two years and eight months. 2. The grandfather of his mother Soemea, Bassianus by name, had been a priest of Sol, whom the Phoenicians where he was living used to call Heliogabalus, whence the infamous Heliogabalus was named. 3. When he had come to Rome in the accompaniment of an enormous number of soldiers and the expectation of the senate, he contaminated himself by means of every lewdness. He turned toward himself a desire for debauchery which, through a defect of nature, he had not been able to attain, and ordered that he be called by the feminine name Bassiana, instead of Bassianus. A vestal virgin, as if in marriage, he joined to himself, and, after self-emasculation, he dedicated himself to the Great Mother. 4. He made Marcellus, his own cousin, who afterward was called Alexander, Caesar. 5. He himself was killed in a military insurrection. 6. His body was dragged through the streets of the city in the fashion of the corpse of a dog, to the accompanying soldierly jesting of people calling him a puppy-bitch of unrestrained and crazed lust. Finally, since the narrow opening of a sewer would hardly accommodate the body, it was dragged all the way to the Tiber and, after a weight was attached lest it ever rise again, was tossed into the River. 7. He lived sixteen years and from what had transpired was called Tiberinus ["the Tiberine"] and Tractitius ["the Dragged"].
24
Severus Alexander ruled thirteen years. Good for the state, he was wretched for <himself>. 2. Under his rule, Taurinius, who had been made Augustus, on account of fear, threw himself into the Euphrates. 3. Then Maximinus, too, [158]when many from the army had been corrupted, took the rule. 4. Alexander, in fact, since he had seen that he had been deserted by his attendants, exclaiming that his mother had been the cause of his death, covered his head and, in the twenty-sixth year of his life, offered to an approaching assassin a neck stoutly tensed. His mother, Mammaea, so constrained her son that those very morsels, if they survived a meal or lunch, would be served again, although <half-eaten, at another> banquet.
25
Julius Maximinus Thrax, from the soldiery, ruled three years. 2. While hunting down the wealthy, guiltless and guilty alike, near Aquileia, by an insurrection of the troops, he was butchered with his child, a daughter, to the accompanying military jest that a whelp from inferior stock must not be kept.
26
In this man's reign, two Gordians, father and son, seized the principate and were destroyed one after another. 2. In the same course, too, Pupienus and Balbinus seized power and were eliminated.
27
Gordian, a grandson of Gordian from a daughter, was born at Rome to a most illustrious father, and ruled six years. 2. Near Ctesiphon, when the troops were incited to insurrection by Philip, the praetorian prefect, he was killed in the twenty-first year of his life. 3. His body, placed near the borders of the Roman and Persian empire, gave to the spot the name "Gordian's Sepulchre. "
28
Marcus Julius Philip ruled five years. 2. At Verona he was killed by the army, the middle of his head cut through above his teeth. 3. Moreover, his son Gaius Julius Saturninus, whom he had made a partner in his power, was killed at Rome, entering the twelfth year of his life, of so harsh and dour a character that from as early as the age of five by precisely no contrivance of anyone was he able to be reduced to laughing; and, during the Secular Games, [159] although still of tender age, his face averted, he made note of his father too wantonly roaring with laughter. 4. He (Philip) rose from humble station, from a father who was a most noble commander of brigands.
29
Decius, from Pannonia Inferior, was born at Bubalia, and ruled thirty months. 2. He made Decius, his son, Caesar. He was a man learned in all the arts and virtues, quiet and courteous at home, in arms most ready. 3. On foreign soil, among disordered troops, he was drowned in the waters of a swamp, so that his corpse could not be found. His son, in fact, was killed in the war. 4. He lived fifty years. 5. In this man's time, Valens Lucinianus was made imperator.
30
Vibius Gallus, with Volusianus, his son, ruled two years. 2. In their time, Hostilianus Perpenna was made imperator by the senate and, not much later, was consumed by the plague.
31
Under these men, Aemilianus, too, in Moesia was made imperator, against whom both advanced and near Interamna were murdered by their own army (the father in about the forty-seventh year of his life), having been born on the island Meninx, which is now called Girba. 2. But Aemilianus, in his fourth month, was defeated near Spoletium or a bridge which is said to have taken its name from his destruction of the Sanguinarii, between Oriculum and Narnia, positioned in the middle of the area between Spoletium and the city Rome. He was, moreover, a Moor by race, warlike yet not reckless. 3. He lived fifty less three years.
32
Licinius Valerianus, Colobius ["Undershirt"] by cognomen, ruled fifteen years. Sprung from parents most distinguished, he was nevertheless stupid and extremely indolent, [160] unfit by mind or deeds for any holding of public office. 2. His own son Gallienus he made Augustus, and Gallienus' son, Cornelius Valerianus, Caesar. 3. During their rule, Regillianus in Moesia and, when Gallienus' son was killed, Cassius Latienus Postumus in Gallia, were made imperatores. 4. In the same way, Aelianus at Mogontiacum, in Egypt Aemilianus, at Macedon Valens, and, in Mediolanum, Aureolus seized control. 5. But, indeed, Valerianus, waging war in Mesopotamia, was defeated by Sapor, King of the Persians, immediately captured, too, and among the Persians grew old in ignoble servitude. 6. For he lived a long while, and the king of the same province was accustomed, with him bent low, to place his foot on his shoulders and mount his horse.
33
Gallienus, in fact, substituted another son, Salonianus, in place of his own son Cornelius, eager for the separate love of Salonina, his wife, and of a concubine -- Pipa by name -- , whom, when a portion of Pannonia Superior had been conceded through a treaty by her father, king of the Marcomanni, he had accepted in a kind of marriage. 2. Finally, he advanced against Aureolus. When, near some bridge, which is called "Aureolus" from his name, that had been seized and destroyed, he beseiged Mediolanum, he was killed by his men in imitation of this same "Aureolus. " 3. He ruled fifteen years, seven with his father, eight alone. He lived fifty years.
34
Claudius ruled one year, nine months. 2.
