Book LXXX

 This is how it came about. He brought his cousin Bassianus before the senate, and having caused Maesa and Soaemis to take their places on either side of him, formally adopted him as his son; and he congratulated himself on becoming suddenly the father of so large a boy,— though he himself was not much older than the other,— and declared that he had no need of any other child to keep his house free from despondency. He said that Elagabalus had ordered him to do this and further to call his son's name Alexander. And I, for my part, am persuaded that all this did come about in very truth by some divine arrangement; though I infer this, not from what he said, but from the statement made to him by someone else, to the effect that an Alexander should come from Emesa to succeed him, and again from what happened in Upper Moesia and in Thrace.  For shortly before this time a spirit, claiming to be the famous Alexander of Macedon, and resembling him in looks and general appearance, set out from the regions along the Ister, after first appearing there in some manner or other, and proceeded through Moesia and Thrace, revelling in company with four hundred male attendants, who were equipped with thyrsi and fawn skins and did no harm. It was admitted by all those who were in Thrace at the time that lodgings and all provisions for the spirit were donated at public expense, and none — whether magistrate, soldier, procurator, or the governors of the provinces — dared to oppose the spirit either by word or deed, but it proceeded in broad daylight, as if in a solemn procession, as far as Byzantium, as it had foretold. Then taking ship, it landed in the territory of Chalcedon, and there, after performing some sacred rites by night and burying a wooden horse, it vanished. These facts I ascertained while still in Asia, as I have stated, number before anything had been done at all about Bassianus at Rome.

One day this same emperor made this statement: "I do not want titles derived from war and bloodshed. It is enough for me that you call me Pius and Felix."

The False Antoninus, on being praised by the senate, remarked: "Yes, you love me, and so, by Jupiter, does the populace, and also the legions abroad; but I do not please the Pretorians, to whom I keep giving so much."

So long as Sardanapalus continued to love his cousin, he was safe. But when he became suspicious of all men and learned that their favour was turning entirely to the boy, he ventured to change his mind and did everything to bring above his destruction.

When some persons who were acting as advocates along with the False Antoninus remarked how fortunate he was to be consul together with his son, he replied: "I shall be more fortunate next year; for then I am going to be consul with a real son."

When, however, Sardanapalus attempted to destroy Alexander, he not only accomplished nothing but came near being killed himself. For Alexander was sedulously guarded by his mother and his grandmother and by the soldiers, and the Pretorians, also, on becoming aware of the attempt of Sardanapalus, raised a terrible tumult; and they did not stop rioting until Sardanapalus, accompanied by Alexander, came to the camp and poured out his supplications and under compulsion surrendered such of his companions in lewdness as the soldiers demanded. In behalf of Hierocles he offered piteous pleas and bewailed him with tears; then, pointing to his own throat, he cried: "Grant me this one man, whatever you may have been pleased to suspect about him, or else slay me." Thus with difficulty he succeeded in appeasing them; and for the time being he was saved himself, though with difficulty. Even his grandmother hated him because of his deeds, which seemed to show that he was not the son of Antoninus at all, and was coming to favour Alexander, as being really sprung from him.  Later he again formed a plot against Alexander, and when the Pretorians raised an outcry at this, he went with him to the camp. But he then became aware that he was under guard and awaiting execution, as the mothers of the two youths, being more openly at variance with each other than before, were inflaming the spirits of the soldiers; so he made an attempt to flee, and would have got away somewhere by being placed in a chest, had he not been discovered and slain, at the age of eighteen. His mother, who embraced him and clung tightly to him, perished with him; their heads were cut off and their bodies, after being stripped naked, were first dragged all over the city, and then the mother's body was cast aside somewhere or other, while his was thrown into the river.

With him perished, among others, Hierocles and the prefects; also Aurelius Eubulus, who was an Emesene by birth and had gone so far in lewdness and debauchery that his surrender had been demanded even by the populace before this. He had been in charge of the fiscus, and there was nothing that he did not confiscate. So now he was torn to pieces by the populace and the soldiers; and Fulvius, the city prefect, perished at the same time with him. Comazon had succeeded Fulvius, even as he had succeeded Fulvius' predecessor; for just as a mask used to be carried into the theatres to occupy the stage during the intervals in the acting, when it was left vacant by the comic actors, so Comazon was put in the vacant place of the men who had been city prefects in his day. As for Eubulus himself, he was banished from Rome altogether.

