place and was â—illing to seem to mitigate what he had said but this was all one For in fine as we have already said Lucius Cejonius Commodus Verus Aelius Caesar for he was called by all these names died and was buried with all the Ceremonies observed at the Funerals of Princes Honour done him at his Funerals the only Royal honour which he ever had being those at his death Hadrian who regretted his death like a good Father was a long time afterwards dubious upon what he should do at last he Adopted Antoninus the Pious as he was called upon whom he imposed this condition that Antoninus should likewise Adopt Marcus and Verus and should Marry his Daughter not to Marcus but to Verus And this was one of the last things he spoke to He had been used to say that a Prince ought to dye sound of mind Then he grew worse and the Complication of his Maladies carried him off He had ordered large Statues to be set up in all parts to the honour of Aelius Verus Caesar in some Cities and Temples Also he admitted his Son whom he had obliged Antoninus to Adopt into the Royal Family as his own Grandson often saying Let the Empire have all that it can of Aelius Verus Verus the Son brought no small Lustre to the Imperial Family especially by his Clemency This is what I have thought fit to observe concerning Aelius Verus Caesar whom I would not omit because I have made it my resolution to write the History of all those who since Julius Caesar the Emperour have been either called Emperours or Caesars or have been Adopted into the Imperial Family and Consecrated the Sons or Kinsmen of Emperours by the name of Caesars In which though there is no necessity that obliges me to it as some think I shall satisfie at least my own Inclinations whatever I do as to others THE Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR ANTONINUS the Prous Dedicated to the EMPEROR DIOCLESIAN By JULIUS CAPITOLINUS TItus Aurelius Fulvius Bononius Antoninus called the Pious derived his Origin by his Father's side from Nismes in Languedoc His Grandfather by his Father's side His Extraction was Titus Aurelius Fulvius who through several other Honours came to be twice a Consul and to be the Governour of the City of Rome His Father was Aurelius Fulvius who was also a Consul and a Person of great Virtue and Integrity His Mother was Arria Fadilla His Grandmother by his Mother's side Bojonia Procilla His Grandfather by the same side Arrius Antoninus who was twice Consul and a holy virtuous Man who instead of Congratulating compassionated Nerva to see him advanced to that difficult Station of a Prince His Wife's Father was Julius Lupus a Consul His Sister by the same Venter was Julia Fadilla His Wife was Annia Faustina by whom he had two Sons and two Daughter The eldest Daughter married Zamia Syllanus the yonger to Marcus Antoninus Antoninus Pius was born at a Seat near Lavinia in the Campagna di Roma upon the thirteenth of the Calends of October in the Consulships of Domitian and Cornelius Dolabella which was then the twelfth time of the Consulship of Domitian He was brought up at another Seat called Laurium upon the Aurelian way where he afterwards built a Palace which hath some remains of it standing at this day He passed his Infancy hetwixt his two Grandfathers sometimes with the one and sometimes the other and being very dutiful and observant to all his Relations several of them left their Estates to him which made him very Rich. He was handsome as to his Person full of His Personage and Conditions Wit of a sweet and courteous Behaviour a generous Countenance Easie Eloquent and of a polite Literature He was Sober a great lover of the Country and Agriculture Mild Bountiful not coveting other Men's Goods Discreet and all this without Vanity He was every thing which is commendable and may be very justly compared with Numa Pompilius according to the Opinion of most good Men. The Senate conferred upon him Why surnam'd the Pious the Title of the Pious either because he was used to lead by the Hand in their sight his decrepit Father-in-Law to and from the Senate tho' it would be rather an impious thing not to discharge such a Devoir than it is an Argument of great Piety to do it or because it was he who had preserved the lives of those whom Hadrian in his Frenzy had commanded to be murdered or because he decreed such infinite and unexpected Honours to Hadrian his Father after his death or because when Hadrian would have killed himself he hindred him from it with all the care he could or lastly because he was in his Nature a most mild Person and had done nothing that was disoblinging or Cruel in all his life He lent out his Money at the small Interest of four per Cent. to assist the Poor in their Occasions with that Fortune which he had He was a generous Questor splendid and noble when he was a Praetor and Consul in Conjunction with Catilius Severus He lived for the most part in the Country all the time he was a private man but wherever he was he was in great renown So that when Hadrian committed the Affairs of Italy unto the Administration of four Proconsuls he made a choice of him to be one of them to Govern in that part where he had the greatest Estate in which he equally consulted the Honour and the Repose of this great Person He received an Omen of his future Succession to the Empire in the time of this his Administration Omens of his Succession to the Empire For amongst the Acclamations which were made to him as he sat upon the Bench in the Court some cried Auguste Dii te servent The Gods save your Majestâ— Next he was made the Proconsul of Asia where he behaved himself so well that he alone out-did his Grandfather Arrius Antoninus the Equity of whose Government no Person had ever surpassed before In this Proconsulship he received another good Omen of his future Reign The Priests at the City of Tralles in Lydia who according to Custom saluted the Proconsuls upon their arrival there with an Ave Proconsul did not say Ave Proconsul to Antoninus but Ave Imperator Hail O Emperour At the City Ciziqua upon the Propontis a Crown which before stood upon the Head of an Image of a God was translated from thence and found upon a Statue of Antoninus His Statues throughout all the Country of Hetruria were covered with swarms of Bees As he went to Asia he lost his eldest Daughter His Wife they say ' was one that contracted a great many Censures by the too great Liberties which she allowd herself in her Life and Conversation which Antoninus dissembled as much as he could but not without some trouble to support her Credit After his Proconsulship he lived ordinarily at Rome where he was of the
way by Ravenna to deliver it first to the Emperor Maximus and yet he made such haste by change of Horses that he reached Rome in four days which was never known done before The two Emperors Balbinus and Gordianus with all the People were then assembled in the Theatre at the Publick Divertisements Immediately as the Express came into the Theatre before he could have the time to say any thing all the People cryed out with great Joy Maximin is Killed which was a grateful Hearing to the Emperors So the Company rose and every one went strait to the Temples and the Chappels to return their Thanks to the Gods From thence the Emperors went to the Senate which Assembled upon this Occasion as likewise did the People and after the Emperor Balbinus had read to the Senate the Letter which was arrived from Maximus the Senate passed this Decree as follows The Gods Pursue the Enemies of the People of Rome We return our Thanks to thee for the same O most Excellent Jupiter and to Thee O Holy Apollo We Thank the Emperor Maximus We Thank Your Majesties here present Balbinus and Gordianus We Decree Temples to the Honour of the Emperors the Gordiani deceased The Name of Maximin as it hath already been erased out of the Publick Monuments so now let it be erased out of our Thoughts and be forgotten for ever Let the Head of the Publick Enemy be thrown into the River and no Man Bury his Body He that threatned the Senate with Death and Bonds is Killed as he deserved We give our Thanks for it to your most Sacred Majesties Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus The Gods Preserve you We all wish you Victory over your Enemies We all desire the Return and Presence of Maximus The Gods Save Your Majesty Balbinus Your Majesties will be pleased to be the Consuls this Year After this Cupidius Celerimus said thus Having Erased the Name of the Maximins and Deified the Emperors the Gordiani we on the other hand Decree Triumphal Statues with Elephants to our present Princes Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus We Decree them Triumphal Chariots Statues on Horseback and Trophies upon the Subject of this Victory Then the Senate Adjourn'd The Emperors retired to the Palaces and Publick Sacrifices were appointed throughout all the City of Rome THE Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Maximin the Second TO THE EMPEROR Constantine the Great BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS MAXIMIN the Second or the Younger and the Son of the foregoing was a Youth of that extraordinary Beauty that generally the Ladies of Wit were in Love with him some of them even wished themseves a part in his Caresses and to have Children by him He was so Tall that had he lived it is probable he would have reach'd the heighth of his Father But he dyed in the Flower of his Youth in his one and twentieth Year or as some say in his eighteenth He had learn'd the His Learning and Masters Greek and Latin Languages to a Perfection In the Greek his Master was Fabilius who hath several Epigrams in the Greek yet extant and particularly some that he made upon the Picture of his Scholar In the Latin he had the Grammarian Philemon Modestinus the Lawyer and Titianus the Orator The Father of which last was he who hath written a Chorography of the Provinces of the Roman Empire and was called the Ape of his Age because he Imitated all things He had a Greek Rhetoriâ—ian called Eugenius who was Famous in his time Junia Fadilla a Daughter of the Family of the Princes the Antonini was Contracted to him who afterwards was Married to Toxotius a Senator of the same Family who dyed after his Praetorship and hath written some Poems which we have at this day The Presents which were given to her by Maximin when he Contracted her are particularly recounted by Aelius Cordus A Locket of nine great Pearls a Head set with eleven Emeralds a Bracelet of four Jacynths Garments of Cloth of Gold and all the Ornaments of Princely Attire which were fit for a New Spouse As this Maximin was very Beautiful so he carried a Pride to the highest degree he kept himself Sitting when his Father as Cruel as he was many times rose to Persons of Honour that came to wait upon him He was of a gay Humour Drank little but loved good Eating especially of the wild Creatures of the Field the Wild Boar Duck Crane and the like were his constant Dishes Those of the Party of the Emperors Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus and particularly the Senators were willing to slander him because of his great Beauty Pretending that