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.
Aurelius Victor - Caesars
5.
Lest he be alarmed by the approach of the malevolent, he was admonished in the following fashion in a comment of Junius Mauricus, a steadfast man: invited to a social gathering, when he had observed that Veiento, who had, indeed, enjoyed consular honor under Domitian, yet who had persecuted many with secret accusations, was present, when among the conversations mention was made of Catullus, a principle calumniator, and Nerva was saying, "What would he be doing now, if he had survived Domitian?
", Mauricus said, "He would be dining with us.
" He was a most learned man and a frequent arbitrator of disputes.
6.
Calpurnius Crassus, who was tempting the minds of the troops with grand promises, having been discovered and having confessed, he removed, along with his wife, to Tarentum, while the senate chided his leniency.
7.
And when Domitian's murderers were being called to execution, he was so consternated that he was unable to keep from vomiting or from a paroxysm of the bowels, but nevertheless he vehemently objected, saying that it was more fitting to die than to befoul the authority of imperium as a result of the authors of the power that he was to acquire having been betrayed.
8.
But the soldiers, with the princeps ignored, slaughtered those they sought, Petronius with a single blow, but Parthenius after his genitals had been torn out and shoved into his mouth †, with Casperius bought off by means of huge payoffs, who, more insolent than the savage crime, compelled Nerva to give thanks among the people to the soldiers, since they had killed the most base and wicked of all [148] mortals.
9.
He admitted Trajan to the position of son and to a share of imperium; with him he lived three months.
10.
It was he who, with his voice rising in anger as he shouted out very many things against someone by the name Regulus, was seized by a sweat.
11.
When it abated, the excessive shivering of his body revealed the beginnings of a fever, nor much later did he end his life in his sixty-third year of age.
12.
His body, as formerly that of Augustus, was conveyed with honor by the senate and buried in the tomb of Augustus.
On the day on which he died, there was an eclipse of the sun.
13
Ulpius Trajan, from the city Tudertina, called Ulpius from his grandfather, Trajan from Traius, the founder of his paternal line, or named thus from his father Trajan, ruled twenty years. 2. He showed himself to be the sort of man of state that the awestruck abilities of consummate writers have scarcely and with difficulty been able to express. 3. He accepted imperium at Agrippina, the noble colony in Gallia, possessing diligence in military matters, mildness in civil, and largess in supporting citizens. 4. And since there are two things expected of egregious principes -- integrity at home, bravery in arms, and prudence in both -- so great was the quantity of what is best in him that, as if in some due proportion, he seemed to have combined the virtues, except that he was somewhat given to food and drink. 5. He was liberal toward friends and, as much as befit his style of life, thoroughly enjoyed associations. 6. He established baths in honor of Sura, with whose zeal he had secured imperium. 7. With regard to this, he appeared over and above what was necessary to wish to dedicate everything in his name, when it was enough to have said that he improved or repaired. 8. He was certainly tolerant of labor, a devotee of whatever was best and [149] warlike. He highly esteemed very straightforward characters or men most erudite, although he himself was of slight theoretical knowledge and moderately eloquent. 9. But of justice and human and divine law he was as much a deviser of the new as a guardian of the traditional. 10. All of these things were viewed the greater, because, with the Roman state destroyed and prostrated through many and fearsome tyrants, a divinity was thought to have been opportunely bestowed toward the remedy of evils so great to the extent that quite numerous and wondrous things proclaimed his coming. Among these, the main cornice proclaimed in Attic speech from the pediment of the Capitol: ["It will be well"]. 11. The ashes of his cremated body were borne back to Rome and interred in the Forum of Trajan under his column, and an image was placed above it, just as triumphators are accustomed to do, entering the city, with the senate preceding and the army. 12. At that time, more destructively by far than under Nerva, the Tiber flooded with great devastation of close-by buildings; and there occurred a serious earthquake through many provinces and a dreadful plague and famines and fires. 13. To all these things Trajan brought relief through remedies usually excellent, decreeing that the height of houses not exceed sixty feet on account of proneness to collapse and deadly expenses if ever things such as this should come to pass. 14. From this he was deservedly called "Father of his Country. " He lived sixty-four years.