Many think this man was fathered by Gordian, when, as a youth, he was being prepared by a grown woman for a wife. This Claudius was designated imperator by the decision of the dying Gallienus, to whom, stationed at Ticinum, he had, through Gallonius Basilius, directed the imperial regalia, and, when Aureolus had been killed by his own men, [161] by means of the legions regained, he fought against the people of the Alamanni not far from Lake Benacus and vanquished so great a multitude that scarcely half will have survived. 3. In these days, Victorinus took the rule. Indeed, when Claudius had learned from the Sibylline Books, which he had ordered to be inspected, that there was no remedy for the death of the man who stated his position first in the senate - although Pomponius Bassus, who then was the first man, offered himself - , he did not allow the responses to be ineffectual and gave his own life to the state for a gift, having proclaimed that none but the imperator held the first place of so great an order. 4. Inasmuch as this act was beneficial to all, the leading men dedicated to him not only the name "Divinity" but a statue of gold near the effigy of Jupiter itself and, in the senate-house, a gold image. 5. His brother Quintillus succeeded him. He held power a few days and was killed.
35
Aurelian, sprung from a common father - one even, as some say, a tenant farmer of Aurelius, a very distinguished senator, between Dacia and Macedonia - , ruled five years, six months. 2. That man was not unlike Alexander the Great or Caesar the Dictator; for in the space of three years he retook the Roman world from invaders, while Alexander in thirteen years, through immense victories, reached to India, and Gaius Caesar, in a ten-year period, subjugated the Gauls and, for four years, contended against citizens. In Italy, that man was victor in three battles: at Placentia, beside the Metaurus River and the Altar of Fortuna, and, finally, at the Ticenensian Fields. 3. In his time, among the Dalmatians, Septimius was made imperator and immediately killed by his own men. 4. At this time, in the city Rome, the masters of the mint rebelled, who, having been conquered, Aurelian [162] repressed with the utmost cruelty. 5. That man first introduced among the Romans a diadem for the head, and he used gems and gold on every item of clothing to a degree almost unknown to Roman custom. 6. He fortified the city with stronger, more solid walls. For the populace, he instituted a ration of pork. 7. He appointed Tetricus, who had been made imperator by the army in Gallia, Regulator of Lucania, twitting the man with the choice jest that to rule over some portion of Italy must be regarded more loftily than to reign beyond the Alps. 8. Finally, by the treachery of his own servant - who gave to certain military men, friends of that very servant, names with notations (he deceitfully imitated his [Aurelian's] handwriting), as though Aurelian were preparing to kill them - he was murdered at the halfway point in the road which is between Constantinople and Heracleum. 9. He was savage, bloodthirsty, and ferocious at every moment -- even the murderer of his sister's son. 10. At the time, for seven months, there proceeded a kind of interregnum.
36
After him, Tacitus took power, a man of singular character, who died at Tarsus from a fever in the two hundredth day of his reign. 2. Florian succeeded him. But when the majority of the troops chose Equitius Probus, a man experienced in military affairs, Florian, on the sixtieth day of his reign, as if exhausted in the contest for power, when he had cut open his veins, was consumed by loss of blood.
37
Probus, sprung from a rustic father, fond of the fields -- Dalmatius by name -- , ruled six years. 2. He defeated Saturninus in Oriens, and Proclus and, at Agrippina, Bonosus, who had been made imperatores. 3. He allowed the Gauls and Pannonians to have vineyards. By the labor of the soldiery, he planted vineyards on Mount Alma near Sirmium and on Mount Areum in Moesia Superior. 4. At Sirmium, in the "Iron Tower," he was killed. [163]
38
Carus, born at Narbo, ruled two years. 2. He immediately made Carinus and Numerian Caesars. 3. He died near Ctesiphon by the blow of a lightning bolt. 4. Numerian, too, his son, while he was being carried in a litter (he had contracted a disorder of the eyes), was murdered in a plot, with Aper, who was his father-in-law, the instigator. 5. While his death was being hidden by a deception until such time as Aper was able to take power, the crime was revealed by the stench of the corpse. 6. Then Sabinus Julianus took power and, at the Verronesian Fields, was killed by Carinus. 7. This Carinus defiled himself with all crimes. He killed many innocent men for made-up offenses. He corrupted the marriages of nobles. He was ruinous toward his fellow pupils, too, who, with jeering voice, teased him in the classroom. 8. He was tortured to death chiefly by the hand of his tribune, whose wife he was said to have violated.
39
Diocletian, a Dalmatian, freedman of the senator Anulinus, was, until he assumed power, called in their language Diocles, from his mother and likewise from a city named Dioclea; when he took control of the Roman world, in the fashion of the Romans, he converted the Greek name. He ruled twenty-five years. 2. He made Maximian an Augustus; Constantius and Galerius Maximianus, with the cognomen Armentarius ["Herdsman"], he created Caesars, giving to Constantius, when his prior wife was divorced, Theodora, the stepdaughter of Herculius Maximian. 3. At this time, Charausius in Gallia, Achilles in Egypt, and Julianus in Italy were made imperatores and, by diverse death, perished. 4. Of these, Julianus, when an attack breached his walls, threw himself into a fire.
5. Diocletian actually relinquished the imperial fasces of his own accord at Nicomedia and grew old on his private estates. [164] 6. It was he who, when solicited by Herculius and Galerius for the purpose of resuming control, responded in this way, as though avoiding some kind of plague: "If you could see at Salonae the cabbages raised by our hands, you surely would never judge that a temptation. " 7. He lived sixty-eight years, out of which he passed almost nine in a common condition. He was consumed, as was sufficiently clear, by voluntary death as a result of fear. Inasmuch as when, called by Constantine and Licinius to the celebrations of a wedding which he was by no means well enough to attend, he had excused himself, after threatening replies were received in which it was being proclaimed that he had favored Maxentius and was favoring Maximian, he, regarding assassination as dishonorable, is said to have drunk poison.
40
In these days, the Caesars Constantius, the father of Constantine, and Armentarius were proclaimed Augusti, with Severus in Italy and, in Oriens, Maximinus, the son of Galerius' sister, created Caesars; and at the same time Constantine was made a Caesar. 2. Maxentius was made imperator in a villa six miles outside the city, on the road to Lavicanum, next Licinius became an Augustus, and, in the same fashion, Alexander at Carthagina; and likewise Valens was created imperator. Their demise was as follows:
3. Severus Caesar was killed by Herculius Maximian in Rome at Tres Tabernae and his ashes were interred in the sepulchre of Gallienus, which is nine miles from the city on the Appian Way. 4. Galerius Maximianus, when his genitals were consumed, died. 5. Maximian Herculius, besieged by Constantine at Massilia, then captured, was executed in a fashion most base, with his neck snapped by a noose. 6. Alexander was slaughtered by Constantine's army. 7. Maxentius, while engaged against Constantine, hastening to enter from the side a bridge of boats constructed a little above the Milvian Bridge, was plunged into the depth when his horse slipped; his body, swallowed up by the weight of his armor, [165] was barely recovered. 8. Maximinus died a simple death at Tarsus. 9. Valens was punished with death by Licinius.