it was impossible that so charming a Gift of the Gods could be kept uncorrupt So also when he went about the Walls of Aquileia in Company with his Father to persuade that City to a Surrender All that they pretended to object against him was the matter of Uncleanness because of his tempting Beauty which however was very far from him He was so Proper in his Cloaths that no Lady in the World could be more He was extreamly Obsequious to such as were of his Father's Friends that is so far as to give them what was in his power and make them Largesses But when they paid their Reverences to him he received them in a manner which was again as high He gave them his Hand to kiss he suffered them to kiss his Knees and sometimes his Feet which his Father would never do who said The Gods forbid that any free-born Man should lay his Lips to my Feet Having mention'd his Father I desire to insert one pleasant Passage of him He was as I have observed before in his Life Eight Foot and almost a half high Therefore his Shoe or Royal Buskin was given by some to be seen publickly in a Religious House in a Grove which is betwixt the City Aquileia and a place called Arzia which Shoe it is certain is bigger by a Foot than the Measure of any other Man And hence it is become a Proverb to say of one who is of an extraordinary Height without much Wit Caliga Maximini i. e. He is the Print of Maximin He treads in his Shoe But I return to speak of the Son The Emperor Alexander Severus in a Letter to his Mother Mammaea appears to have had some thoughts of Matching this Maximin to his own Sister Theoclia The Letter was this Madam I Would propose to you to Marry your Daughter Theoclia to the younger Maximin did not his Father who is a Commander in our Forces and I assure you a very good one retain something in him that savours of the Barbarian I fear my Sister who is so acquainted with all the Politeness of the Grecian Education will not endure a Father in Law of that Nature Otherwise as for the Youth himself he is Beautiful and Ingenious and seems to be bred and polished to the Mode of the Grecians too This is what I think You may please to consider with
hath exposed a Hundred Lions together at one Shew His behaviour towards his Friends in his Reign was just the same as before when he was a private Person and neither they not his Servants whom he manumitted pretended to make any Gain to themselves of their Interest in him particularly he was very strict with the Latter He was much delighted with His Recreations the Diversions of the Comedians and in Fishing Hunting Walking and Talking with his Ministers to whose Entertainments he went and sometimes to the Feasts of the Vintage He gave Honours and Recompences in Money in the Provinces to the Rhetoricians and the Philosophers The Speeches which are extant under his Name are said by many to have been of the Composition of another but Marius Maximus says they are truly his own He made Entertainments for his Friends in particular and in publick He never Sacrificed by a Proxy unless he was Sick When he desired any Honour for himself or his Sons he did all things as a private Candidate in the same Case He dined with his Ministers many times at their Houses He went one time to see the House of Omulus where admiring the Porphyry-Pillars which he had and asking him from whence he procured them Omulus said When you came Sir into a Strangers House you are to be both Dumb and Deaf He took this patiently as he did a great many other Jests of the same Person He made divers Laws in which he served His Laws himself of the best Lawyers of his time who were Vinidius Verus Salvius Valens Volusius Metianus Ulpius Marcellus and Jabolenus He put an end to whatever Seditions in any Part arose not by Force and Cruelty but by the Modesty and the Gravity of his Judgments He prohibited the burying of the Dead within the City He limited the Expences of the Games of the Gladiators He facilitated things for the convenience of Travelling with all the Care he could He gave Reasons for every thing he did either to the Senate or in his Edicts He died in his Seventieth Year but was His Death as much lamented then as if it had been in the flower of his Age And the manner of his Death they say was this he had eaten with great Appetite at Supper of the Cheese which is made upon the Alps but he brought it up again in the Night and the next Day was taken with a Fever the third Day being worse he recommended the Empire and the Care of his Daughter unto Marcus Antoninus in the presence of the Court. Then he ordered the Golden Image of Fortune which always stands in the Emperor's Bed-Chamber to be removed out of his Room into that of Marcus Antoninus Then he gave the word to the Tribune which was Equanimity and turning himself as it were to sleep he died at his own Seat at Laurium He was light-headed in his Fever at which times all his Discourse was concerning the State and the Kings who had given him an occasion of Displeasure He left his Paternal Estate to his Daughter and Legacies by his Will to all his Domesticks He was tall and graceful but being apt to His Personage stoop a little in his old Age he then wore a pair of Bodice on purpose to keep himself strait In a morning when he grew in years before he was visited he eat a little dry Bread for his Health He spoke a little broad but yet agreeably enough The Senate made him a God in which all People were forward to concur with them because his Goodness Clemency Wit and Sanctimony were universally esteemed They decreed him all the Honours which had ever been bestowed upon the best Princes They appointed him an Order of Priests of his own Name a Temple and the Honour of the Games of the Cirque He was absolutely the only one of all the Emperors who lived without having ever shed the Blood either of Citizen or Enemy and as his Reign was attended with the same Felicity and Goodness the same Security and Religiousness with that of Numa Pompilius he may very well be put in the Comparison with that Prince He reigned Twenty Three Years THE A. Christi CLXII Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Marcus Aurelius Antoninus The PHILOSOPHER BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS Addressed to the EMPEROR DIOCLESIAN MArcus Antoninus was a Lover of Wisdom a Philosophical Man all his time and the best as to the Sanctity of his Life of all the Emperors before him His Father was Annius Verus who died in his Praetorship His Extraction His Grandfather was another Annius Verus who was twice Consul and the Governour of the City of Rome having been admitted amongst the Patricians by Vespasian and Titus when they were Censours His Uncle by his Father's side was Annius Libo a Consul the Empress Galeria Faustina was his Aunt his Mother was Domitia Calvilla the Daughter of Calvisius Tullus who was twice Consul his Father's Grandfather was Annius Verus originally of Succubae in Spain who was a Praetor and a Senator his Mother's Grandfather was Catilius Severus who was twice Consul and Governour of Rome his Grandmother by his Father's side was Rupilia Faustina the Daughter of Rupilius Bonus who was a Consul also Marcus Antoninus was born at Rome upon Mount Caelius in the Gardens 〈…〉 e the Sixth of the Calends of May under the Consulships of his Grandfather and Augur which was then the Second Consulship of his Grandfather His Family if we carry it up to the highest is proved to partake of the Blood of Numa Pompilius by his Father's side according to Marius Maximus and by his Mother's to come from Malennius a King of the antient Salentini in Naples who was the Son of Dasumnus who built Lopiae He was brought up where he was born and partly in the House of his Grandfather Verus hard by the Lateran Palace He had a Sister who was younger than he called Annia Cornificia His Wife was Annia Faustina who was his Cousin German by his Mother's side At first his Name was Annius Verus from his Father and his Grandfather Hadrian called him Annius Verissimus because of the Integrity of his Temper But afterwards he re-assured his first Name again of Annius Verus because his Grandfather his Father dying adopted him and educated him He was from his first Infancy grave and serious and after he was out of those Years in which Children are in the hands of the Women His Education he was delivered to the Tuition of great Masters who prepared his way for Philosophy His Masters to teach him his first Elements of Letters were Euphorion the Grammarian Geminus a Comedian and Andron who was both a Musician and a Geometrician As these Three were they who laid the Foundation for him to 〈…〉 eed to all other Learning so he ever had 〈◊〉 â—n very great Respect His Masters to teach him Grammar were for the Greek Alexander for the Latin Trosius Aper Pollio and Eutychius
Ceremony He passed him thro' the Colleges of the Priests according to the desire of the Senate He made him a second time Consul with himself when himself entred upon his fourth Consulship But at the same time that Marcus was possessed of these high Honours and assisted at all things which his Father did in order to be formed to the Government of the Empire he went passionately nevertheless to his Studies He married Faustina His wife and Relations by whom he had a Daughter Then the Tribunitian and the Proconsular Powers were given him and the right of a fifth Reference so that his Interest became so great that his Father never easily Promoted any one without him He was always the most dutiful to his Father that it was possible for any one to be howsoever some were willing to whisper Pius in the Ear with things against him particularly Valerius Omulus who one day taking notice of Calvilla the Mother of Marcus as she was at her Devotions in a Garden before an Image of Apollo says he to Pius That Lady there is now Praying for your death and for the Reign of her Son But this was altogether of no weight with him because he â—aw the great Probity of Marcus and with what Modesty he carried himself under the Honour of his Ascension to the degree of a Prince He was so careful to weigh all things well to preserve his Reputation that in his youthful years he always ordered his Servants to do nothing that was hard upon any body and sometimes when Estates were left to him he refused them if he could to give them to the next of the Family He lived three and twenty years together in the Court with his Father and yet he was every day beloved more and more and in all that time he was not absent from him above two nights Wherefore when Antoninus Pius came to dye he called his Ministers and his Friends about him and recommended to them all Marcus as his Successour in the Empire He gave the Tribune the Word which was Aequanimity and immediately he ordered the Golden Image of Fortune which stood in his Bedchamber to be translated into the Bed-chamber of Marcus After the death of Pius the Senate constraining He is created Emperor and Verus his Partner Marcus to take the Publick Government upon him he nominated Verus to be his Partner in the same declaring him Caesar and Emperor from which time they equally began to Reign together and were the first two Emperours