[Sidenote:—11—] To those who flattered him, however, he distributed possessions and money.
¶Julius Paulus [Footnote: Undoubtedly a mistake for the Julius Paulinus subsequently mentioned.] was a man of consular rank, who was a great chatterer and joker and would not refrain from aiming his shafts of wit at the very emperors: therefore Severus had him taken into custody, though without constraints. When he still continued, even under guard, to make the sovereigns the objects of his jests, Severus sent for him and swore that he would cut off his head. But the man replied: "Yes, you can cut it off, but as long as I have it, neither you nor I can restrain it," and so Severus laughed and released him.
He granted to Julius Paulinus twenty-five myriads because the man, who was a jester, had been led, though involuntarily, to make a joke upon him. Paulinus had said that he actually resembled a man getting angry, for somehow he was always assuming a fierce expression. [Footnote: None of the editors, any more than the casual reader, has been able to find anything of a sidesplitting nature in this joke. The trouble is, of course, that the utterance sounds like a plain statement of fact. Caracalla's natural disposition was harsh and irritable. Some have changed the word "man" to "Pan (in anger)", but without gaining very much. I offer for what it is worth the suggestion that a well-known truth, especially in the case of personal characteristics, may sound very amusing when pronounced in a quizzical or semi-ironical fashion by a person possessing sufficient vis comica. Thus we may conceive Paulinus, a professional jester, on meeting Antoninus to have blurted out in a tone of mock surprise: "Why, anybody would really think you are angry. You look so cross all the time!" There would then be a point in the jest, but the point would lie not in the words but in the voice and features of the speaker. Apart from this explanation of the possible humor of the remark an excerpt of Peter Patricius (Exc. Vat. 143) gives us to understand that it would be taken as a compliment by Antoninus from the mouth of a person to whom he was accustomed to accord some liberties, since Antoninus made a point of maintaining at all times this character of harshness and abruptness.]—Antoninus made no account of anything excellent: he never learned anything of the kind, as he himself admitted. So it was that he showed a contempt for us, who possessed something approaching education. Severus, to be sure, had trained him in all pursuits, bar none, that tended to inculcate virtue, whether physical or mental, so that even after he became emperor he went to teachers and studied philosophy most of the day. He also took oil rubbings without water and rode horseback to a distance of seven hundred and fifty stades. Moreover, he practiced swimming even in rough water. In consequence of this, Antoninus was, as you might say, strong, but he paid no heed to culture, since he had never even heard the name of it. Still, his language was not bad, nor did he lack judgment, but he showed in almost everything a keen appreciation and talked very readily. For through his authority and recklessness and his habit of saying right out without reflection anything at all that occurred to him, and not being ashamed to air his thoughts, he often stumbled upon some felicitous expression. [But the same Antoninus made many mistakes through his headstrong opinions. It was not enough for him to know everything: he wanted to be the only one who knew anything. It was not enough for him to have all power: he would be the only one with any power. Hence it was that he employed no counselor and was jealous of such men as knew something worth while. He never loved a single person and he hated all those who excelled in anything; and most did he hate those whom he affected most to love. Many of these he destroyed in some way or other. Of course he had many men murdered openly, but others he would send to provinces not suited to them, fatal to their physical condition, having an unwholesome climate; thus, while pretending to honor them excessively, he quietly got rid of them, exposing such as he did not like to excessive heat or cold. Hence, though he spared some in so far as not to put them to death, yet he subjected them to such hardships that the stain [Footnote: This is very likely an incorrect translation of an incorrect reading. The various editors of Dio have a few substitutes to propose, but as all the interpretations seem to me extremely lumbering I have turned the MS. [Greek] chêlidoysthai (taken as a passive) in a way that may be not quite beyond the bounds of possibility. The noun [Greek] chêlhist like the English "stain," often passes from its original sense of "blemish" to that of the consequent "disgrace.">[ of murder still rested on him.
The above describes him in general terms.