10. As for characters, moreover, they were of this sort: Aurelius Maximian, with the cognomen Herculius, was fierce by nature, burning with lust, stolid in his counsels, of rustic and Pannonian stock. For even now, not far from Sirmium, there is a spot prominent because of a palace constructed there, where his parents once worked wage-earning jobs. 11. He died at the age of sixty, imperator for twenty years. 12. From Eutropia, a Syrian woman, he sired Maxentius and Fausta, the wife of Constantine, to whose father Constantius had given his stepdaughter, Theodora. 13. But Maxentius, they say, was substituted by the womanly wile of one laboring to control a husband's affection by means of an auspice of a most felicitous fecundity which commenced with a boy. 14. Maxentius was dear to no one at all, not even to his father or father-in-law, Galerius. 15. Galerius, moreover, although possessed of an uncultivated and rustic justice, was praiseworthy enough, physically attractive, a skilled and fortunate warrior, sprung from country parents, a keeper of cattle, whence for him the cognomen Armentarius ["Herdsman"]. 16. He was born and also buried in Dacia Ripensis, a place which he had called Romulianum from the name of his mother, Romula. 17. He insolently dared to affirm that, in the fashion of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, his mother had conceived him after she had been embraced by a serpent. 18. Galerius Maximinus, scion of Armentarius' sister, called by the name Daca, to be sure, before imperium, was a Caesar for four years, then an Augustus in Oriens for three -- in birth, indeed, and in station a shepherd, yet a supporter of every very learned man and of literature, quiet by nature, too fond of wine. 19. Drunk with which, with his mind corrupted, he used to command certain harsh measures; but when he repented what had been done, in a continent and sober time, what he had enjoined, he ordered deferred. 20. Alexander was a Phrygian in origin, inferior in the face of hardship through the fault of old age. [166]
41
With all these men out of the way, the rights of imperium fell to Constantine and Licinius. 2. Constantine, son of imperator Constantius and Helena, ruled thirty years. While a young man being held as a hostage by Galerius in the city of Rome on the pretence of his religion, he took flight and, for the purpose of frustrating his pursuers, wherever his journey had brought him, he destroyed the public transports, and reached his father in Britain; and by chance, in those very days in the same place, ultimate destiny was pressing on his parent, Constantius. 3. With him dead, as all who were present -- but especially Crocus, King of the Alamanni, who had accompanied Constantius for the sake of support -- were urging him on, he took imperium. 4. To Licinius, who was summoned to Mediolanum, he wed his own sister Constantia; and his own son, Crispus by name, born by Minervina, a concubine, and likewise Constantinus, born in those same days at the city Arlate, and Licinianus, son of Licinius, about twenty months old, he made Caesars. 5. But, indeed, as imperia preserve concord with difficulty, a rift arose between Licinius and Constantine; and first, near Cibalae, beside a lake named Hiulca, when Constantine burst into Licinus' camps by night, Licinius sought escape and, by a swift flight, reached Byzantium. 6. There Martinianus, Master of Offices, he made a Caesar. 7. Then Constantine, stronger in battle in Bithynia, pledged through the wife to confer regal garb upon Licinius, his safety having been guaranteed. Then, after he had been sent to Thessalonica, a little later he ordered him and Martinianus slaughtered. 8. Licinius died after about fourteen years of dominatio, and near the sixtieth year of his life: through a love of avarice he was the worst of all men and not a stranger to sexual debauchery, harsh indeed, immoderately impatient, hostile toward literature, which, as a result of his boundless [167] ignorance, he used to call a poison and a public pestilence, especially forensic endeavor. 9. Obviously he was sufficiently salutary to farmers and country folk, because he had sprung from and had been raised from that group, and a most strict guardian of the military according to the institutes of our forefathers. 10. He was a vehement suppressor of all eunuchs and courtiers, calling them worms and vermin of the palace. 11. But Constantine, when mastery of the entire Roman empire had been obtained through the wondrous good fortune of his wars, with his wife, Fausta, inciting him, so men think, ordered his son Crispus put to death. 12. Then, when his mother, Helena, as a result of excessive grief for her grandson, chastised him, he killed his own wife, Fausta, who was thrown into hot baths. 13. He was, to be sure, too desirous of praise, as is able to be ascertained. On account of the legends inscribed on many structures, he was accustomed to call Trajan "Wall Plant. " He built a bridge over the Danube. 14. The royal garb he adorned with gems, and his head, at all times, with a diadem. Nevertheless, he was most agreeable in many matters: by means of laws most severe he checked malicious prosecutions; he nurtured the fine arts, especially studies of literature; he himself read, wrote, reflected, and listened to legations and the complaints of the provinces. 15. And when, with his children and his brother's son, Delmatius, confirmed as Caesars, he had lived sixty-three years, half of which thus, so that thirteen he alone ruled, he was consumed by disease. 16. He was a mocker rather than a flatterer. From this he was called after Trachala in the folktale, for ten years a most excellent man, for the following twelve a brigand, for the last ten, on account of his unrestrained prodigality, a ward irresponsible for his own actions. 17. His body was buried in Byzantium, called Constantinople. 18. With him dead, Delmatius was put to death by the violence of the troops.
19. Thus dominatio of the Roman world was returned to three men, Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans, the sons [168] of Constantine. 20. These individually held these areas as their realms: Constantinus the Younger, everything beyond the Alps; Constantius, from the Strait of the Propontis, Asia, and Oriens; Constans, Illyricum and Italy and Africa; Delmatius, Thrace and Macedonia and Achaea; Hannibalianus, brother of Delmatius Caesar, Armenia and neighboring, allied nations.