who sate at once upon the Throne of Rome He called himself by the name of Marcus Antoninus and he called his Brother Emperour by the name of Verus Antoninus to whom he Contracted his Daughter Lucilla For an Act of goodness upon the occasion of this Conjunction they inlarged the Charity of their Predecessors for the Maintenance of the Children of poor Families and added other Pensions to them From the Senate after having finished their Affairs there they both went together to the Camp of the Guards where they promised the Soldiers a Bounty of twenty thousand Sesterces and to the Officers proportionably as usual upon the occasion of their joynt Reigns They made a magnificent Funeral for their Father whom they interred in the Sepulchre of Hadrian They proceeded to Consecrate him a God Each made an Oration in Publick in his Praise and having appointed him his Order of Priests out of the number of his Friends they distinguished them by calling them after the name of his Family Possessed thus of the Empire they both Their good Government comported themselves so well that none could complain of the loss of the gentle Reign of Pius Marullus the Satyrical Poet of that time had some flings at them but he passed unpunished They concluded the Funeral Obsequies of their Father with the Games of the Gladiatours In the mean time Marcus gave himself still to Philosophy and courted the love of the People But the felicity and the quiet of their Reigns was interrupted first by an Inundation of the Tyber which was very terrible It not only carried away several Buildings of the City and destroyed a great many Cattle but it produced a most grievous Famine which Calamities were moderated as much as possible by the Care and the Presence of Marcus and Verus Then the Parthian Several Wars begun War arose which Vologesus the King of that Country had been hatching under Pius but he did not Proclaim it till the Reign of Marcus and Verus at what time he attack'd Atidius Cornelianus the Lieutenant of Syria and put him to flight Also a War with the Britains was upon the point of kindling and the Catti had already made Incursions into Germany and Rhaetia So against the Britains Calphurnius Agricola was sent Against the Catti Aufidius Victorinus But to the Parthian War the Emperour Verus was appointed to go with the advice of the Senate whilst Marcus tarried at Rome where the Civil Affairs required the presence at least of one Emperour He accompanied Verus as far as to Capuâ— and honoured him with a Retinue of Great Men out of the Senate and Officers for his Court of all sorts to be both his Ministers and his Companions with him in the Expedition But no sooner was Marcus returned to Rome but he received advice that Verus was sick at Canosa in Naples He offered his Vows in the Senate for his Recovery and then went in all haste to see him there and being return'd to Rome the second time he next received an account that Verus was safely arrived in Syria where he passed his time in Sports and Hunting and lived at Antioch and the Village of Daphne in the greatest pleasure whilst his Generals carried on the Parthian War in which they had the Victory of the Enemy In the mean time Marcus was continually attent upon the Affairs of the State and seemed to take the Pleasures of his Brother as if he was indifferent to them or knew nothing of them He ordered and managed all things necessary for the War and yet lived the distance of Rome from it The Affairs of Armenia were prosperous Their Success and the City Teflis upon the Araxis was taken by Statius Priscus Hereupon both the Emperours were presented with the Title of Conquerours of the Armenians which Marcus in modesty first at refused but afterwards accepted They were both in like manner after the War was over presented with the Title of Conquerours of the Parthians and this also Marcus at first refused but afterwards accepted The Title of Pater Patriae or Father of his Country which had been offered to Marcus in the absence of Verus he deferred to meddle with till the return of Verus because he would not assume it but in Conjunction with him In the mean time having Contracted his Daughter Lucilla in Marriage to him he presented her richly and sent her into Syria in the midst of the War attended by his Sister
in the presence of the Emperors themselves He was very Magnificent in his Quaestorship The Year that he was Aedile he Entertained the People of Rome at his own expence Twelve times with the Publick Shews that is once every Month and sometimes he presented five hundred couple of Gladiators at a Shew never less than one hundred and fifty He had a hundred Wild Beasts of Africa Hunted in one day another a thousand Bears his sixth day is very Memorable There were two hundred stout Stags Hunted by Britains thirty Wild Horses a hundred Wild Sheep ten Elks a hundred Cyprian Bulls three hundred Red Barbary Ostriches thirty Wild Asses one hundred and fifty Boars two hundred Wild Goats and two hundred Deer All these he gave in One which was his sixth day to be Hunted taken and divided amongst the People There is a Painting of it yet to be seen in the House where he lived of the Great Pompey which House was his and his Father's and his Grandfather's before him but since confiscated in the time of the Emperor Philip. In his Praetorship he acquitted himself Nobly After which he was Consul the first time in conjunction with the Emperor Antoninus Caracallus the second time in conjunction with the Emperor Alexander Severus He had two Children a Son who was a Consul and afterwards his Colleague in the Empire who was killed in the Battel in Africa near Carthage and a Daughter called Maecia Faustina who married Junius Balbus who was also a Consul In his Consulships he was the most Famous of all of his time insomuch that the Emperor Caracallus envied him and admired sometimes his Robes sometimes his Shews extreamly He was the first Private Man of the Romans that had a Consular Tunick and Gown Embroidered with Palm-leaves and other Devices in Gold of his own Because before the Emperors themselves when Consuls received those Robes upon solemn Occasions either out of the Capitol where they were reposited from time to time or out of the Wardrobe of the Court He gave by the Emperor's leave ten Sicilian Chariot-Horses and ten others bought out of Cappadocia to be Run in the Cirque So that he rendred himself dear to the Populace who are always affected with these things Aelius Cordus says that in all the Cities of Campania Hetruria Flaminia Ombria and the Picenum he diverted the People with the Sports of the Stage and other Divertisements upon his own Charges for four days together He writ in Prose the Praises of all the Princes before him of the Name of Antoninus which Name he so loved that when he entred his Son into the Publick Register before the Keeper of the Exchequer according to the Roman Law it is certain he called him Antoninus Gordianus After his Consulship he was chosen the Proconsul Made Proconsul of Africa of Africa with the consent of all who wished well to the Honour of the Reign of Alexander Severus in that Country That Prince hath a Letter extant in which he returns his Thanks to the Senate for making choice of so Deserving a Person for that Employment You could not do any thing says he Fathers of the Senate which is more Grateful and more Pleasing to me than your making Choice of Gordianus to be the Proconsul of Africa A Man of Honour and Gallantry Eloquent Just Continent Good and so he goes on This shews how Great a Man he then was When therefore he came into Africa the People Loved him as they never did any Proconsul before Some called him a Scipio some a Cato some a Mutius Scaevola a Rutilius and a C. Laelius One day particularly says Juâ—ius Cordus as he was Reading in publick to them an Order from the Emperor his Master which began with these words Since the Proconsulship of the two Scipio's the People took the Hint from thence to cry A New Scipio a True Scipio is the Proconsul Gordianus All Happiness to Him And several such Acclamations as these he heard frequently He was as to his Person of a Roman Height His Person and Character with comely gray Hairs and a stately Visage rather ruddy than fair a good full Face his Eyes Mouth and Brow carried a Majesty He was pretty big in the Body As to his Actions he was so Moderate that you can say nothing that he ever did passionately or immodestly or to any manner of excess He loved his Son and Grandson his Daughter and his Grand-daughter very entirely and according to all the Rules of Duty He deferred so much to his Wife's Father Annius Severus that as if he was in the Quality of a begotten Son to him he never presumed to Bath in the same Water with him nor before he was a Praetor to sit down in his presence When he was Consul he either dwelt with him always in his House or if he was at his own he went to wait upon him Morning or Night daily He Drank little and Eat less was proper in his Cloaths loved Bathing so that in Summer he Bathed four or five timeâ— a day and twice in the Winter he Slept very much If he dined any time abroad with hiâ— Friends he made no scruple to fall asleep upon the Couches which any body might seâ— was natural to him and not caused by any Ebriety or Luxury Yet did not this good Life procure him â— happy End and Death He who was in thâ— conduct of himself so Venerable and was always entertaining himself sweetly with Platâ— Aristotle Tully Virgil and the rest of the Antients suffered an Exit that was very differenâ— from his deserts As he remain'd the Proconsul of Africa in the time of the Cruel and Violent Maximin after the decease of his first Master the Emperor Alexander Severus the Senatâ— sent his Son to him into that Province in thâ— Quality of a Lieutenant to assist him Noâ— there was a Receiver of Maximin's who wâ— Barbarous upon a great many of the People oâ— the Country beyond even what Maximin himself would have suffered Some he Proscribed others he put to death enterprizing many things beyond his Commission till at length the Proconsul and the Lieutenant took it upon them to reprove him He nevertheless pursuing his Courses and threatning with death Persons of the Nobility and of Consular Dignity and the Africans not being able to endure such unwonted and outragious Injuries they first of all joyning some of the Soldiers to them killed this Receiver Then they began to think what they should do next to secure the repose of the Country and their own Lives against the Party of Maximin And it being the time that Maximin had rendered himself odious unto all the World one Mauricius a Captain of Note amongst the Africans and a Gentleman of good Birth assembled a Party of them together upon his own Grounds near the City Thysdrus and putting himself at the head of them he Harangued them thus Gentlemen and Fellow-Citizens I thank the immortal Gods that they
