But the end of his infamous life was rapidly approaching. He had written to Rome, some time previously, to direct that the Chaldæans should be consulted as to the name of his successor, so that he might slay the man named. The minister to whom he wrote had some grievance against one of the officials in the East, Opilius Macrinus, and he wrote to inform Caracalla that Macrinus was designated by an African soothsayer. The more romantic historians say that this letter reached Caracalla just as he was engaged in directing a race, and that he gave it, unopened, to Macrinus himself to deal with. More plausible is the story related by Dio. The letter went, as all letters went, to the Empress at Antioch, and a delay was caused. Macrinus had, in the meantime, learned from Rome the danger that threatened him, and he set energetically to work. A discontented soldier in Caracalla’s body-guard was secured, and on the 8th of March, 217, he ended that Emperor’s infamies with the thrust of a dagger. It was a timely release for Rome. It was discovered after his death that he had bought great quantities of poison in Asia.

Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when the news reached her at Antioch. She mourned little over the removal of her son, says Dio, as she “had hated him when he was alive”; but the prospect of laying down her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in the prime of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She learned that, after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised the usual bribe to the troops, and obtained the Empire. Rumour quickly recognized in him the assassin of Caracalla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on him. Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would recognize her Imperial status, and not remove her guard of honour. He feared the attachment of the soldiers to Caracalla, and disavowed his share in the assassination. Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her first resolve to take her life by refusing food, she entertained a hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers, however much attached to Caracalla, had little idea of putting a Semiramis on the throne of Rome. Her plan miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed. Her sister and nieces returned to the paternal temple at Emesa, where we shall soon rejoin them, but Julia, failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary adventure by which they would shortly return to power, racked with the pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow on the breast in her first anger, decided to leave the world. She refused food, and died in May or June, 217. Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp at Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the Imperial gods and goddesses.

CHAPTER XIII
IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS

The fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, and bringing upon the Imperial stage as grotesque a figure, as any that have yet come under our notice. Three women—the sister and the nieces of Julia Domna—are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed with the Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome in the extraordinary period that followed it. But before we introduce the tragi-comic figure of Elagabalus, we must clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his faint shadow of an Empress.

Opilius Macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive old man. Accident had put the Empire within his reach. He timidly grasped it because no other offered to do so, and held it until another desired it. He was in his fifty-third year, a man of obscure African origin, an adventurer in the public service. He was married to Nonia Celsa, of whom we know only that her qualities were not generally believed to include the possession of virtue. Their son Diadumenianus was a tall and handsome youth, with black eyes and curly yellow hair. When his father made him Cæsar, and he donned a purple robe, the spectators are said to have melted with affection. He lived long enough to show, by urging his parents to deal more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so tender as his pretty looks had suggested.

“How happy and fortunate we are,” Macrinus wrote to his family, when his accession was secured. In little more than a year he would be flying over the hills of Asia Minor, and he and his handsome boy would be cruelly put to death. He set out at once, with great display, against the unruly Parthians. But he soon purchased an ignoble peace from them, and repaired to the banquets and pleasures of Antioch. Anxious as he was about his position, he made the fatal error of keeping the troops in camp, and there soon passed from legion to legion an ominous murmur. The soldiers contrasted his luxury with Caracalla’s sharing of their march and their cheese, and chafed under the discipline he rightly sought to enforce. The rumour spread, too, that Macrinus had given offence to the Senate; and that a mule had borne a mule at Rome, and a sow had given birth to a little pig with two heads and eight feet. The apparition of a comet and an eclipse of the sun made it yet more certain that something was going to happen, and confirmed those who were preparing the event. In the month of May Macrinus heard that a boy of fourteen, supported by three women and a eunuch, had claimed the throne, and seduced some troops. He sent a general, with a moderate force, to bring him the boy’s head. In a week or two a messenger returned with a head—his general’s head. He roused himself from the drowsy luxury of Antioch, and set out with his army.

The three women were, as I have said, Julia Mæsa, sister of Julia Domna, and her daughters, Soæmias and Mamæa. At the death of Julia Domna they had retired to the ancestral home at Emesa, in Syria, but with a very considerable fortune, which Mæsa had gathered at the court of Severus and Caracalla. The two daughters seem to have lost their husbands, though each had a son. Soæmias had a child of fourteen years, named Varius Avitus Bassianus, a strikingly pretty boy.[17] His cousin Alexianus was three or four years younger. Avitus was therefore clothed with the dignity of priest of the temple, which seems to have been hereditary, and the little group resumed the life they had quitted, twenty years before, to dwell in the Imperial court. Mæsa, and probably Soæmias, found this rustic tranquillity unendurable, and followed political events with interest. The one retained dreams of Imperial power, the other of Imperial indulgence. Their chief servant was a clever eunuch, Gannys by name, who is strangely described by Dio as “practically living with Soæmias.” A geographical accident brought their vague dreams to a practical issue.

Near the little town of Emesa was a camp of the Roman soldiers. Cosmopolitan as they now were in race and religion, and fretting at their detention in the dull countryside, the soldiers took a close interest in the temple of the strange god. The great wealth and fame of the shrine, the peculiar nature of its deity and its ritual, often attracted them, and the knowledge that these rich and handsome women of the priestly family had been so closely connected with their popular Caracalla increased the interest. But the chief feature that drew their attention was the beauty of the young high-priest. The soft and feminine delicacy of his form and features was enhanced by a long robe of Imperial purple, fringed with gold, and a crown that flashed back the rays of the Syrian sun from its precious gems. The romance was not lessened when they reflected that the great Severus had often fondled this boy in his arms, and that he might have inherited the throne. The women, or their servants, now doubled the interest of the soldiers by insinuating a whisper that he was the son of their Caracalla, and when Mæsa’s gold began to pass freely into their purses, they contrived to see a resemblance to the dark and repellent features of the late Emperor in the girlish beauty of the boy. Soæmias had no difficulty in paying the poor price of her reputation for a return to court. Lampridius bluntly calls her a meretrix.

On the night of May 15th, 218, the three women and the two boys were transferred to the camp. Mæsa’s fortune went with them, as the price of Empire, and on the following day the soldiers announced that Bassianus, as he was now called, was Emperor. The camp was fortified, and in a few days Macrinus’s general, Julianus, appeared before it with his troops. Their companions in the camp exhibited the young son of Caracalla on the rampart, and, as they exhibited also the bags of Mæsa’s gold, they convinced and seduced the assailants. Julianus’s head was cut off, and sent to Antioch. Macrinus now marched against them, and the two armies met in the intervening country on June 8th. The softened troops wavered on both sides, and it looked as if Macrinus might win, when Mæsa and Soæmias sprang from their chariots in the rear of the army, rushed into the ranks, and spurred their flagging followers on to victory. Macrinus fled, in an ignominious disguise, across the hills and valleys of Asia Minor, and within a few weeks Nonia Celsa learned that she had lost her throne, her husband, and her boy. The Emperor of Rome was the pretty boy-priest of Elagabalus.