21. However, on account of the legal right to Italy and Africa, Constantinus and Constans immediately disagreed. When Constantinus, reckless and horribly intoxicated, in a display of highway robbery, rushed into territories not his own, he was slain and thrown into a river, the name for which is Alsa, not far from Aquileia. 22. But while Constans, because of a desire of hunting, was roaming through forests and woodland pastures, some soldiers, with Chrestius, Marcellinus, and also Magnentius the instigators, conspired toward his murder. As soon as the day of carrying out the business was resolved, Marcellinus, feigning the birth of a son, invited many men to dinner. And so, late in the night, while a drinking party was being celebrated, he withdrew as if to relieve himself as is normal, and assumed the revered attire. 23. When this action was discovered, Constans attempted to flee to Helena, a city close to the Pyrenees, and by Gaiso, who had been dispatched with picked men, he was killed in the thirteenth year of his reign as an Augustus (for he had been a Caesar for a three-year period), at the age of twenty-seven. 24. Disabled in the feet and hands through a malady of the joints, he was fortunate in temperateness of climate, in an abundance of harvests, and in no terror from barbarians, things which would have been still greater indeed, if he had promoted governorsof provinces not for a price, but on the basis of judgment. 25. When his death became known, Vetranio, Master of Soldiers, seized imperium in Pannonia at Mursia; not many days after, Constantius desposed him from power, granting to him not only a long life, but also a retirement full of pleasures. He was, moreover, a most simpleminded man, verging on stupidity. [169]
42
Constantius proclaimed Caesar Gallus, the son of his father's brother, marrying to him his sister, Constantia. 2. Magnentius, too, made Decentius, his brother, Caesar beyond the Alps. 3. In these days, at Rome, Nepotianus, son of Eutropia, Constantine's sister, with those who had been destroyed driving him on, took the name Augustus; him Magnentius crushed in twenty-eight days. 4. At this time, Constantius did battle with Magnentius at Mursa and was victorious. In this battle, hardly anywhere was Roman might more fully consumed and the fortune of the whole empire dashed. 5. Then, when Magnentius had removed himself toward Italy, near Ticinum he scattered many who were recklessly and, as is customary in victory, too boldly pursuing him. 6. Not much later, cornered near Lugdunum, he breathed his last in the forty-second month of imperium and in about the fiftieth year of his life, his side pierced with a sword secretly supplied, assisting the blow by pushing against a wall -- as he was of immense size -- , spewing blood from the wound, his nostrils, and mouth. 7. He sprang from barbarian parents, who inhabited Gallia; he was inclined toward the study of reading, sharp of tongue, of a haughty spirit, and cowardly beyond measure; a master, nevertheless, for concealing terror under a pretext of boldness. 8. When his death was heard of, Decentius ended his life with a noose made of a cloth swathe. 9. At this time, Gallus Caesar was killed by Constantius. He ruled four years. 10. Silvanus was made imperator and, on the twenty-eighth day of imperium, was destroyed. He was by nature most charming. 11. Although the scion of a barbarian father, he was nevertheless, as a result of Roman training, sufficiently cultivated and patient.
12.
16
Marcus Aurelius Antonius ruled eighteen years. 2. He showed himself to be of all virtues and of celestial character, and was thrust before public calamities like a defender. For indeed, if he had not been born to those times, surely, as if with one fall, all of the Roman state would have collapsed. 3. Since there was never rest from arms, and wars were raging through all Oriens, Illyricum, Italy, and Gallia, and there were earthquakes not without the destruction of cities, inundations of rivers, numerous plagues, species of locusts which infested fields, there is almost nothing by which mortals are accustomed to be vexed with the most serious difficulties that is able to be described which did not rage while he was ruling. 4. I believe that it has been bestowed by divine providence that, when the law of the universe or nature produces † or something else unknown to men, they are appeased by the counsels of honest men as by the remedies of medicine. 5. With a new kind of benevolence, he admitted his own kinsmen, Lucius Annius Verus, to a share of imperium. This is the Verus who, while journeying between Altinum and Concordia, died, in the eleventh year of imperium, as a result of a surge of blood, a disorder which the Greeks call [apoplexy]. 6. He was a poet, mostly of tragedies, studious, of a rugged and lascivious character. [153] 7. After his demise, Marcus Antoninus controlled the state alone. From the beginning of his life, he was extremely placid, so much so that from infancy he changed his expression neither from joy nor sorrow. Of philosophy and Greek literature he was a student <most expert>. 8. He allowed more illustrious men and his ministers alike to host banquets in the same splendor as did he himself. 9. When, with the treasury exhausted, he did not have the funds which he applied to the soldiers and did not wish to inflict anything on the provincials or senate, he removed by a confiscation made in the Forum of Trajan material of regal splendor, golden vases, crystalline and murrine goblets, and his own wife's silken and golden apparel, numerous ornaments of gems, and through two continuous months an auction was held and much gold was collected. 10. After a victory, however, he refunded the purchase prices to buyers who wished to return what had been bought. 11. In his time, Cassius, seizing a tyranny, was killed. 12. He himself was consumed by disease at Bendobona in the fifty-ninth year of his life. 13. When the announcement about his death reached Rome, with the city convulsed with public lamentation, the senate gathered in the senate house, wrapped in mourning garb, weeping. 14. And what is scarcely believable about Romulus, all in common consent presumed that Marcus had been received into heaven. In his honor temples, columns, and many other things were decreed.
17
Aurelius Commodus, son of Antoninus, and himself called Antoninus, ruled thirteen years. 2. What he was going to become, in the very beginning, he revealed. For when [154] he was being advised by his father in his will not to allow the barbarians, who were now exhausted, to regain strength, he had responded that, although negotiations could be completed over a period of time by a live man, nothing could to be completed by a dead man. 3. He was quite fierce with sexual desire and greed, with cruelty, faithful to no one, and more savage toward those whom he had exalted with most splendid honors and enormous gifts. 4. So depraved was he that he often battled with gladiatorial weapons in the amphitheater. 5. Nevertheless, Marcia, of freedman stock, prevailed on this man by her beauty and meretricious arts, and, when she had thoroughly gained control of his mind, offered a drink of poison to him when he was emerging from the bath. Finally, his throat crushed by a very strong wrestling instructor who had been let loose on him, he expired in the thirty-second year of his life.
