[Sidenote:—3—] This was in Rome. And Avitus assigned [lacuna] Pollio to govern [lacuna] Germany [lacuna] since the latter had very rapidly reduced Bithynia to subjection. He himself, after sojourning some months in Antioch until he had established his authority there in every direction, went into Bithynia, coadjutor [lacuna] often [lacuna] making Gannys, as had been his custom in the case of Antioch.
Having passed the winter here he proceeded into Italy through Thrace and Moesia and both the Pannonias, and there he abode to the end of his life. One action of his was worthy of a thoroughly good emperor: for, whereas many individuals and communities alike,
including the Romans themselves, both knights and senators,
had privately and publicly, by word and deed, heaped insults upon [both Caracalla and] himself as a result of the letters of Macrinus, he [neither threatened to make reprisals] in the case of a single person, nor did he make reprisals. But on the other hand he drifted into all the most obscene and lawless and bloodthirsty practices. [Some of them never before known in Rome, took root and grew like ancestral institutions. Others, taken up tentatively from one time [Footnote: Reading [Greek: allote] (Bekker, Dindorf) in place of [Greek: alla te].] to another by various individuals] flourished for the three years and nine months and four days during which he ruled (to compute from the battle in which he gained supreme control). [In Syria, he caused the assassination of Nestor and Fabius Agrippinus, the governor of the country, as well as of the foremost knights belonging to the party of Macrinus; but he inflicted a similar fate upon men in Rome who were on most friendly terms with him. In Arabia, he executed Pica Cæsianus, [Footnote: P. Numicius Pica Cæsianus.] entrusted with the administration, because he had not immediately declared his allegiance; and, in Cyprus, Claudius Attalus, because he had fallen out with Comazon. Attalus had once been governor of Thrace, had been expelled from the senate by Severus in the war with Niger, but was restored to it by Tarautas, and had at this time been assigned to Cyprus, as the lot directed. He had incurred Comazon's ill-will by having formerly reduced him to the position of rower in a trireme as a punishment for some villany which the latter committed while serving in Thrace.]
[Sidenote:—4—] This incident sheds some light on the character of Comazon, who got this name from mimes and buffoonery. [Footnote: This statement is an error on the part of Xiphilinus, who thought that "Comazon" (in Greek=The Reveler) was a nickname for a certain Eutychianus. Investigations, however, show that there was a M. Valerius Comazon prominent at this time and that the word should be taken as a proper and not as a vulgar noun.] He commanded the Pretorians and, though holding no position of management or superintendence whatever, except over the camp, [he obtained the consular honors] and subsequently actually became consul. [Also he became city prefect] not merely once, but twice and thrice, as could be recorded in no other case. Wherefore this, too, must be enumerated among the most illegal proceedings. [It was on his account, then, that Attalus was put to death.
Triccianus came to his end on account of the Alban legion, which he commanded with good discipline during Macrinus's reign, and Castinus [Footnote: C. Iulius Septimius Castinus.] because he was energetic and was known to many soldiers in consequence of the commands he had held and his association with Antoninus. He had accordingly been sent out in advance by Macrinus without reference to other events and was living in Bithynia. The emperor put him to death in spite of having written concerning him to the senate that Triccianus had been banished from Rome, like Julius Asper, by Macrinus, and that he had restored him. He took similar vengeance on Sulla, who had been governing Cappadocia but had relinquished it, because Sulla both meddled in some matters that did not concern him and when summoned to Rome by Elagabalus had managed to meet the Celtic soldiers returning home after their winter in Bithynia, a period during which they had raised some little disturbance. These men perished for the reasons specified and no statements about them were communicated to the senate. Seius Carus, the descendant of Fuscianus, who had been city prefect, was killed because he was rich, great, and sensible, on the pretext that he was forming a league of some of the soldiers belonging to the Alban legion; and, on the basis of some charges preferred by the emperor alone, he was accused in the palace, where he was also slain.] Valerianus Pætus lost his life because he had stamped some likeness of himself upon gold pieces to serve as ornaments for his mistresses. [This led to the accusation that he intended to remove to Cappadocia, a country bordering on his own (he was a Gaul), for the purpose of starting a revolution, and that this was why he made gold pieces bearing his own figure.
[Sidenote:—5—] On these charges] Silius Messala and Pomponius Bassus [also were condemned to death by the senate: they] incurred blame because they were not pleased with what he was doing. He did not hesitate to write this statement about them to the senate, and called them investigators of his habits of life and censors of proceedings in the palace. ["The proofs of their plot I have not sent you," he said, "because it would be useless to read them, in view of the fact that the men are already dead.">[ There was another cause of dislike underlying [the case against Messala,—the point, namely, that he sturdily made public many facts in the senate. This was what led the emperor at the outset to send for him to come to Syria, pretending to have very great need of him, whereas his real fear was that Messala might bring about a change of attitude on the part of the senators.