Such was the fate of Tiberinus; and none of those who had helped him plan his uprising, and had gained great power in consequence, survived, either, save perhaps a single person.

Alexander became emperor immediately after him, and entrusted to one Domitius Ulpian the command of the Pretorians and the other business of the empire.

Thus far I have described events with as great accuracy as I could in every case, but for subsequent events I have not found it possible to give an accurate account, for the reason that I did not spend much time in Rome. For, after going from Asia into Bithynia, I fell sick, and from there I hastened to my province of Africa; then, on returning to Italy I was almost immediately sent as governor first to Dalmatia and then to Upper Pannonia, and though after that I returned to Rome and to Campania, I at once set out for home.  For these reasons, then, I have not been able to compile the same kind of account of subsequent events as of the earlier ones. I will narrate briefly, however, all that occurred up to the time of my second consulship.

Ulpian corresponded many of the irregularities introduced by Sardanapalus; but after putting to death Flavianus and Chrestus, that he might succeed them, he was himself slain ere long by the Pretorians, who attached him in the night; and it availed him naught that he ran to the palace and took refuge with the emperor himself and with the emperor's mother. Even during his lifetime a great quarrel had arisen between the populace and the Pretorians, from some small cause, with the result that they fought together for three days and many lost their lives on both sides. The soldiers, on getting the worst of it, directed their efforts to setting fire to buildings; and so the populace, fearing the whole city would be destroyed, reluctantly came to terms with them. Besides these occurrences, Epagathus, who was believed to have been chiefly responsible for the death of Ulpian, was sent to Egypt, ostensibly as governor, but really in order to prevent any disturbance from taking place in Rome, as it would if he were punished there. From Egypt he was taken to Crete and executed.

 Many uprisings were begun by many persons, some of which caused great alarm, but they were all put down.

But the situation in Mesopotamia became still more alarming and inspired a more genuine fear in all, not merely the people in Rome, but the rest of mankind as well. For Artaxerxes, a Persian, after conquering the Parthians in three battles and killing their king, Artabus, made a campaign against Hatra, in the endeavour to capture it as a base for attacking the Romans. He actually did make a breach in the wall, but when he lost a good many soldiers through an ambuscade, he moved against Media. Of this country, as also of Parthia, he acquired no small portion, partly by force and partly by intimidation, and then marched against Armenia. Here he suffered a reverse at the hands of the natives, some Medes, and the sons of Artabanus, number either fled, as some say, or, as others assert, retired to prepare a larger expedition.  He accordingly became a source of fear to us; for he was encamped with a large army so as to threaten not only Mesopotamia but also Syria, and he boasted that he would win back everything that the ancient Persians had once held, as far as the Grecian Sea, claiming that all this was his rightful inheritance from his forefathers. The danger lies not in the fact that he seems to be of any particular consequence in himself, but rather in the fact that our armies are in such a state that some of the troops are actually joining him and others are refusing to defend themselves. They indulge in such wantonness, licence, and lack of discipline, that those in Mesopotamia even dared to kill their commander, Flavius Heracleo, and the Pretorians complained of me to Ulpianus, because I ruled the soldiers in Pannonia with a strong hand; and they demanded my surrender, through fear that someone might compel them to submit to a régime similar to that of the Pannonian troops.

Alexander, however, paid no heed to them, but, on the contrary, honoured me in various ways, especially by appointing me to be consul for the second time, as his colleague, and taking upon himself personally the responsibility of meeting the expenditures of my office. But as the malcontents evinced displeasure at this, he became afraid that they might kill me if they saw me in the insignia of my office, and so he bade me spend the period of my consulship in Italy, somewhere outside of Rome. And thus later I came both to Rome and to Campania to visit him, and spent a few days in his company, during which the soldiers saw me without offering to do me any harm; then, having asked to be excused because of the ailment of my feet, I set out for home, with the intention of spending all the rest of my life in my native land, as, indeed, the Heavenly Power revealed to me most clearly when I was already in Bithynia. For once in a dream I thought I was commanded by it to write at the close of my work these verses:

Fragment

When the false Antoninus had been put out of the way, Alexander, the son of Mamaea, and his cousin, inherited the supreme power. He immediately proclaimed his mother Augusta, and she took over the direction of affairs and gathered wise men about her son, in order that his habits might be correctly formed by them; she also chose the best men in the senate as advisers, informing them of all that had to be done.