and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Gordianus the Second BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS GORDIANUS the Second was the Son of the precedent Gordianus the Proconsul of Africa and was set up Emperor by the Africans and by the Senate of Rome at the same time and in conjunction with his Father He was one whose Ingenuity and Carriage of himself gave him as great a Reputation as did the Honour of his Birth by which he was related to the several Noble Families of the Scipio's that of Pompey the Great the Antoninusses and the Antonies His Mother was Fabia Orestilla a Great Grand-daughter of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus which was the reason that he was Registred in his Infancy by the Name of Antoninus Gordianus But yet Gordianus was the Name which adhered to him and which he was commonly called by He was his Father's first Child In his Studies he always followed the best and gravest Opinions He was very Handsome His Character when young of an extraordinary Memory and a kind and sweet Disposition insomuch that at School when a Child if he saw some of the Boys beaten he could not forbear to cry for them His Master was Serenus Sammonicus who extreamly loved him and bequeathed to him at his death a Library which consisted of Sixty two Thousand Books being the whole Library of another Serenus Sammonicus the Father who was put to death under the Emperor Caracalla The same of which Treasure of Learning extolled Gordianus to the Heavens and gave him a great Name amongst the Ingenious The Emperor Heliogabalus made him a Quaestor to whom he was known by being a young Man that loved Pleasure but yet without Scandal and without ever bearing part in the infamous Luxury of that Prince Alexander Severus made him a Praetor for the Affairs of the City of Rome He discharged himself so well and gained so great an Esteem that he presently after was made a Consul though his Father had come late to that Honour After which either in the time of the same Alexander Severus or in that of Maximin he was sent into Africa as Lieutenant to his Father the then Proconsul there where what Fortune befel him we have already recounted under the Life of his Father He loved Wine but he always had it Infused And in his advanc'd Age. either with Roses or Mastick or Wormwood or other things that pleased his Palate He eat very little He had dined and supped as it were in a moment Women he passionately loved It is said he kept two and twenty Concubines by all which he had three or four Children a-piece He was called the Priamus of his Age for the multitude of his Issue In Drollery instead of Priamus they many times called him a Priapus He spent his time betwixt the Gardens the Baths and the delightful Groves Nor did his Father Correct him but often said That he would one day die a Great Man For as freely as he lived he did not depart from that Vigor which was natural to him nor from the Virtues of Persons of Honour He was always amongst the most Illustrious Company and ready with the best of his Judgment to serve either the Publick or his Friend Therefore the Senate were very glad to Proclaim him Emperor together with his Father and placed the Publick Hopes in him He was just in his Dress beloved by his Domesticks and all that belong'd to him Aelius Cordus says that he never would consent to Marry But on the contrary we are told by Dexippus that Gordianus the Third was his Son who afterwards whilst he was a Youth was advanced to the Empire in conjunction with Maximus and Balbinus When his Father some time consulted an Astrologer about the Nativity of him it was answer'd they say That he would be both the Son and the Father of an Emperor and an Emperor himself Gordianus laughing at it as a Jest the Astrologer shew'd him his Horoscope and undertook to prove out of the Books of the Antient Masters of the Art of Astrology that what he said was true He told him the Day the Manner the Place of the Death of both the First and Second Gordianus and justified himself with the greatest obstinacy All which Gordianus the Elder reflecting upon when he saw himself an Emperor he even when there was no reason for him to be afraid of any thing spoke very often both of his own and his Son's Death and applied to his Son those Verses of Virgil Ostendent terris hunc tantum c. i. e. This Man will only to the World be shown lamenting his Condition that he was not long to live We have several Discourses and also Verses of Gordianus the Second extant which at this day are often remembred amongst his Friends They are not Great nor yet Mean but of a middle Character and such as bespeak him to have been an Ingenious Man of a Luxuriant Wit and negligent of the Parts that Nature gave him He was a great lover of Fruit and Herbs In his other Diet he was very sparing but he was always eating some New Fruit or other A great lover of all Cold things in the Summer he eat little else He was Gross and much inclined to be Fat and therefore he the rather chose this Diet to keep himself down This is what I have judged worthy to be remarked concerning the Second Gordianus For as for his domestick Pleasures and other petty things of no Observation which are with so little judgment recollected by Junius Cordus let any Person who is desirous to know them read him who tells you how many Coats and Cloaks every Prince had what Courtiers how many Servants the knowledge whereof signifies nothing Nor do I think that it is the part of an Historian to trouble himself but about things which it is either good to follow or good to avoid I shall only add a Passage which I find in Vulcatius Terentianus who hath writ a History of his Time He says that Gordianus the First was the Reverse of Augustus Caesar he spoke so like him and he resembled him so much in his Face and Stature That the Second Gordianus was very like Pompey the Great But as to this I know not what to say Because it is denied that Pompey was Fat or Gross And he further says That Gordianus the Third whose Statues we have now extant resembled the Asiatick Scipio This I thought was Remarkable and more for their Honour than to be wholly pass'd in silence THE A. Christi Ccxxxviii Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Gordianus the Third BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS AFter the death of the two preceding Gordiani as on the one hand the Senate whom that News had struck with a great Consternation and put them very much in fear of Maximin elected out of the twenty Persons appointed for the defence of Italy Maximus and Clodius Balbinus to be Emperors so on the other the People and the Guards made it their Request that
Cecropius a Colonel of the Dalmatians who by his Address and Prudence had much assisted towards the pretensions of Claudius about Milan and his Brother Valerian was also killed with him at the same place whom though some deny to have been honoured with the Imperial Style and some make him a Caesar and some neither the one nor the other yet this is certain that after the Captivity of his Father we find in the publick Registers a Note of the Emperor Valerian ' s being a Consul which can only mean the Son Valerian The Soldiers fell into a great Mutiny upon the death of Gallienus and cried him up for an Useful Brave and Powerful Prince taken off only to serve private Interests But as it is the known way to appease Soldiers to give them Money and great Promises Martianus with the advice of others of the principal Officers having done this and given them upon the spot because they had Money enough at hand twenty pieces of Gold a Man they submitted and were satisfied to have Gallienus entred as a Tyrant upon the Publick Records And then Claudius a good and truly Venerable Person a lover of his Country and the Laws and dear to all of worth acceptable to the Senate and well known to the People took the Empire upon him In this manner lived and died Gallienus who was born to serve his Belly and his Lusts Character of Gallienus He spent Days and Nights in Drinking and Whoring without caring what became of all the State About thirty Persons in his time set up for Emperors to the dishonour of the Roman Name nay even Women-Revolte 〈…〉 His horrid Luxury Governed better than he In the Spring to tell you some of his miserable Devices he made himself Beds of Roses and Pomilions of Apple-Trees and all sorts of Fruits Grapes he preserved three Years He had Melons in the depth of Winter Sweet Wine all the Ye 〈…〉 long Green Figs and Apples fresh from t 〈…〉 Trees in Months which were out of their proper Season His Table Linen was always embroidered with Gold His Services of Gold set with Jewels The Powder for his H 〈…〉 was of Gold dust He often went abroad iâ— a Crown radiated like that of God At Româ— where the Emperors appear always in Gowns he wore a Purple Cloak with Buttons of Jewels set in Gold and a Purple Tunicâ— embroidered with Gold His Belt was beset with Jewels His Shoes were covered with Jewels He Eat in Publick The People h 〈…〉 softned and attracted to him by Largesses He invited the Ladies to the Feast of his Consulship who kissed his Hand and he presented them with four Pieces of Gold of his Coin Aâ— a great Philosopher Xenophon once said wheâ— he had lost his Son I knew that when I beg 〈…〉 him I begat a Mortal so said Gallienus wheâ— he heard that his Father was taken Prisoner I knew my Father was a Mortal For which Saying Annius Cornicula vainly commends his Constancy Going out and coming in he was often attended with Musick Voices and Instruments He Washed in the Summer six or seven times a day in the Winter twice or thrice He drank always in Vessels of Gold scorning Glass because he said nothing was commoner than it He changed his Wine every time he drank never at one Meal drank twice of the same His Mistresses often sat at the Table with him A second Table was always by of Jesters and all sorts of Mimicks When he removed to the Gardens wh 〈…〉 h bear his Name all the Houshold followed him who were admitted to Eat and Bath and Swim with him Women also young and old handsome or unhandsome were often admitted with whom he jested and diverted himself whilst the Empire every where went to ruine at the same time He was extremely Cruel however upon the Soldiers for sometimes he killed three or four thousand of them together in a day He ordered a vast great Coloss to be made of him in the form of that of the Sun which was begun but when he died it was left unfinished He designed to have placed it upon the Esquiline holding a Spear in the hollow of whose Shaft a Child might go up by steps to the top He had ordered a Chariot and Horses in imitation of those of the Sun to be made proportionable to this Statue and to be set upon a vast Basis But the Emperors Claudius and Aurelian who came after thought all this foolish He did also design to continue the Work of the Portico Flaminia as far as to Ponte Molle and to make it with four or five Orders of Pillars But it would be tedious to say more of him Let whoever desires to know any thing more go to Palfurius Sural who hath written a Journal of his Life I shall proceed to Saloninus Gallienus his Son And then I will say something in short of the Thirty pretended Emperors or Tyrants in particular who set up themselves against this Prince I must own I have here studiously pretermitted several things out of a respect to his Posterâ—â—y You know Sir very