18
Helvius Pertinax ruled eighty-five days. Compelled to imperium, he drew "Resister and Submitter" as a sort of cognomen. 2. Having risen from a humble origin, he advanced to the urban prefecture, was made imperator, and, by the viciousness of Julianus, was cut down with many wounds at the age of sixty-seven. His head was carried about the entire city. 3. By this death, there perished a man who is an example of human vicissitude, who, through all types of labor, reached the heights, to such a degree that he was called the "Pillar of Fortune. " 4. For he was the product of a freedman father among the Ligurians on a humble estate of Lollius Getianus, in whose prefecture it was most happily fated that he become a client, and he became a teacher of the letters which are taught by grammarians. He was more pleasing than beneficial, hence men called him by the Greek name ["Smooth-talk"]. 5. Never was he drawn to vengeance by injuries he had received. He was a lover of simplicity, he presented himself as a common man by means of his speech, his dining, and his demeanor. 6. To him [155]in death was decreed the name "Divine;" for his praise, there was acclaimed with repeated ovations until voices failed: "With Pertinax in control, we lived secure, we feared no one. To a dutiful father! To the father of the senate! To the father of all good men! "
19
Didius Julianus, by birth of Mediolanum, ruled seven months. He was a man of the nobility, very skilled in law, factious, reckless, eager to rule. 2. At this time, near Antioch, Niger Pescennius and, at Sabaria in Pannonia, Septimius Severus were made Augusti. 3. By this Severus, Julianus was led to the secret baths of the palace and, with his neck stretched out in the fashion of the condemned, was decapitated and his head placed on the rostra.
20
Septimius Severus ruled eighteen years. 2. He eliminated Pescennius, a man of utter baseness. Under him Albinus, too, who in Gallia had made himself Caesar, was slain near Lugdunum. 3. Severus left as successors his own sons, Bassianus and Geta. 4. In Britannia he extended a wall over a distance of thirty-two thousand paces, from sea to sea. 5. Of all the men who had lived before him, he was the most warlike. He was relentless in character, persevering to the end toward everything to which he had turned his attention. To whom he was well disposed, he exhibited a goodwill singular and abiding. He was thrifty when it came to his needs, lavish in largess. 6. Toward friends and enemies he was equally passionate, inasmuch as he enriched Lateranus, Cilo, Anullinus, Bassus, and several others -- and with buildings worthy of note, particular examples of which we see which are called the "House of the Parthians" and the "House of Lateranus. " 7. To no one, in his reign, did he permit offices to be sold. 8. He was sufficiently educated in Latin literature, erudite in the Greek language, more at ease with Punic eloquence, [156] inasmuch as he was born near Leptis in the province Africa. 9. When he was unable to endure the pain of all his limbs, especially of his feet, in place of a drug, which was being denied him, he too avidly fell upon a meal large and of very much meat; since he was unable to digest this, he was overcome by the indisposition and breathed his last. 10. He lived sixty-five years.
21
Aurelius Antonius Bassianus Caracalla, Severus' son, was born at Lugdunum and ruled alone six years. 2. He was called by the name Bassianus from his maternal grandfather. But since he had brought very many garments from Gallia and had made ankle-length tunics and forced the urban population to enter dressed in such clothing for the purpose of saluting him, he was from this garment given the cognomen Caracalla. 3. His own brother Geta he destroyed, on account of which he was punished with madness by the railing of the Dirae, who, not without merit, are called Furies. From this madness he later recovered. 4. After he viewed the body of Alexander of Macedon, he ordered himself to be called "the Great" and "Alexander," having been drawn by the intrigues of flatterers to the point that, with fierce expression and neck turned toward his left shoulder (which he had noted in Alexander's face), he reached the point of conviction and persuaded himself that he was of very similar countenance. 5. He could not control sexual desire, for in fact he married his own stepmother. 6. While making a trip to Carrhae, near Edessa, he retired to nature's obligations and was killed by a soldier who was following him as if for the purpose of attendance. 7. He lived almost thirty years. His body was brought back to Rome.
22
Macrinus, with his son Diadumenus, were made imperatores by the army, ruled fourteen months, and were cut down by the same army, because Macrinus began to check military luxury and increased pay.
23
[157] Aurelius Antonius Varius, also called Heliogabalus, son of Caracalla from a cousin, Soemea, who had been secretly defiled, ruled two years and eight months. 2. The grandfather of his mother Soemea, Bassianus by name, had been a priest of Sol, whom the Phoenicians where he was living used to call Heliogabalus, whence the infamous Heliogabalus was named. 3. When he had come to Rome in the accompaniment of an enormous number of soldiers and the expectation of the senate, he contaminated himself by means of every lewdness. He turned toward himself a desire for debauchery which, through a defect of nature, he had not been able to attain, and ordered that he be called by the feminine name Bassiana, instead of Bassianus. A vestal virgin, as if in marriage, he joined to himself, and, after self-emasculation, he dedicated himself to the Great Mother. 4. He made Marcellus, his own cousin, who afterward was called Alexander, Caesar. 5. He himself was killed in a military insurrection. 6. His body was dragged through the streets of the city in the fashion of the corpse of a dog, to the accompanying soldierly jesting of people calling him a puppy-bitch of unrestrained and crazed lust. Finally, since the narrow opening of a sewer would hardly accommodate the body, it was dragged all the way to the Tiber and, after a weight was attached lest it ever rise again, was tossed into the River. 7. He lived sixteen years and from what had transpired was called Tiberinus ["the Tiberine"] and Tractitius ["the Dragged"].
24
Severus Alexander ruled thirteen years. Good for the state, he was wretched for <himself>. 2. Under his rule, Taurinius, who had been made Augustus, on account of fear, threw himself into the Euphrates. 3. Then Maximinus, too, [158]when many from the army had been corrupted, took the rule. 4. Alexander, in fact, since he had seen that he had been deserted by his attendants, exclaiming that his mother had been the cause of his death, covered his head and, in the twenty-sixth year of his life, offered to an approaching assassin a neck stoutly tensed. His mother, Mammaea, so constrained her son that those very morsels, if they survived a meal or lunch, would be served again, although <half-eaten, at another> banquet.
25
Julius Maximinus Thrax, from the soldiery, ruled three years. 2. While hunting down the wealthy, guiltless and guilty alike, near Aquileia, by an insurrection of the troops, he was butchered with his child, a daughter, to the accompanying military jest that a whelp from inferior stock must not be kept.
26
In this man's reign, two Gordians, father and son, seized the principate and were destroyed one after another. 2. In the same course, too, Pupienus and Balbinus seized power and were eliminated.