14
Aelius Hadrian, a scion of Itala, born to Aelius Adrianus, a cousin of princeps Trajan, who came from Adria, the town in the Picenum area which also gave the name to the Adriatic Sea, ruled twenty-two years. 2. He was quite considerably learned in literature and was called by many "Greekling. " He devoured the pursuits and customs of the Athenians, having mastered not merely rhetoric, but other disciplines, too, the science of singing, of playing the harp, and of medicine, a musician, geometrician, painter, [150] and a sculptor from bronze or marble who approximated Polycletus and Euphranoras. Indeed, like those things in a way, he, too, was refined, so that human affairs hardly ever seem to have experienced anything finer. 3. With a power of memory beyond that which is believable for anyone, he was able to review by their names places, affairs, troops, and even those absent. 4. He was of immense industry, inasmuch as he made a circuit of all the provinces on foot, outstripping the accompanying retinue, while he revived all towns and increased the orders. 5. For indeed, on the example of the military legions, he had mustered into cohorts workmen, stone-masons, architects, and, of men for the building and beautifying of walls, every sort. 6. He was diverse, manifold, and multiform; as if a born arbiter with respect to vices and virtues, by some artifice he controlled intellectual impulse. He adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned. 7. With respect to questioning and likewise to answering in earnest, in jest, or in invective, he was very skillful; he returned verse to verse, speech to the speaker, so you might actually believe that he had given advance thought to everything. 8. His wife, Sabina, while she was nearly being incapacitated by servile affronts, was driven to a voluntary death. She used to say openly that, because she had judged his character inhuman, she had taken pains lest, to the bane of the human race, she become pregnant by him. 9. Overcome by a subcutaneous disease which he had long endured placidly, burning and impatient with pain, he destroyed many from the senate. 10. Since peace was procured from many kings by means of tributes, he used to say that he had obtained more by leisure than others had by arms. 11. Certainly he organized the public and palatine offices, though not those of the military, in the [151] form which, with a few things changed by Constantine, persists today. 12. He lived sixty-two years; then he was consumed by a miserable death, weakened by the torment of nearly all his limbs to such a degree that, beseeching his most faithful ministers, he frequently averred that he must be killed and, lest he vent his madness on himself, that a guard of those dearest to him be maintained.
15
The Antonius called Fulvius or Boionius, afterward also given the cognomen Pius, ruled twenty-three years. 2. Adopted as a son by Hadrian, whose son-in-law he had been, he was of such great goodness in the principate that he doubtless lived without a model, although his own age will have compared him to Numa, since by his authority alone, with no war, he ruled the orb of the earth for twenty-three years, with all legions, nations, and peoples together fearing and loving him so much that they regarded him as a parent or patron more than a dominus or imperator, and all, wishing in the fashion of the propitious heavenly ones judgment about controversies among themselves, called upon him. 4. Indeed, even Indians, Bactrians, and Hyrcanians sent legations when the justness of so great an imperator became known, a justness which he adorned with a serious, handsome countenance, long of limb, suitably robust. 5. 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.
13
Ulpius Trajan, from the city Tudertina, called Ulpius from his grandfather, Trajan from Traius, the founder of his paternal line, or named thus from his father Trajan, ruled twenty years. 2. He showed himself to be the sort of man of state that the awestruck abilities of consummate writers have scarcely and with difficulty been able to express. 3. He accepted imperium at Agrippina, the noble colony in Gallia, possessing diligence in military matters, mildness in civil, and largess in supporting citizens. 4. And since there are two things expected of egregious principes -- integrity at home, bravery in arms, and prudence in both -- so great was the quantity of what is best in him that, as if in some due proportion, he seemed to have combined the virtues, except that he was somewhat given to food and drink. 5. He was liberal toward friends and, as much as befit his style of life, thoroughly enjoyed associations. 6. He established baths in honor of Sura, with whose zeal he had secured imperium. 7. With regard to this, he appeared over and above what was necessary to wish to dedicate everything in his name, when it was enough to have said that he improved or repaired. 8. He was certainly tolerant of labor, a devotee of whatever was best and [149] warlike. He highly esteemed very straightforward characters or men most erudite, although he himself was of slight theoretical knowledge and moderately eloquent. 9. But of justice and human and divine law he was as much a deviser of the new as a guardian of the traditional. 10. All of these things were viewed the greater, because, with the Roman state destroyed and prostrated through many and fearsome tyrants, a divinity was thought to have been opportunely bestowed toward the remedy of evils so great to the extent that quite numerous and wondrous things proclaimed his coming. Among these, the main cornice proclaimed in Attic speech from the pediment of the Capitol: ["It will be well"]. 11. The ashes of his cremated body were borne back to Rome and interred in the Forum of Trajan under his column, and an image was placed above it, just as triumphators are accustomed to do, entering the city, with the senate preceding and the army. 12. At that time, more destructively by far than under Nerva, the Tiber flooded with great devastation of close-by buildings; and there occurred a serious earthquake through many provinces and a dreadful plague and famines and fires. 13. To all these things Trajan brought relief through remedies usually excellent, decreeing that the height of houses not exceed sixty feet on account of proneness to collapse and deadly expenses if ever things such as this should come to pass. 14. From this he was deservedly called "Father of his Country. " He lived sixty-four years.