well what a War a Man many times raises against himself who writes of the Ancestors of another I do not doubt but you remember what Tully says in his Hortensius Gallienus with the time that he enjoy'd the Empire in conjunction with his Father reigned it is certain in all Fifteen Years that is Six Years in conjunction with Valerian who then was taken Prisoner and Ten afterwards in which he reigned by himself I mention this because some have said that Gallienus died in the Ninth or Tenth Year of his Reign By which if they mean the Years that he reigned alone after the Captivity of his Father it is true that he died in his Ninth Year But otherwise those Decennial Games which we have spoken of were celebrated by him in his Tenth Year And after them he overcame the Gotâ—â— or Scythians made a Peace with Odenatus and Aureolus fought against Post humius and Lolliâ—nus and did many other things some to his Honour but more to his eternal Shame he even Raked about the Taverns always in the Night and passed the greatest part of his time in the Debauched Company of Pimps Players and Poltrons Gallienus the Second BY TREBELLIUS POLLIO THIS Gallienus was the Son of Gallienus the First and the Grandson of the Emperor Valerian the First There is little to be said of him more than that he was Nobly born Educated like a Prince and at last killed not upon his own account but upon the account of his Father Some call him Saloninus Gallienus because he was born at the City of Salona in Dalmatia or because his Mother's Name was Cornelia Salonina Pipara the Daughter of a Barbarian King who whether she was the Wife or the Mistress of his Father it is certain that she was one that he extremely loved There is extant to this day in Rome a Statue which did
were so distressed there with a Famine and a Pestilence that their own Calamities anticipated the Work of our Arms nor would Claudius give them that honour to Conquer them in the Condition they then were Thus this fierce War ended and the Roman Name was eased of those Terrors with which it was threatned in the beginning One thing the Truth obliges me to observe that such as think we Flatter may know that we conceal nothing which it is requisite that a History should publish Once after a full Victory that Claudius had received of the Enemy his Men grown careless with the Success which is apt to disorder the wisest Heads fell so to Plunder that they forgat all thoughts and fears of the Enemy Therefore a Party of the Enemy that had fled returning unexpectedly again upon them whilst they were yet ingaged wholly in Plundering cut off of them two thousand But as soon as Claudius saw it he drew up his Troops and took all that Party of the Enemy Prisoners and laid them in Irons and sent them to Rome to be kept for the bloody Purpose of the Fights of the Gladiators So Claudius with his good Conduct retrieved that Miscarriage of his Men or rather that Blow of Fortune and the Enemy by their Stratagem only heightened his Victory and their own ruine In this War the Dalmatick Horse signaliz'd themselves much Claudius himself hath been sometime thought to derive his Origin from their Country though others make him a Trojan and pretend to bring him down even from Ilus and Dardanus the two most Antient Kings of Troy The Enemy had in this War thrust themselves into the Island of Crete and attempted to lay waste that of Cyprus But their Army every where labouring under Sickness they were likewise easily reduced there Then the Gothick War being finished and the general Sickness raging more and more Claudius fell sick of the same and died and the Death of Claudins Heavens received him to whom his Virtues so particularly allyed him After his death his Brother Quintillus with universal Consent ascended the Empire Not as if it was by Inheritance but he was preferred to it for his deserts He was so good a Person and so truly as I may say in Virtue his Brother's Brother that he would have been made Emperor though he had never had that Relation by Blood Under him the Barbarians that yet remained laid waste the City of Kenkis in Thrace and attempted Nigeboli in Bulgaria but they were defeated and suppressed again by the Valour of those of the Country His Reign was so short that he had not the time to be Master of any great Action The Soldiers killed him Death of Quintillus as they did Galba and Pertinax the seventeenth day of his Reign only because he was strict upon them and shew'd himself a better and more truly a Prince than they desired to have him to be Dexippus indeed does not say so plainly that he was killed but only that he'died without mentioning the manner of his Death as if he thought it dubious Having given this Account of the Military part of Claudius I should be wanting to the Reader if I did not in the next place observe Extraction and Family of Claudius some few things concerning his Family and Person He had two Brothers Quintillus and Crispus Crispus had a Daughter called Claudia who was married to Eutropius a Noble Trojan by descent who was the Father of Constantius the Caesar Claudius had some Sisters one of which was called Constantina married a Tribune of the Assyrians but she died young Concerning the Father and Ancestors of Claudius I know little because most Persons have written differently about them Claudius himself was grave in his Manners of a singular good Life extraordinary Chaste and Virtuous He drank little eat quick was Tall his Eyes bright and flagrant a full Visage and so strong in the Arms that he hath oftentimes struck out the Teeth of a Horse or a Mule with a blow He did this once when he was a young Man Wrestling with the strongest there in the Field of Mars at the Publick Exercises of the Soldiers the Party with whom he Wrestled giving him a twist by the Cods which was unlawful Claudius in a passion lift up his Hand and struck out all his Teeth at once The Emperor Decius was then present who it not being an Action to be punished because it shew'd both the Bravery and the Modesty of Claudius commended him rather publickly for it and presented him with the Collars and Bracelets and ordered him to Wrestle no more to avoid further occasions of Quarrel He left no Children Quintillus left two and Crispus as I said one Daughter What an opinion the Emperors Valerian Decius and Gallienus had of Claudius whilst he was their Subject and the probability that then appeared of his future Elevation we may see in these following Letters A Letter of the Emperor Valerian to Zosimion the Procurator of the Province of Syria I Have given the Command of the Fifth Legion called Martia unto Claudius who is an Illyrian born and a Man of so much Bravery and Honour that his Equal is not easily to be found in Ages past You shall allow him for his Salary out of our Granaries every Year 3000 Bushels of Wheat 6000 Bushels of Barley 2000 Pound of Bacon 3500 Quarts of Old Wine 150 Quarts of the best Oyl 600 Quarts of other Oyl 20 Bushels of Salt 150 Pound of Wax Hay Straw Vinegar Roots Herbs as much as he wants 20 Parcels of Skins with 10 to each Parcel for his Tents Mules every Year 6 Horses every Year 3 Camels every Year 10 She-Mules every Year 9 of Wrought Silver every Year 50 Pound weight Philips 150 having our Image upon them yearly 47 more in Occasional Presents and 160 Denieres Also for Pots Flaggons Cups and other Vessels of Brass 22 Pound weight Officers Coats 2 Clasps of Silver gilt 2 One Buckle of Gold one Silver Belt gilt one Ring set with two Gems of an Ounce weight One Bracelet of 7 Ounces one Collar of a Pound weight one Helmet overlaid with Gold two Shields inlaid with Gold one Cuirasse which he shall restore again two Herculean Javelins short Darts two Sithes two Hedge-Bills four One Cook whom he shall restore One Muletier whom he shall restore Two Handsome Women of the Captives for his Mistresses One Albe or White Vest of Silk trimmed with Purple One Robe de Chambre trimmed alike One Secretary whom he shall restore One Sewer whom he shall restore Cyprian Table-Bes two Pair Linnen Vests plain two One Gown which he shall restore One Senatorian Robe which he shall restore Running Footmen two One Carpenter One Controller of his Houshold One Water-Bayliff One Fisherman One Confectioner Of Wood every day a thousand Pound weight if it is to be had or if not as much as you conveniently can Of Charcoal every day four Pans One Bagnio-man
going to meet the Enemy commanded the usual Sacrifices to be offered to the Gods the whole Army to be purged and all the Soldiers to burn Incense which this Legion being Christians refusing they were decimated once that is every tenth Man drawn out and put to death But this could not alter their Principles They were decimated a second time but neither so were they to be removed from their Religion Then they were surrounded by the Army and all slain in their own Camp at a Place called Agaunum in Gallia whither they were retired the distance of eight Miles from the Camp of Maximian but assuring him that excusing them their Religion they were always ready to return unto his Camp again and to Act as bravely as any against the Enemy It was by the Hands and Labours of the Christian Soldiers that Maximian raised those immense Structures of the Baths of Dioclesian at Rome the Baths of his own Name at Carthage the Palace at Aquileia and the Amphitheatre at Verona For he condemned them to any the most servile Offices As he assisted upon the fifteenth of the Kalends of May in the Year 301. at the Games of the Cirque the Populace who knew very well that they could not do any thing to oblige him more cryed Let the Christians be cut off and repeated it twelve times May it please your Majesty let there be no Christians They repeated this ten times Therefore Eugenius Hermogenianus the Captain of the Guards proposed the Matter to the Senate who resolving it in the Affirmative Maximian issued out his Rescript for their Excision directed to Venustianus the day before the Kalends of May. In the next place came out the General Edict of Dioclesian to Abolish the Assemblies of the Christians in all places wheresoever they were to raze their Churches to the ground to burn their Scriptures to secure their Ecclesiasticks to deprive them of all Honours Offices and Liberties and by all the means imaginable to force them to comply to the Worship of the Gods Infinite Numbers upon this in all Parts perished In Aegypt alone 140000 were Martyred and 700000 Banished Columns were set up over all the Roman Empire in the Names of Dioclesian and Maximian and sometimes Dioclesian and Galerius vainly boasting that they had extinguished the Christian Name Whereas on the contrary they had propagated it and confirmed it For the Blood of the Martyrs was the Seed of the Church and the Christians surmounted all this with a Virtue never to be forgotten never to be expressed Dioclesian himself lived to know that his Enterprize was impracticable He fell into a Melancholy quitted the Purple which others have so dearly bought Created Galerius at Nicomedia Emperor in his stead and retired for his own part to the City of Salona in Dalmatia where after a Private Life of 9 Years Death of Dioclesian he