27
Gordian, a grandson of Gordian from a daughter, was born at Rome to a most illustrious father, and ruled six years. 2. Near Ctesiphon, when the troops were incited to insurrection by Philip, the praetorian prefect, he was killed in the twenty-first year of his life. 3. His body, placed near the borders of the Roman and Persian empire, gave to the spot the name "Gordian's Sepulchre. "
28
Marcus Julius Philip ruled five years. 2. At Verona he was killed by the army, the middle of his head cut through above his teeth. 3. Moreover, his son Gaius Julius Saturninus, whom he had made a partner in his power, was killed at Rome, entering the twelfth year of his life, of so harsh and dour a character that from as early as the age of five by precisely no contrivance of anyone was he able to be reduced to laughing; and, during the Secular Games, [159] although still of tender age, his face averted, he made note of his father too wantonly roaring with laughter. 4. He (Philip) rose from humble station, from a father who was a most noble commander of brigands.
29
Decius, from Pannonia Inferior, was born at Bubalia, and ruled thirty months. 2. He made Decius, his son, Caesar. He was a man learned in all the arts and virtues, quiet and courteous at home, in arms most ready. 3. On foreign soil, among disordered troops, he was drowned in the waters of a swamp, so that his corpse could not be found. His son, in fact, was killed in the war. 4. He lived fifty years. 5. In this man's time, Valens Lucinianus was made imperator.
30
Vibius Gallus, with Volusianus, his son, ruled two years. 2. In their time, Hostilianus Perpenna was made imperator by the senate and, not much later, was consumed by the plague.
31
Under these men, Aemilianus, too, in Moesia was made imperator, against whom both advanced and near Interamna were murdered by their own army (the father in about the forty-seventh year of his life), having been born on the island Meninx, which is now called Girba. 2. But Aemilianus, in his fourth month, was defeated near Spoletium or a bridge which is said to have taken its name from his destruction of the Sanguinarii, between Oriculum and Narnia, positioned in the middle of the area between Spoletium and the city Rome. He was, moreover, a Moor by race, warlike yet not reckless. 3. He lived fifty less three years.
32
Licinius Valerianus, Colobius ["Undershirt"] by cognomen, ruled fifteen years. Sprung from parents most distinguished, he was nevertheless stupid and extremely indolent, [160] unfit by mind or deeds for any holding of public office. 2. His own son Gallienus he made Augustus, and Gallienus' son, Cornelius Valerianus, Caesar. 3. During their rule, Regillianus in Moesia and, when Gallienus' son was killed, Cassius Latienus Postumus in Gallia, were made imperatores. 4. In the same way, Aelianus at Mogontiacum, in Egypt Aemilianus, at Macedon Valens, and, in Mediolanum, Aureolus seized control. 5. But, indeed, Valerianus, waging war in Mesopotamia, was defeated by Sapor, King of the Persians, immediately captured, too, and among the Persians grew old in ignoble servitude. 6. For he lived a long while, and the king of the same province was accustomed, with him bent low, to place his foot on his shoulders and mount his horse.
33
Gallienus, in fact, substituted another son, Salonianus, in place of his own son Cornelius, eager for the separate love of Salonina, his wife, and of a concubine -- Pipa by name -- , whom, when a portion of Pannonia Superior had been conceded through a treaty by her father, king of the Marcomanni, he had accepted in a kind of marriage. 2. Finally, he advanced against Aureolus. When, near some bridge, which is called "Aureolus" from his name, that had been seized and destroyed, he beseiged Mediolanum, he was killed by his men in imitation of this same "Aureolus. " 3. He ruled fifteen years, seven with his father, eight alone. He lived fifty years.
34
Claudius ruled one year, nine months. 2.
Many think this man was fathered by Gordian, when, as a youth, he was being prepared by a grown woman for a wife. This Claudius was designated imperator by the decision of the dying Gallienus, to whom, stationed at Ticinum, he had, through Gallonius Basilius, directed the imperial regalia, and, when Aureolus had been killed by his own men, [161] by means of the legions regained, he fought against the people of the Alamanni not far from Lake Benacus and vanquished so great a multitude that scarcely half will have survived. 3. In these days, Victorinus took the rule. Indeed, when Claudius had learned from the Sibylline Books, which he had ordered to be inspected, that there was no remedy for the death of the man who stated his position first in the senate - although Pomponius Bassus, who then was the first man, offered himself - , he did not allow the responses to be ineffectual and gave his own life to the state for a gift, having proclaimed that none but the imperator held the first place of so great an order. 4. Inasmuch as this act was beneficial to all, the leading men dedicated to him not only the name "Divinity" but a statue of gold near the effigy of Jupiter itself and, in the senate-house, a gold image. 5. His brother Quintillus succeeded him. He held power a few days and was killed.
35
Aurelian, sprung from a common father - one even, as some say, a tenant farmer of Aurelius, a very distinguished senator, between Dacia and Macedonia - , ruled five years, six months. 2. That man was not unlike Alexander the Great or Caesar the Dictator; for in the space of three years he retook the Roman world from invaders, while Alexander in thirteen years, through immense victories, reached to India, and Gaius Caesar, in a ten-year period, subjugated the Gauls and, for four years, contended against citizens. In Italy, that man was victor in three battles: at Placentia, beside the Metaurus River and the Altar of Fortuna, and, finally, at the Ticenensian Fields. 3. In his time, among the Dalmatians, Septimius was made imperator and immediately killed by his own men. 4. At this time, in the city Rome, the masters of the mint rebelled, who, having been conquered, Aurelian [162] repressed with the utmost cruelty. 5. That man first introduced among the Romans a diadem for the head, and he used gems and gold on every item of clothing to a degree almost unknown to Roman custom. 6. He fortified the city with stronger, more solid walls. For the populace, he instituted a ration of pork. 7. He appointed Tetricus, who had been made imperator by the army in Gallia, Regulator of Lucania, twitting the man with the choice jest that to rule over some portion of Italy must be regarded more loftily than to reign beyond the Alps. 8. Finally, by the treachery of his own servant - who gave to certain military men, friends of that very servant, names with notations (he deceitfully imitated his [Aurelian's] handwriting), as though Aurelian were preparing to kill them - he was murdered at the halfway point in the road which is between Constantinople and Heracleum. 9. He was savage, bloodthirsty, and ferocious at every moment -- even the murderer of his sister's son. 10. At the time, for seven months, there proceeded a kind of interregnum.
36
After him, Tacitus took power, a man of singular character, who died at Tarsus from a fever in the two hundredth day of his reign. 2. Florian succeeded him. But when the majority of the troops chose Equitius Probus, a man experienced in military affairs, Florian, on the sixtieth day of his reign, as if exhausted in the contest for power, when he had cut open his veins, was consumed by loss of blood.
