For he began to live rather more luxuriously and he took official notice of those who reproved him. His putting Maternianus and Datus out of the way was not reasonable,—for what wrong had they done in being attentive to their emperor?—but it was not unlike human nature, since he had been involved in great danger. But he made a mistake in venting his wrath upon the rest, who were suspected of disliking his low birth and his unexpected attempt upon the sovereign power. He ought to have done precisely the opposite; realizing what he had been at the outset and what his position then was, he should not have been supercilious, but should have behaved moderately, cultivated the genius of his household, and encouraged men by good deeds and a display of excellence unchanged by circumstances.
[Sidenote:—16—] These things [lacuna] in regard to him [lacuna] have been said by me [lacuna] in detail [lacuna] of any [lacuna] just as [lacuna] nominally throughout his entire reign [lacuna] of all [lacuna] of it [lacuna] that he said in conversation with the soldiers [lacuna] it was proved [lacuna] and he dared to utter not a few laudations of himself and to send still more of them in letters, saying among other things: "I have been quite sure that you also would agree with the legions, since I enjoy the consciousness of having conferred many benefits upon the commonwealth." He subscribed himself in the letter as Cæsar and emperor and Severus, adding to the name of Macrinus the titles of Pious, and Fortunate, and Augustus, and Proconsul, of course without awaiting any vote on our part. He sent the letter without being ignorant that he was, on his own responsibility, assuming so many and great designations nor [lacuna] name [lacuna] of Pretorians as formerly some [lacuna] not but what [lacuna] so wrote [lacuna] in the beginning [lacuna] war chiefly [lacuna] of barbarians [lacuna] near [lacuna] in the letter he used simply the same terms as the emperors before Caracalla, and this he did the whole year through [lacuna] memoranda found among the soldiers. Thus [lacuna] of things accustomed to be said with a view to flattery and not inspired by truthfulness they became so suspicious as to ask that they be made public, and he sent them to us, and the quæstor read them aloud, as he did other similar documents in their turn. And a certain prætor, as the senate was then in session and none of the quæstors was present, also read an epistle once composed by Macrinus himself.
[Sidenote:—17—] The first letter having been read, appropriate measures were passed with reference to both Macrinus and his son. He was designated Patrician, and Princeps Iuventutis, and Cæsar. He accepted everything save the horse-race voted in honor of the beginning of his reign; from this he begged to be excused, saying that the event had been sufficiently honored by the spectacle on the birthday of Severus. Of Tarautas he made no mention at this time, in the way of either honor or dishonor, save only that he called him Emperor. He ventured to term him neither Hero nor Foe, and, as I conjecture, it was because the deeds of his predecessor and the hatred of much of mankind made him shrink from the former epithet, and the thought of the soldiers restrained him from the latter. Some suspected that it was because he wanted the disgracing to be the act of the senate and the people rather than his own, especially since he was in the midst of the legions. He did say that Tarautas by his wrongdoing had been chiefly responsible for the war and had terribly burdened the public treasury by increasing the money given to the barbarians, inasmuch as it was of equal amount with the pay of the soldiers under arms. No one dared, however, to give utterance publicly to any such statement against him and vote that he was an enemy, for fear of immediate annihilation at the hands of the soldiers in the City. Still, they abused him in their own fashion and heaped insults upon him as much as they could, going over the list of his bloody deeds, with the name of each victim, and ranging him alongside all the evil tyrants that had ever held sway over them.
[Sidenote:—18—] At the same time the public demanded that the horse-race given on his birthday be abolished, that absolutely all the statues, both gold and silver, erected [Footnote: Supplying, with Reiske, [Greek: hidruthentas].] in his honor be melted down, and that those who had served with him in any capacity as informers be made known and punished with the utmost speed. For great numbers, not only slaves and freedmen and soldiers and Cæsarians, but likewise knights and senators and numerous very distinguished women, were believed to have given secret hints during his reign and to have blackmailed various persons. And although they did not attach to Antoninus the name of Enemy, they did keep vociferating that Martialius (on account of the similarity of his name to that of Mars, as they pretended,) ought to be honored with enconiums and with statues for worship. They also showed for the moment no indication of annoyance at Macrinus], the reason being that they were so overwhelmed by joy on account of the death of Tarautas as not to have leisure to think anything about his humble origin, and they were glad to accept him as emperor. They were less concerned about whose slaves they should be next than about whose yoke they had shaken off, and were impressed with the idea that any chance comer who might present himself would be preferable to their former master. [All the unusual expenditures were rehearsed that had been made, not only by the Roman Treasury but privately for any persons and on the part of any foreign nations as a result of the former sovereign's direction: and thus the overthrow of those charged with carrying out the enactments made by him and the hope that in the future nothing similar would be done inclined people to be satisfied with the existing arrangement.