14
Aelius Hadrian, a scion of Itala, born to Aelius Adrianus, a cousin of princeps Trajan, who came from Adria, the town in the Picenum area which also gave the name to the Adriatic Sea, ruled twenty-two years. 2. He was quite considerably learned in literature and was called by many "Greekling. " He devoured the pursuits and customs of the Athenians, having mastered not merely rhetoric, but other disciplines, too, the science of singing, of playing the harp, and of medicine, a musician, geometrician, painter, [150] and a sculptor from bronze or marble who approximated Polycletus and Euphranoras. Indeed, like those things in a way, he, too, was refined, so that human affairs hardly ever seem to have experienced anything finer. 3. With a power of memory beyond that which is believable for anyone, he was able to review by their names places, affairs, troops, and even those absent. 4. He was of immense industry, inasmuch as he made a circuit of all the provinces on foot, outstripping the accompanying retinue, while he revived all towns and increased the orders. 5. For indeed, on the example of the military legions, he had mustered into cohorts workmen, stone-masons, architects, and, of men for the building and beautifying of walls, every sort. 6. He was diverse, manifold, and multiform; as if a born arbiter with respect to vices and virtues, by some artifice he controlled intellectual impulse. He adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned. 7. With respect to questioning and likewise to answering in earnest, in jest, or in invective, he was very skillful; he returned verse to verse, speech to the speaker, so you might actually believe that he had given advance thought to everything. 8. His wife, Sabina, while she was nearly being incapacitated by servile affronts, was driven to a voluntary death. She used to say openly that, because she had judged his character inhuman, she had taken pains lest, to the bane of the human race, she become pregnant by him. 9. Overcome by a subcutaneous disease which he had long endured placidly, burning and impatient with pain, he destroyed many from the senate. 10. Since peace was procured from many kings by means of tributes, he used to say that he had obtained more by leisure than others had by arms. 11. Certainly he organized the public and palatine offices, though not those of the military, in the [151] form which, with a few things changed by Constantine, persists today. 12. He lived sixty-two years; then he was consumed by a miserable death, weakened by the torment of nearly all his limbs to such a degree that, beseeching his most faithful ministers, he frequently averred that he must be killed and, lest he vent his madness on himself, that a guard of those dearest to him be maintained.
15
The Antonius called Fulvius or Boionius, afterward also given the cognomen Pius, ruled twenty-three years. 2. Adopted as a son by Hadrian, whose son-in-law he had been, he was of such great goodness in the principate that he doubtless lived without a model, although his own age will have compared him to Numa, since by his authority alone, with no war, he ruled the orb of the earth for twenty-three years, with all legions, nations, and peoples together fearing and loving him so much that they regarded him as a parent or patron more than a dominus or imperator, and all, wishing in the fashion of the propitious heavenly ones judgment about controversies among themselves, called upon him. 4. Indeed, even Indians, Bactrians, and Hyrcanians sent legations when the justness of so great an imperator became known, a justness which he adorned with a serious, handsome countenance, long of limb, suitably robust. 5. 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.
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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.