37
Probus, sprung from a rustic father, fond of the fields -- Dalmatius by name -- , ruled six years. 2. He defeated Saturninus in Oriens, and Proclus and, at Agrippina, Bonosus, who had been made imperatores. 3. He allowed the Gauls and Pannonians to have vineyards. By the labor of the soldiery, he planted vineyards on Mount Alma near Sirmium and on Mount Areum in Moesia Superior. 4. At Sirmium, in the "Iron Tower," he was killed. [163]
38
Carus, born at Narbo, ruled two years. 2. He immediately made Carinus and Numerian Caesars. 3. He died near Ctesiphon by the blow of a lightning bolt. 4. Numerian, too, his son, while he was being carried in a litter (he had contracted a disorder of the eyes), was murdered in a plot, with Aper, who was his father-in-law, the instigator. 5. While his death was being hidden by a deception until such time as Aper was able to take power, the crime was revealed by the stench of the corpse. 6. Then Sabinus Julianus took power and, at the Verronesian Fields, was killed by Carinus. 7. This Carinus defiled himself with all crimes. He killed many innocent men for made-up offenses. He corrupted the marriages of nobles. He was ruinous toward his fellow pupils, too, who, with jeering voice, teased him in the classroom. 8. He was tortured to death chiefly by the hand of his tribune, whose wife he was said to have violated.
39
Diocletian, a Dalmatian, freedman of the senator Anulinus, was, until he assumed power, called in their language Diocles, from his mother and likewise from a city named Dioclea; when he took control of the Roman world, in the fashion of the Romans, he converted the Greek name. He ruled twenty-five years. 2. He made Maximian an Augustus; Constantius and Galerius Maximianus, with the cognomen Armentarius ["Herdsman"], he created Caesars, giving to Constantius, when his prior wife was divorced, Theodora, the stepdaughter of Herculius Maximian. 3. At this time, Charausius in Gallia, Achilles in Egypt, and Julianus in Italy were made imperatores and, by diverse death, perished. 4. Of these, Julianus, when an attack breached his walls, threw himself into a fire.
5. Diocletian actually relinquished the imperial fasces of his own accord at Nicomedia and grew old on his private estates. [164] 6. It was he who, when solicited by Herculius and Galerius for the purpose of resuming control, responded in this way, as though avoiding some kind of plague: "If you could see at Salonae the cabbages raised by our hands, you surely would never judge that a temptation. " 7. He lived sixty-eight years, out of which he passed almost nine in a common condition. He was consumed, as was sufficiently clear, by voluntary death as a result of fear. Inasmuch as when, called by Constantine and Licinius to the celebrations of a wedding which he was by no means well enough to attend, he had excused himself, after threatening replies were received in which it was being proclaimed that he had favored Maxentius and was favoring Maximian, he, regarding assassination as dishonorable, is said to have drunk poison.
40
In these days, the Caesars Constantius, the father of Constantine, and Armentarius were proclaimed Augusti, with Severus in Italy and, in Oriens, Maximinus, the son of Galerius' sister, created Caesars; and at the same time Constantine was made a Caesar. 2. Maxentius was made imperator in a villa six miles outside the city, on the road to Lavicanum, next Licinius became an Augustus, and, in the same fashion, Alexander at Carthagina; and likewise Valens was created imperator. Their demise was as follows:
3. Severus Caesar was killed by Herculius Maximian in Rome at Tres Tabernae and his ashes were interred in the sepulchre of Gallienus, which is nine miles from the city on the Appian Way. 4. Galerius Maximianus, when his genitals were consumed, died. 5. Maximian Herculius, besieged by Constantine at Massilia, then captured, was executed in a fashion most base, with his neck snapped by a noose. 6. Alexander was slaughtered by Constantine's army. 7. Maxentius, while engaged against Constantine, hastening to enter from the side a bridge of boats constructed a little above the Milvian Bridge, was plunged into the depth when his horse slipped; his body, swallowed up by the weight of his armor, [165] was barely recovered. 8. Maximinus died a simple death at Tarsus. 9. Valens was punished with death by Licinius.
10. As for characters, moreover, they were of this sort: Aurelius Maximian, with the cognomen Herculius, was fierce by nature, burning with lust, stolid in his counsels, of rustic and Pannonian stock. For even now, not far from Sirmium, there is a spot prominent because of a palace constructed there, where his parents once worked wage-earning jobs. 11. He died at the age of sixty, imperator for twenty years. 12. From Eutropia, a Syrian woman, he sired Maxentius and Fausta, the wife of Constantine, to whose father Constantius had given his stepdaughter, Theodora. 13. But Maxentius, they say, was substituted by the womanly wile of one laboring to control a husband's affection by means of an auspice of a most felicitous fecundity which commenced with a boy. 14. Maxentius was dear to no one at all, not even to his father or father-in-law, Galerius. 15. Galerius, moreover, although possessed of an uncultivated and rustic justice, was praiseworthy enough, physically attractive, a skilled and fortunate warrior, sprung from country parents, a keeper of cattle, whence for him the cognomen Armentarius ["Herdsman"]. 16. He was born and also buried in Dacia Ripensis, a place which he had called Romulianum from the name of his mother, Romula. 17. He insolently dared to affirm that, in the fashion of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, his mother had conceived him after she had been embraced by a serpent. 18. Galerius Maximinus, scion of Armentarius' sister, called by the name Daca, to be sure, before imperium, was a Caesar for four years, then an Augustus in Oriens for three -- in birth, indeed, and in station a shepherd, yet a supporter of every very learned man and of literature, quiet by nature, too fond of wine. 19. Drunk with which, with his mind corrupted, he used to command certain harsh measures; but when he repented what had been done, in a continent and sober time, what he had enjoined, he ordered deferred. 20. Alexander was a Phrygian in origin, inferior in the face of hardship through the fault of old age. [166]