[Sidenote:—19—] However, they soon learned that Aurelianus was dead and that Diadumenianus, son of Macrinus, had been appointed Cæsar. This last was nominally the act of the soldiers, through whose ranks he passed when summoned from Antioch to meet his father, but really it was accomplished by Macrinus. People further learned that their ruler had assumed the name of Antoninus. (He had done this to win the favor of the soldiers, partly to avoid seeming to dishonor his predecessor's memory entirely, especially in view of the fact that he had secretly thrown down some of the statues offered to him in Rome by Alexander and set on pedestals by Antoninus himself: and again he wanted to get an excuse for promising them seven hundred and fifty denarii more.) So persons began to think differently and reflected that previously they had held him in no esteem. Taking account, furthermore, of all the additional ignoble manifestations on his part that they suspected and thought likely, they began to be ashamed and did not [lacuna] Caracalla any more than [lacuna] things pertaining to him differently [lacuna] by deprecating the [lacuna] of Severus [lacuna] of Antoninus [lacuna] they displayed [lacuna] and hero and what befitted his reign, not to be sure [lacuna] and wholly the judgments of all men in Rome [lacuna] underwent a change [lacuna] senate [lacuna] to him [lacuna] me [lacuna] however, when all were questioned man by man regarding his honors, both others answered ambiguously and [lacuna] Saturninus [lacuna] in a way attributing [lacuna] prætors [lacuna] that it was not permissible for him to put any vote about anything, in order that they might avoid the consul's jealousy. This procedure was contrary to precedent, for it was not lawful that there should take place in the senate-chamber an inquiry into any matter, except at the command of the emperor.
[Sidenote:—20—] The crowd, because they could obscure their identity at the contest and by their numbers, gained the greater boldness, raised a loud cry at the horse-race on the birthday of Diadumenianus, which fell on the fourteenth of September: they uttered many lamentations, asserting that they alone of all mankind were destitute of a leader, destitute of a king; and they invoked the name of Jupiter, declaring that he alone should be their leader and uttering aloud these words: "As a master thou wert angry, as a father take pity on us." Nor would they pay any heed at first to either the equestrian or the senatorial order [lacuna] and commending the emperor and the Cæsar to the extent of [lacuna] in Greek saying: "Ah, what a glorious day is to-day! What noble kings!" and desiring that the others also should share their opinion. But they stretched out their arms toward the sky and exclaimed: "[lacuna]. this is the Roman Augustus: having him we have all!" So true it is that among mankind respect is a distinct characteristic of the better element and contempt a characteristic of the worse. For these two now regarded Macrinus and Diadumenianus as henceforth absolutely non-existent and trampled upon their claims as though they were already dead. This was one great reason why his soldiers despised him, and paid no heed to what was done to win their favor. Another still more important cause lay in the frequent and extraordinary insolence shown toward him by the Pergamenians, who were deprived of what they had formerly received from Tarautas; and for this conduct he imposed upon them public sentence of loss of citizenship. [Sidenote:—21—] The attitude of the soldiers is straightway to be described. At this time Macrinus neither sent to the senate, as they were demanding, nor published otherwise any document of the informers, saying either truly or falsely (to avoid a great disturbance) that none such had been found in the royal residence. For Tarautas had either destroyed the majority of those containing any accusation or had returned them to the senders themselves, as I have stated, [Footnote: The passage to which Dio refers is lost.] to the end that no proof of his baseness should be left. But he did reveal the names of three senators whom, from what he had himself discovered, he deemed to be especially deserving of hatred. These were Manilius and Julius, and moreover Sulpicius Arrhenianus, who had blackmailed, among others, Bassus, the son of Pomponius, whose lieutenant he had been when Bassus was governor of Moesia. These men were banished to islands, as the emperor expressly forbade their being put to death. "We would avoid,"—he wrote—these were his very words,—"ourselves appearing to do the things for which we censure them."—And Lucius Priscillianus [whose name was presented by the senate itself,] was as much renowned for his insulting behavior as he was for his killing of wild beasts. [He fought them at Tusculum every now and then, and contended with so many each time that he bore the scars of their bites.] Once he, unassisted, joined battle with a bear and panther, a lioness and lion at once, but far more numerous were the men, both knights and senators, whom he destroyed as a result of his slanders. [For both of these achievements] he was greatly honored by Caracalla [was enrolled among the ex-prætors and became (contrary to precedent) governor of Achæa. He incurred the violent hatred of the senate, was summoned for trial] and was confined upon an island. These men, then, came to their end as described.
[Sidenote:—22—] And Flaccus was entrusted also with the dispensation of food stuffs,—an office which Manilius had formerly held,—for he had secured [Footnote: Reading [Greek: eilaephos] (Reimar).] it (with the added ratification of Macrinus) as a reward of his information against him; and he was subsequently made superintendent of the distribution of dole which took place at the games given by the major prætors, save those celebrated in honor of Flora [lacuna] moreover the iuridici possessing authority in Italy had to stop rendering decisions outside the traditional limits set by Marcus. [Footnote: The text of the early part of this chapter may be characterized as "jagged." The sentences lack clearness and the relation of the individual words is not always certain. The reader may be interested to see a translation of Hirschfeld's interpretation of the section, taken from his book entitled Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der Roemischen Verwaltungsgeschichte (pp. 117-120).
a [Flaccus]—It is here a question of a high senatorial office, which can only be the præfectura alimentorum.
b [The iuridici]—Perhaps the person entrusted with the execution of this ruling was C. Octavius Sabinus, who had the title of electus ad corrigendum statum Italiæ.
c [The orphans]—Probably during the latter portion of Caracalla's reign, as also under Commodus, the funds for food had been available either not at all or at irregular intervals, and therefore the restitution of district prefects was determined upon.