The cause in] the case of Bassus was that he had a wife both fair to look upon and of noble rank; she was a descendant of Claudius Severus and of Marcus Antoninus. Indeed, the prince married her, not allowing her even to mourn the catastrophe. Now of his marriages, in which he both married and was bestowed in marriage, an account will be given presently. He appeared both as man and as woman, and performed the functions of both in the most licentious fashion [lacuna] about [lacuna] and [lacuna] by whom [lacuna] own [lacuna] Sergius [lacuna] and [lacuna] out of [lacuna] any [lacuna] making [lacuna] him [lacuna] blame for [lacuna] slaughter the [Sidenote:—6—] [lacuna] and of knights [lacuna] Cæsarians [lacuna] [lacuna] were destroyed [lacuna] nothing [lacuna] but by killing in Nicomedea at the very start of his reign Gannys, who had arranged the uprising, who had introduced him into the camp and had likewise caused [the soldiers to revolt, who had presented him with the victory over Macrinus, one who had reared and managed him,—by this act he came to be regarded as the most impious of men. To be sure, Gannys was living rather luxuriously and was fond of accepting bribes, but for all that he brought no injury upon anybody and bestowed many benefits upon many people. Most of all, he always showed a deep respect for the emperor, and he was thoroughly satisfactory to Mæsa and Soæmias, suiting the former because she had brought him up and the latter because he practically lived with her. But these were not the reasons why the emperor put him out of the way, seeing that he was willing to give him a marriage contract and appoint him Cæsar. It was rather that Gannys compelled him to live temperately and prudently. And his own hand was the first to give his minister a mortal blow, since no one of the soldiers had the hardihood to take the initiative in his murder.—These events, then, took place in this way.
[Sidenote:—7—] [lacuna] Another pair executed were Verus, who had likewise mustered courage to make an attempt upon the sovereignty while in the midst of the third (Gallic) legion, which he was commanding; and Gellius Maximus, on the same sort of charge, though he was lieutenant in Syria proper and at the head of the fourth (Scythian) legion. For to such an extent had everything got upside down, that these men, too, one of whom had been enrolled in the senate from the ranks of the centurions and the other of whom was the son of a physician, took it into their heads to aim at the imperial office. I have mentioned them alone by name, not so much because they were the only ones who appeared entirely insane as because they belonged to the senate; for other attempts were made. A certain centurion's son undertook to throw into disorder the same Gallic legion, and another, a worker in wool, tampered with the Fourth, and a third, a private citizen, with the fleet in harbor at Cyzicus when the False Antoninus was wintering at Nicomedea. And there were many others elsewhere, so that it became a very ordinary thing for those who so wished to hazard the chance of fomenting rebellion and becoming emperor. They were encouraged partly by the fact that many persons had entered upon the supreme office without expecting or deserving it. Let no one be incredulous of my statements, for the facts about the private citizens I ascertained from men who are worthy of confidence, and of what I have written about the fleet I gained an exact knowledge in Pergamum, close at hand, the affairs of which, as also of Smyrna, I managed, having been assigned to duty there by Macrinus. And in view of this attempt none of the others seemed at all incredible to me.
[Sidenote:—8—] This is what he did in the way of murders. His acts which varied from our ancestral precedents, however, were of simple character and inflicted no great harm upon us. Some noteworthy innovations were his applying to himself certain titles connected with his sovereignty before they had been voted, as I have already described, [Footnote: See Chapter 2.] and again his enrolling himself in the consulship in place of Macrinus when he had not been elected to it and did not enter upon any of its duties (the time expiring too soon): yet at first, in three letters, he had referred to the year by the name of Adventus, as if assuming that the latter had been sole consul. Other points were that he undertook to be consul a second time, without having secured any office previously or the privileges of any office, and that while consul in Nicomedea he did not employ the triumphal costume on the Day of Vows. [Footnote: Translated by Sturz "votivorum ludorum die." What festival is meant is uncertain, but it is probably not the Compitalia (III. Non. Ian.). [Sidenote:—11—] With his infractions of law is connected also the matter of Elagabalus. The offence consisted, not in his introducing a foreign god into Rome, or in his exalting him in very strange ways, but in his placing him before even Jupiter and having himself voted his priest, in his circumcising his foreskin and abstaining from swine's flesh [on the ground that his devotion would be purer by this means. He had thought of cutting off his genitals altogether, but that was an idea prompted by salaciousness; the circumcision which he actually accomplished was a part of the priestly requirements of Elagabalus. Hence he mutilated in like manner numerous of his associates.] A further offence was his being frequently seen in public clad in the barbaric dress which the Syrian priests employ, a circumstance which had more to do than anything else with his getting the name of "The Assyrian."