died some say he Poisoned himself and the Romans consecrated him a God He had reigned 20 Years and lived to the Age of 68. Maximian at the perswasion of Dioclesian concurred with him in this his last unprecedented Action They both Abdicated the Empire in a day Maximian created in his stead Constantius Emperor at Milan and went and lived a Private Life in the Province of Lucania Maximian and resumes till the Romans perswaded him to resume his Dignity again in order to determine a great Quarrel that was arisen betwixt Maxentius his Son and Severus the Kinsman of Galerius Maximian endeavour'd in like manner to have perswaded Dioclesian to have resumed his former Dignity again also But Dioclesian detested it and said I wish you could see my Gardens that I have Planted with my own hand at Salona you would never have thought this a thing to be proposed to me However Maximian put himself at the Head of an Army and went to the Siege of Ravenna and getting Severus by Treachery within his Power he slew him whose Body was interred afterwards in the Sepulchre of Gallienus upon the Appian Way 9 Miles from Rome Quitting the Army when this Work was done because he was not overwelcome to Command it longer he visited Dioclesian at Salona and then went into Gallia where he matched his Daughter Fausta unto the Emperor Constantine the Son of Constantius by Helena who had succeeded to the Powers of his Father But yet as he was at Treves it was found that he practised his Arts upon the Soldiers with a design if he could to expel Constantine and possess himself of the Empire a-new Constantine was advertised of it by Fausta and pursuing him as far as to Marseilles he besieged him took him and ordered him to be Strangled and his Body was interred at His Death Milan He had reigned 18 Years and lived to the Age of 60. He was born at Sirmish in Sclavonia of mean Parents His Wife was Eutropia a Syrian Woman by whom he had Issue Maxentius and Fausta He was a very Rough Stern and Barbarian-like Man but a great Soldier and a faithful Friend to Dioclesian and one that had been his old Companion in Arms. And he was Incontinent and Treacherous THE A. Christi CCCIV. Lives and Reigns OF THE EMPERORS Flavius Constantius Chlorus AND Galerius Maximianus Armentarius BY J. BERNARD THERE is the less to be spoken of these two Princes in this place because a great part of their Actions hath been represented already in the Account of the Emperors fore-going under whom they served and who advanced them successively to the Dignity first of Caesars and then of Emperors Therefore I shall only here take notice that at the same time that they were created Caesars they were obliged to put away their Wives to whom they were already married and to re-marry for a Tye of Affinity into the Families of Dioclesian and Maximian Constantius dismissed himself from Helena by whom he had had Constantine who was afterwards the Emperor Constantine the Great and he remarried to Theodora who was Daughter-in-Law to Maximian In like manner Galerius re-married to Valeria who was the Daughter of Dioclesian but she did not live long with him and to consecrate her Memory to futurity after her Death her Father imposed her Name on a part of Pannonia which he called the Province of Valeria and also he gave her Name to a City situated upon the Banks of the Danube Constantius was the Son of a Daughter of Crispus who was the Brother of the Emperor Claudius He was created the Caesar properly to Maximian to whom he succeeded in the Government of the West and Galerius was the Caesar properly to Dioclesian to whom he succeeded in the Empire of the East But as Constantius was a Prince endowed with all the fine and good Qualities in the World it is certain that he neither when he was a Caesar not when Emperor dipped his Hands in the Blood of the Christians which all the other Three laboured to spill with so much greediness He could not indeed
had from a War of his own So they carried the Children of Marcus of either Sex in the Triumph with them even his Virgin-Daughters and they beheld the Games which were Celebrated upon the occasion with their triumphal Habits upon them Amongst other remarkable things of the Pity of Marcus it is not fit to forget this that he ordered Feather-beds to be spread under the Rope-dancers after an accidental fall of a Boy from the Rope which is the reason that we have a Custom of hanging a Net under them at this day Whilst the Parthian War was yet on Foot War with the Marcomanni another War kindled with the Marcomanni in Germany which was suspended a good while by the Art of the Officers upon the Frontiers that it should not trouble us till the Oriental War was over It was five years from the beginning of that War to the return of Verus At whose return Marcus declared to the Senate that as he had sometime before given them Intimations of a War in Germany so it was necessary that now both the Emperours in Person should repair to it Now the terrour of this Marcomannick War was so great that Marcus was obliged to send for Priests from all parts to dispatch the vast number of Sacrifices which were vowed and offered upon this occasion He Celebrated all the Sacred Foreign Rites that were ever seen at Rome and purged the City of Rome all manner of ways and Celebrated the Feasts of Lectisternia seven days together A Pestilence at the same time prevailed A great Plague which was so great that the dead were carried off in Carts and Wagons This obliged the two Princes to make strict Laws concerning Burials and Sepulchres in which they provided that it should not be at the Liberty of Persons to build their Sepulchres in what place they pleased which is still in force at this day Many thousands dyed of this Pestilence several of the Nobility whereof the most considerable had their Statues set up by Marcus Antoninus Who in his great Clemency took that care of the Common People that he ordered them to be buried upon his own Expence The Marcomanni and their Confederates being now actually in Arms and putting all things into Confusion the two Emperours arrayed in their Military Apparel set forward together upon the Expedition Their March had no small effect with it as soon as they came but as far as to Aquileia For the Kings of the Enemy for the most part not only retreated with their Men but put to death the Authors of their Insurrection The Quadi whose King was dead said that they would not confirm the Person his Successour who had been Created in his place till our Emperours approved him others sent Ambassadours to them to ask their Pardon for their disobedience so that Verus his Opinion who had set out much against his will in the beginning was for returning back to Rome especially having lost the Captain of the Guards Furius Victorinus and a part of the Army But Marcus believing that the Barbarians dissembled and that both their Retreat and the other things which they did were only out of a fear of being oppressed with the weight of so great a Force he declared himself to be for pursuing the War Therefore they marched on and crossed the Alpes having settled all things in order for the safety of Italy and Illyricum However Verus was urgent for going back to Rome to which Marcus at last consented and that the Senate should have notice given them of it by Letter But as they were afterwards upon the Road in the Coach together Verus was Death of Verus suddenly taken with an Apoplexy and died Marcus was so little affected for his part with those Pleasures which were the real Reason of Verus his desire to return to Rome that he both Read and hearkned to any one's Business and signed Orders whilst he hath been at the shews of the Cirque which made the People they say sometimes pass their Railleries upon him Geminas and Agaclytus two manumitted Servants of Verus had a great Influence over their Master But yet Marcus dissembled and even excused the Faults of Verus tho' they displeased him never so much He deified him after his Death He provided honourably for his Aunts and his Sisters He appointed a great many Sacrifices to his Honour He appointed his Priests and gave him all the other Respects which are paid to the Gods But as there is no Prince but is subject to the most outragious Censure Marcus was for all this represented as if he had either poysoned Verus by a Knife invenom'd on one side with which he cut a piece of a Sacrifice and gave Verus the invenomed part to eat whilst he reserved the sound to himself or at least that he killed him by his Physician Posidipâ—us by letting him Blood unseasonably After the Death of Verus Avidius Cassius revolted from Marcus Tho' Marcus was so indulging to Verus his Relations and all that belonged to him that he did them all the Honours that it was possible Commodus his Son Commodus declared Caesar as wicked and profligate as he was received from him the Title of Caesar the Dignity of the Priesthood the Title of Emperor a share â—n the Triumph with him and the Consulship At the same time the Father attended the Triumphal Chariot of the Son on Foot in the Cirque Now when Marcus reigned alone after the Death of Verus he was much more easie and more abundant in good Actions than he could be before because he was hindered with the Errours of his Brother He was one for his own Part of that Tranquillity of Mind that he never changed his Countenance either with Sorrow or Joy following exactly the Precepts of the Stoick Philosophy which he had learnt from all the best Masters and which he had diligently collected from all Parts Hadrian would have made him his immediate Successour had not his Minority theâ— hindred it Nevertheless he chose him for one whom he obliged Pius to adopt that a he was deserving of the Roman Empire iâ— should sooner or later certainly come to him So he treated the Provinces with a great deal of Moderation and Goodness and managed his Affairs happily against the Germans He went through with the Marcomannick War End of the Marcomannic War than which a greater hath not been known in any Age with a Bravery equally extraordinary as the Success and this at a time when a grievous Pestilence swept away many Thousands of the People and the Army The Marcomanni the Sarmatians the Vandals the Quadi being extinguished by him he delivered the Country of Pannonia out of its Servitude for which he triumphed at Rome and his Son Commodus with him whom he had created Caesar He had exhausted all his Coffers upon this War and because he could not persuade himself to command any thing from the Provinces to over-charge them he made an Auction