[Sidenote: A.D. 213(?)] [Sidenote:—12—] Now we shall state what sort of person he showed himself in war. [Abgarus, king of the Osrhoeni, when he had once got control of the kindred tribes, inflicted the most outrageous treatment upon his superiors. Nominally he was compelling them to change to Roman customs, but in fact he was making the most of his authority over them in an unjustifiable way.] He tricked the king of the Osrhoeni, Abgarus, inducing him to visit him as a friend, and then arrested and imprisoned him. This left Osrhoene without a ruler and he subdued it.
The king of the Armenians had a dispute with his own children and Antoninus summoned him in a friendly letter with the avowed purpose of making peace between them: he treated these princes in the same fashion as he had Abgarus. The Armenians, however, instead of yielding to him had recourse to arms and not one of them thereafter would trust him in the slightest particular. Thus he was brought by experience to understand how great the penalty is for an emperor's practicing deceit toward friends. [The same ruler assumed the utmost credit for the fact that at the death of Vologæsus, king of the Parthians, his children proceeded to fight about the sovereignty; what was purely accidental he pretended had come about through his own connivance. He ever took vehement delight in the actions and dissensions of the brothers and generally in the mutual slaughter of foreign potentates.] He did not hesitate, either, to write to the senate regarding the rulers of the Parthians (who were brothers and at variance) that the brothers' quarrel would work great harm to the Parthian state. Just as if barbarian governments could be destroyed by such procedure and yet the Roman state had been preserved! Just as if it had not been, on the contrary, almost utterly overthrown! It was not merely that the great sums of blood money given under such conditions to the soldiers for his brother's murder served to demoralize mankind: in addition, vast numbers of citizens had information laid against them,—not only those who had sent the brother letters or had brought him presents [Footnote: Reading [Greek: dôrophorhêsantest] (Reimar) for the MS. [Greek: doruphoraesantes].] when he was still Cæsar or again after he had become emperor, but all the rest who had never had any dealings with him. If anybody even so much as wrote the name of Geta, or spoke it, that was the end of him then and there. Hence the poets no longer used it even in comedies. [Footnote: Geta was a common name for slaves in Latin comedy. It came into Rome through Greek channels and was originally merely the national adjective applied to a tribe of northern barbarians.] The property, too, of all those in whose wills the name was found written was confiscated.
[Many of his acts were committed with a view to getting money. And he exhibited his hatred for his dead brother by abolishing the honor paid to his birthday, by getting angry at the stones which had supported his images, and by melting up the coinage that displayed his features. Not even this sufficed him, but more than ever from this time he began his practice of unholy rites and often forced others to share his pollution by making a kind of annual offering to his brother's Manes.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 213 (a.u. 966)] [Sidenote:—13—] Though holding such views and behaving in such a way with regard to the latter's murder he took delight in the dissension of the barbarian brothers, on the ground that the Parthians would suffer some great injury as a result of it.
[The Celtic nations, however, afforded him neither pleasure nor any pretence of cleverness or courage but proved him to be nothing more nor less than a cheat, a simpleton, and an arrant coward. Antoninus made a campaign among the Alamanni and wherever he saw a spot suitable for habitation he would order: "There let a fort be erected: there let a city be built." To those spots he applied names relating to himself, yet the local designations did not get changed; for some of the people were unaware of the new appellations and others thought he was joking. Consequently he came to entertain a contempt for them and would not keep his hands off this tribe even; but, whereas he had been saying that he had come as an ally, he accorded them treatment to be expected of a most implacable foe. He called a meeting of their men of military age under promise that they were to receive pay, and then at a given signal,—his raising aloft his own shield,—he had them surrounded and cut down; he also sent cavalry around and arrested all others not present.
¶Antoninus commended in the senate by means of a letter Pandion, a fellow who had previously been an understudy of charioteers but in the war against the Alamanni drove his chariot for him and in this capacity was his comrade and fellow soldier. And he asserted that he had been saved by this man from a portentous danger and was not ashamed to evince greater gratitude to him than to the soldiers, whom in their turn he regarded as our superiors.[Footnote: There is a gap of a word or two here (Dindorf text), filled by reading [Greek: hêlen hechôn] (with Boissevain).]