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With all these men out of the way, the rights of imperium fell to Constantine and Licinius. 2. Constantine, son of imperator Constantius and Helena, ruled thirty years. While a young man being held as a hostage by Galerius in the city of Rome on the pretence of his religion, he took flight and, for the purpose of frustrating his pursuers, wherever his journey had brought him, he destroyed the public transports, and reached his father in Britain; and by chance, in those very days in the same place, ultimate destiny was pressing on his parent, Constantius. 3. With him dead, as all who were present -- but especially Crocus, King of the Alamanni, who had accompanied Constantius for the sake of support -- were urging him on, he took imperium. 4. To Licinius, who was summoned to Mediolanum, he wed his own sister Constantia; and his own son, Crispus by name, born by Minervina, a concubine, and likewise Constantinus, born in those same days at the city Arlate, and Licinianus, son of Licinius, about twenty months old, he made Caesars. 5. But, indeed, as imperia preserve concord with difficulty, a rift arose between Licinius and Constantine; and first, near Cibalae, beside a lake named Hiulca, when Constantine burst into Licinus' camps by night, Licinius sought escape and, by a swift flight, reached Byzantium. 6. There Martinianus, Master of Offices, he made a Caesar. 7. Then Constantine, stronger in battle in Bithynia, pledged through the wife to confer regal garb upon Licinius, his safety having been guaranteed. Then, after he had been sent to Thessalonica, a little later he ordered him and Martinianus slaughtered. 8. Licinius died after about fourteen years of dominatio, and near the sixtieth year of his life: through a love of avarice he was the worst of all men and not a stranger to sexual debauchery, harsh indeed, immoderately impatient, hostile toward literature, which, as a result of his boundless [167] ignorance, he used to call a poison and a public pestilence, especially forensic endeavor. 9. Obviously he was sufficiently salutary to farmers and country folk, because he had sprung from and had been raised from that group, and a most strict guardian of the military according to the institutes of our forefathers. 10. He was a vehement suppressor of all eunuchs and courtiers, calling them worms and vermin of the palace. 11. But Constantine, when mastery of the entire Roman empire had been obtained through the wondrous good fortune of his wars, with his wife, Fausta, inciting him, so men think, ordered his son Crispus put to death. 12. Then, when his mother, Helena, as a result of excessive grief for her grandson, chastised him, he killed his own wife, Fausta, who was thrown into hot baths. 13. He was, to be sure, too desirous of praise, as is able to be ascertained. On account of the legends inscribed on many structures, he was accustomed to call Trajan "Wall Plant. " He built a bridge over the Danube. 14. The royal garb he adorned with gems, and his head, at all times, with a diadem. Nevertheless, he was most agreeable in many matters: by means of laws most severe he checked malicious prosecutions; he nurtured the fine arts, especially studies of literature; he himself read, wrote, reflected, and listened to legations and the complaints of the provinces. 15. And when, with his children and his brother's son, Delmatius, confirmed as Caesars, he had lived sixty-three years, half of which thus, so that thirteen he alone ruled, he was consumed by disease. 16. He was a mocker rather than a flatterer. From this he was called after Trachala in the folktale, for ten years a most excellent man, for the following twelve a brigand, for the last ten, on account of his unrestrained prodigality, a ward irresponsible for his own actions. 17. His body was buried in Byzantium, called Constantinople. 18. With him dead, Delmatius was put to death by the violence of the troops.
19. Thus dominatio of the Roman world was returned to three men, Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans, the sons [168] of Constantine. 20. These individually held these areas as their realms: Constantinus the Younger, everything beyond the Alps; Constantius, from the Strait of the Propontis, Asia, and Oriens; Constans, Illyricum and Italy and Africa; Delmatius, Thrace and Macedonia and Achaea; Hannibalianus, brother of Delmatius Caesar, Armenia and neighboring, allied nations.
21. However, on account of the legal right to Italy and Africa, Constantinus and Constans immediately disagreed. When Constantinus, reckless and horribly intoxicated, in a display of highway robbery, rushed into territories not his own, he was slain and thrown into a river, the name for which is Alsa, not far from Aquileia. 22. But while Constans, because of a desire of hunting, was roaming through forests and woodland pastures, some soldiers, with Chrestius, Marcellinus, and also Magnentius the instigators, conspired toward his murder. As soon as the day of carrying out the business was resolved, Marcellinus, feigning the birth of a son, invited many men to dinner. And so, late in the night, while a drinking party was being celebrated, he withdrew as if to relieve himself as is normal, and assumed the revered attire. 23. When this action was discovered, Constans attempted to flee to Helena, a city close to the Pyrenees, and by Gaiso, who had been dispatched with picked men, he was killed in the thirteenth year of his reign as an Augustus (for he had been a Caesar for a three-year period), at the age of twenty-seven. 24. Disabled in the feet and hands through a malady of the joints, he was fortunate in temperateness of climate, in an abundance of harvests, and in no terror from barbarians, things which would have been still greater indeed, if he had promoted governorsof provinces not for a price, but on the basis of judgment. 25. When his death became known, Vetranio, Master of Soldiers, seized imperium in Pannonia at Mursia; not many days after, Constantius desposed him from power, granting to him not only a long life, but also a retirement full of pleasures. He was, moreover, a most simpleminded man, verging on stupidity. [169]
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Constantius proclaimed Caesar Gallus, the son of his father's brother, marrying to him his sister, Constantia. 2. Magnentius, too, made Decentius, his brother, Caesar beyond the Alps. 3. In these days, at Rome, Nepotianus, son of Eutropia, Constantine's sister, with those who had been destroyed driving him on, took the name Augustus; him Magnentius crushed in twenty-eight days. 4. At this time, Constantius did battle with Magnentius at Mursa and was victorious. In this battle, hardly anywhere was Roman might more fully consumed and the fortune of the whole empire dashed. 5. Then, when Magnentius had removed himself toward Italy, near Ticinum he scattered many who were recklessly and, as is customary in victory, too boldly pursuing him. 6. Not much later, cornered near Lugdunum, he breathed his last in the forty-second month of imperium and in about the fiftieth year of his life, his side pierced with a sword secretly supplied, assisting the blow by pushing against a wall -- as he was of immense size -- , spewing blood from the wound, his nostrils, and mouth. 7. He sprang from barbarian parents, who inhabited Gallia; he was inclined toward the study of reading, sharp of tongue, of a haughty spirit, and cowardly beyond measure; a master, nevertheless, for concealing terror under a pretext of boldness. 8. When his death was heard of, Decentius ended his life with a noose made of a cloth swathe. 9. At this time, Gallus Caesar was killed by Constantius. He ruled four years. 10. Silvanus was made imperator and, on the twenty-eighth day of imperium, was destroyed. He was by nature most charming. 11. Although the scion of a barbarian father, he was nevertheless, as a result of Roman training, sufficiently cultivated and patient.
12.