in the Forum of Trajan of the Goods of his Houshold He sold the Vessels of Gold Crystal and Myrrh the Royal Services Rich Garments of his Wife 's which were embroidered with Gold and several Jewels which were laid up in the Cabinet of Hadrian The Sale continued Two Months and such a considerable Sum was produced by it that having prosecuted the Reliques of the Marcomannick War with it according to his desire he gave the Buyers the Liberty to return if they pleased their Purchases and take their Money again But whether they did or no he was satisfied and allowed Gentlemen to have their Tables as splendid as himself In the publick Shews which he gave the People at his Triumph he was so Magnificent that he exposed a Hundred Lions together to be shot to death with Arrows Having therefore Reigned to the general Love of all the People who called him by the endearing Terms of sometimes their Brother sometimes Father sometimes Son as every one's Age was he died in the Eighteenth Year Death of Antoninu◠of his Empire and the Sixty First of his Age. The Love of him amongst all the People appear'd on the Day of his interment Because none thought him then an Object to be lamented but assured themselves that as he had been formed and lent them by the Gods so he was returned to the Gods Before his Funeral was well finished a thing which never was known to be done before nor since the Senate and the People in one Body upon the place pronounced him a Propitious Deity This great Man who was so Excellent himself and so ally'd to the Gods both in his Life and Death left a Son Commodus who was so ill on the other hand that it had been happy he had never had him Nay it was a small thing that Persons of all Ages Sexes Conditions and Dignities honoured Marcus as a God for he was judged Sacrilegious whoever had not his Image in his House if his fortune permitted him To this day in many Families the Statues of Marcus Antoninus stand amongst the Houshold Deities and some Persons have firmly and publickly averred that he hath predicted many future and true thing to them in Dreams A Temple was erected to him and an Order of Priests of his own Name appointed him with all other things which to consecrated Persons have ever been ascribed by Antiquity Some say and it is not unlikely that Commodus Antoninus his Successor and his Son was a sort of an Adulterous Birth the Story whereof is represented commonly thus Faustina Story of the Birth of Commodus the Wife of Marcus and formerly the Daughter of Antoninus Pius seeing one Day the Gladiators enter the Amphitheatre fell in love with one of them to that degree that she laboured under a long Sickness upon it till at last she confessed the Cause to her Husband Marcus advised with the Magicians whose Counsel it was to put to Death that Gladiator and that Faustina should wash her Secrets with his Blood and then lie with her Husband This was done and her Love cured But Commodus was born after it more a Gladiator than a Prince because when he was Emperor he fought almost a Thousand Combats with the Gladiators in the publick view of the People as we shall have occasion to say in his Life And that which makes this Story the more credible is this Son of so Holy a Father was a Man of those profligate Manners that no common Sword-player Actor Baiter of Beasts nor in fine no one tho' of the sink of all Shame and Wickedness was like him Others say that he was absolutely a Bastard and that Faustina when she was at the Port of Gajetta chose herself there by the Eye the Seamen generally working naked what Men she saw were the best provided both out of the Sea-men and the Gladiators wherefore Marcus Antoninus was advised by one if he would not punish her by Death to divorce her To which he answered If I divorce my Wife I must return her her Dower But her Dower was the Empire which he had received from her Father who had adopted him at the desire of Hadrian Certainly the Virtue the Integrity the Tranquillity the Piety of a good Prince is a thing of that prevalence that the ill Character not so much as of the nearest Relation can defame him And so it was with Marcus Antoninus who persevering still in his own virtuous way and not changing in any thing upon the whispers or calumnies of the People neither his Gladiator-Son was a prejudice to him nor his impure Consort He is as he hath ever been esteemed a God to this Day and particularly by you O most Sacred Emperor Dioclesian who have a Veneration for him even above the rest of your Gods and are pleased often to say That you chiefly wish yourself like him in his Life and the Clemency which he always exercised tho' should Plato return into the World again he could not parallel him with all his Philosophy The things that passed under Marcus Antoninus after the Death of Verus were these First the Body of Verus was brought to Rome and interred in the Sepulchre of his Ancestors and Ver 〈…〉 made a God Then Marcus thanked the Senate for having Consecrated his Brother but intimated at the same time As if the Counsels by which the Parthians were overcome had been much owing to himself and that now he would govern as it were upon a new and better Foundation The Senate took it in the Sense which Marcus meant and seemed to congratulate that Verus was departed this Life However Marcus provided very honourably for Verus's Sisters Relations and Servants Indeed he was very Curious of his Reputation and enquired always what every one said of him and corrected himself accordingly in such things as they seemed to blame him for with reason Going to the War in Germany he re-married his Daughter to Claudius Pompeianus the Eldest Son of a Roman Knight of a Family of the City of Antioch but not of the highest Nobility He afterwards made him Twice Consul in consideration that his Daughter was so much his Superior which Match however did neither please her nor her Mother The Moors laying waste almost all Spain he Tumults c. quelled employed his Lieutenants against them who reduced them In Egypt the Robbers about the Parts called Bucolia committing divers great Disorders they were also reduced by Avidius Cassius who afterwards set himself up for the Empire About this time Marcus Antoninus whilst he was at his Retreat at Palestrina lost his Son called Verus Caesar of the Age of Seven Years by lancing a Tumour which he had under his Ear. The Mourning for whom was kept but Five Days and then he applied himself again to the publick Business It was the time of the Celebration of the Games of Jupiter which he would not suffer to be interrupted by a more solemn Mourning so he only ordered
Accomplices of the Defection desiring if possible at the same time that no Senator might be put to Death in his Reign because it should not be polluted with Blood He ordered such Persons as were banished to be recall'd Some few Centurions lost their Heads He pardoned the Cities which had complied with Cassius He pardoned the Antiochians who had said several things against himself and in Favour of Cassius from whom however he took away their Shews their publick Conventions and all sorts of Assemblies by a strict Edict because they were a seditious People as he intimates in his Speech in Marius Maximus which he made to his Ministers upon the Subject of this Defection He designed not to see Antioch when he went into Syria nor the City Cyr or Carin of which Cassius was But however afterwards he went to Antioch He was at Alexandria and was very obliging to that City He transacted many things with the Kings of those Parts who met him together with the Ambassadors of the Persians and he established a Peace with them He made himself dear to all the Oriental Provinces and left the Prints of his Philosophy amongst them by his weighty Discourse He acted the Citizen and the Philosopher in Egypt in all the Academes Temples and publick Places where he came Though the Alexandrians had said several things to the Advantage of Cassius he pardoned them and left a Daughter of Cassius with them After this he lost his Consort Faustina at a Village called Death of Faustina Halala at the Foot of the Mountain Taurus where she died suddenly He desired the Senate to make her a Goddess and give her a Temple praising her though she had laboured under such a Censure of Unchastity which either he knew nothing of or at least he dissembled it Some Alms-Children for whom he made a Provision he called by her Name in her Honour She had accompanied him into the Field in the Summer and therefore had the Title of the Mother of the Camp He made the Village a Colony where she died and erected her a Temple there which was afterwards re-dedicated to Heliogabalus At the same time that he marched against Cassius he gave no Commands for the killing him out of his Clemency Heliodorus his Son was banished Others who banished themselves were allowed a part of their Estates And for the rest of the Children of Cassius they enjoyed above a half of their Father's Fortune His Daughter Alexandra and Druncianus her Husband had their free Liberty of going any whither And certainly Marcus Antoninus was sorry for the Death of Cassius because he said He desired to have passed his Reign without shedding the least drop of the Blood of the Senators After he had settled the Affairs of the East he came to Athens where amongst other things he visited the Temple of the Goddess Ceres to shew his Innocency because this was solemnly forbidden to wicked Persons and he was admitted into the Sacresty all alone In his return by Sea into Italy he was overtaken with a great Storm At his Landing at Brindisi in Naples he b 〈…〉 h put on the Roman Gown himself and commanded the Soldiers to habit themselves accordingly who never went in their Soldiers Coats in Italy in his Reign Being come to Rome he triumphed there and from thence he went to Lavinia He made his Son Commodus his Colleague in the Tribunitian Power He entertain'd the People with a Largess and extraordinary fine Shews He reformed many things in the Civil Policy and set proper Bounds to the Expences of the Games of the Gladiators having this Sentence of Plato much in his Mouth Happy the States where either the Philosophers are the Emperors or the Emperors are Philosophers He match'd a Daughter of Bruttius Praesens who was of the Consular Dignity to his Son Commodus But the Espousals were celebrated Espousals of Commodus with no more than ordinary Magnificence on which occasion he gave a Largess to the People Then he re-assum'd the Old War with the Marcomanni again For he had made War with those and with the Hermunduri the Sarmatae and the Quadi three Years before together and now if he had lived but one Year longer he had reduced them into Provinces But he died as he was making his preparations for that Conquest Two days before he died his Officers being admitted into his Chamber he gave them to understand that he had as ill an Opinion of his Son Commodus as Philip of Macedon had a good Opinion of his Son Alexander saying as Philip did he was not sorry to dye since he left behind him such a Son but meaning that the Roman Empire would scarce be large enough to hold the Vices of him who made it appear already departing from the Rules of Life which his Father had prescribed him that he was Cruel The Death of Antoninus and Infamous His death was thus when he began to be sick he called his Son to him and advised him first of all not to slight the Reliques of the War for fear that he should seem to betray the Empire To which Commodus answering that he should be obliged for his own safety to be gone from the Army because of the Pestilence which raged he told him again He might do as he would but he desired him rather to tarry at least a few days because he would do well to appear to hold it a little against the Barbarians After this he would neither eat nor drink because he desired to dye and this increased his Distemper The sixth day he called in his Friends and discoursing to them about the Vanity of Humane things and the Contempt of death he said Why are you sorry for me when you ought rather to think of the Pestilence which rages and of the common death of every one As they retired from him he sighed and said If you see me no more I bid you farewel I go before you They asked him to whom he recommended his Son He said To all you if he deserves it and to the Gods Immortal The Army upon the notice of his sickness was very much troubled for they loved him dearly The seventh Day he was worse and saw none but his Son whom he presently dismissed again for fear he should be infected His Son being gone he threw the Cloaths over his Head as if he went to sleep and died that night Some say that when he saw that Commodus would prove such a Man as afterwards he did he rather wished him dead than that he should make another Nero Caligula or Domitian by his Reign One thing Marcus Antoninus is blamed for which is That he promoted to several Honors Tertullus Utilius Orphitus and Moderatus who were his Wife 's great Lovers He had Licentiousness of Faustina surprized Tertullus one day actually at Dinner with her The Buffoon upon the Stage gave him a Rub as to this Man in his own Presence What says he to him
