"Enough!" said the emperor. "Caracalla tarries yet with the camp. Our person is not menaced by his hand. Prithee, send a brasier hither. The night is far spent, and slumber will not again visit these eyelids."
A bronze tripod was brought supported by sphinxes, the worship of Isis being a fashionable idolatry at that period. Charred wood was then placed in a round dish pierced with holes, and perfumes thrown in to correct the smell. The emperor commanded that he should be left alone. Covering his shoulders with a richly-embroidered mantle, he took from behind his pillow a Greek treatise on the occult sciences, to the study of which he was passionately addicted.
It is said of him by historians that he was guided by his skill in judicial astrology to the choice of the reigning empress, having lost his first wife when governor of the Lyonnese Gaul. Finding that a lady of Emesa in Syria, one Julia Domna, had what was termed "a royal nativity," he solicited and obtained her hand, thus making the prophecy the means of its accomplishment.
A woman of great beauty and strong natural acquirements, she was at the same time the patron of all that was noble and distinguished in the philosophy and literature of the age. It was even said that secretly she was a favourer of the Christians. Be this as it may, we do not find she ever became a professor of the faith.
Sleep, that capricious guest which comes unbidden but not invited, was just stealing over the monarch's eyelids when the roll fell from his grasp. The unexpected movement startled him. His eye fell on the bright crystal opposite. He thought a glimmer was moving in the glass. He remembered the words of the sage, and his eye was riveted on the mystic goblet. A sudden flash was reflected from it. He started forward, when a naked sword fell on the couch: the stroke he only escaped by having so accidentally changed his place! The glass had revealed the glitter of the blade behind him, and he was indebted to a few inches of space for his life!
Looking round, he beheld a masked figure preparing to repeat the stroke. Severus, with his usual courage and presence of mind, threw his mantle across the assassin's sword. He cried out, and the chamber was immediately filled with guards; but whether from treachery or inadvertence, the traitor was nowhere to be found. He had escaped, leaving his weapon entangled in the folds of the mantle. On examination, the emperor's surprise was visibly increased when he recognised the sword as one belonging to Caracalla! The soothsayer's prediction was apparently fulfilled. To the emperor's superstitious apprehensions the crystal goblet was charged with his safety. But lo! on being sought for, the charmed cup was gone!
The next morning, as the sun was just rising over the green wolds, and the fresh air came brisk and sharply on the traveller's cheek, a stranger was noticed loitering through the narrow streets of the imperial city. He had passed the great Galcarian or western gate, from which the statue of the reigning emperor on that memorable morning was found razed from its pedestal. The outer and inner faces of the gate were whitened for the writing of edicts and proclamations by the government scribes, and likewise for the public notices of minor import, these being daubed on the walls with various degrees of skill, in red or black pigments, according to the nature of the decrees that were issued by the prætor, and the caprice of the artist.
On that morning a number of idlers had assembled about the gate. The statue of the emperor, fallen prostrate, had been removed, and an edict promptly supplied, to the purport that an impious hand, having attempted the life of the monarch, a reward of one hundred thousand sestertia would be the price of his apprehension. Another reward of the like sum was offered for the discovery of a crystal goblet stolen from the emperor's chamber.
The individual we have just noticed wore the common sleeved tunic of coarse wool; over it was a cloak buckled on the right shoulder, the yarn being dyed in such wise that, when woven, it might resemble the skin of a brindled ox—such was the dress of the ancient Britons. His head was covered with a close cap, but his feet were naked; and the only weapon he bore was a two-handed sword, stuck in his girdle.