that was with him is the name of that Man that you say Gallants my Wife the other answered Tullus Tullus Tullus He asked him the same Question again says the other I have told you By which the Audience plainly saw that he meant that his crying three times Tullus signified Tertullus So every body talk'd very much of this Spark and blamed the Patience of Antoninus Sometime before his death and before he went the second time to the Marcomannick War he took his Oath in the Capitol that not one single Senatour by his knowledge had been put to death And he said He should have saved the lives even of the Rebels with Cassius if it had been left to him He was so far from seeking to enrich himself with the Estate of Proscribed Persons that he abhorred and shun'd nothing more than the scandal of Covetousness against which he purges himself in several Letters Some pretend to say that he was a Dissembler and not really of that Sincerity as he seemed to be or as either Pius or Verus was of And again they say that he too much raised the Pride of the Court by estranging his Friends from his Company and his Banquets He ordered a Deification for his Parents and honoured the Friends of his Relations with Statues though they were Persons that were dead He did not easily believe things upon Trust but gave himself always time enough to find out the truth After the death of Faustina Fabia the Sister of Verus was Ambitious to Marry him But he rather chose to content himself with a Concubine of a Daughter of a Servant to his late Wife than over so many Children which he had to superinduce a Step mother THE A. Christi CLXII Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR VERUS ANTONINUS By JULIUS CAPITOLINUS Addressed to the EMPEROR DIOCLESIAN I Know very well that several Persons who have written the History of the Actions of Marcus and Verus have done it in such a method as to give the Reader an account of Verus in the first place following the order not of their Reigns but their Deaths But I have thought it my Duty to give the precedence as to this to Marcus and to treat of Verus afterwards because Marcus was the first of the two upon the Throne and because his survival after the death of Verus made but a continuation still of the same Reign Lucius Cejonius Aelius Commodus Verus Antoninus who by his Adoption into the Aelian Family by the Will of Hadrian was called Aelius and by his Alliance with Marcus Antoninus received the name of Verus Antoninus was a Prince whom we do not reckon in the number of the Best nor yet on the contrary in the number of the Worst Princes For as his Virtues were not abundant so neither were his Vices formidable One thing is he did not Reign an Independent Monarch of himself for he was under Marcus but yet of an equal Majesty with him in the Empire and at the same time he very much differed from him in this that he was Licentious in his Manners and was of an humour that was frank and open and could dissemble nothing His Father was Lucius Aelius Verus who formerly had been Adopted by Hadrian being the first of the Title of a Caesar as it is used to denote the Person appointed to be the Successour to the Empire and who died in that Quality His Grandfathers and Great Grandfathers together with many of his other Ancestours Verus his Birth and Extraction had been Consuls He was born at Rome in the Praetorship of his Father upon the eighteenth of the Calends of January which was heretofore also the Birth-day of the Emperor Nero. His Family by his Father's side was for the most part out of the Country of Hetruria and by his Mother's out of the City Faenza This being his Extraction he upon the Adoption of his Father by Hadrian came into the Family of that Emperour continuing wherein after his Father's death when Hadrian was pleased out of his care for the good of Posterity to take Antoninus Pius to be his Son and Marcus Antoninus to be his Grandson he not only obliged at the same time the former to Adopt this Verus but to give him also his Daughter to Wife which Daughter was married however to Marcus Antoninus and not to Verus because Verus in respect of his Age was not then judged proper for her as we have said above and Verus married Lucilla the Daughter of Marcus He was brought up in the Court His Master in Grammar His Preceptors for the Latin was Scaurinus the Son of that Scaurus who was the Grammarian to Hadrian For the Greek he had Telephas Hephaestion and Harpocration His Masters in the Greek Eloquence were Apollonius Celer Caninius and Herodes Atticus for the Latin Cornelius Frontâ— His Masters in Philosophy were Apollonius and Sextus all whom he loved very well and they loved him but he was one that had little of a natural Genius to Learning He pleased himself the most at first in making Verses and afterwards in making Orations It is said he was a better Oratour than a Poet or rather to speak more properly that he was a worse Poet than he was an Orator Others say he had the Wits of his Friends to assist him and that in those very things of his which are Extant whatsoever they are he served himself of the same For they say he had several Men of Learning and Eloquence always with him The Governour of his Youth was Nicomedes He was Voluptuous and shew'd great gaiety in all sorts of Pleasures Sports and Divertisements which became him but too well He was Adopted at the Age of seven years and was formed upon the Manners and Authority of Marcus Antoninus He loved Hunting Wrestling and all the Exercises of Youth and was as a private Person in the Court no less than three and twenty years together The day that he put on the Roman that is the Man's Gown Antoninus Pius dedicated a Temple to his Father Aelius Verus and gave a Bounty to the People When he was made Quaestor and entertained at his admittance into that Office the People with the Publick Games he took his place in the midst betwixt Antoninus Pius and Marcus After his Quaestorship he was presently made Consul He is made Consul in Conjunction with Sextilius Lateranus Some years after that he was made a second time Consul in Conjunction with Marcus Antoninus after which he continued a long time â—n the Estate of a private Man and was not adorned with the same Honours as Marcus was He did not sit in the Senate before his Quaestorship neither did he accompany so much with the Emperor as with the Captain of the Guards and he had no other name of Honor added to his own more than this that he was called the Emperor's Son He much delighted in the Races of the Cirque and in the Games of the
the Guards and made one of his Sons Governour of the City of Alexandria which Two were afterwards both kill'd by the Army but it was done against the Will and without the Knowledge of Marcus Antoninus who neither fell into any Passion to hear of the News of the Rebellion nor sought his Revenge upon the Children or Friends of Cassius The Senate declared him an Enemy and confiscated his Estate which Marcus Antoninus forbidding to be returned into his proper Coffers it was paid by the Order of the Senate into the publick Treasury Some pretended which struck a Terror into the City that in the absence of Antoninus Avidius Cassius as he was entirely beloved by all excepting the looser sort of People would come to Rome and expose it to Free-Plunder upon the Account of the Senatours especially who had declared him an Enemy and confiscated his Estate On the other hand the Love of Antoninus himself to Cassius appeared very much in this that when he was killed and every body unless the Citizens of Antioch were contented at it he was not killed by the Command of him for there is no doubt but he would have spared him if it had been in his Power so to do And when his Head was brought to him Clemency of Antoninus he did not rejoyce nor was he elevated at it at all but on the contrary he was very sorry that he was deprived of an occasion to shew his Mercy and said He would rather have had him taken alive to have convinced him of his Ingratitude and then saved him One said That Antoninus was to blame for being so favourable to his Enemy and to his Enemy's Friends and Children and all his adherents Adding That if Cassius had got the better what then Antoninus answered We have not so served the Gods nor so lived as that it should be his luck to Conquer us Upon which he reckoned up all the Princes that had been killed and said That there were Reasons for which they had deserved it for scarce ever any good Prince had been either killed or conquered by an Usurper for Nero deserved it Caligula deserved it Otho and Vitellius were not fit to reign He thought as much of Galba for his Covetousness and said That Avarice in an Emperor is a most bitter Fault In fine not Augustus Caesar nor Trajan nor Hadrian nor Antoninus Pius his Father could ever be surmounted by the Rebols tho' they had many of them but it was the Rebels Fate to be destroyed sometime even without the Knowledge and contrary to the Will of those Princes So he desired the Senate not to animadvert too severely upon the Accomplices of the defection of Cassius wishing that no Senatour might be put to Death in his Reign which gained him an extraordinary deal of Love Some few Centurions were punished and then as for others who were banished he ordered them to be re-called and pardoned them He pardoned the Antiochians who had so firmly adhered to the Usurpation of Cassius together with other Cities that had assisted him For tho' at the first he was very angry at the former so as to take away their publick Games and many other Ornaments of their City yet he afterward restored them to them again He bestowed a Moiety of the Estate of Cassius upon his Sons and gave his Daughters the Gold Silver and Jewels Alexandra who was one of them and Druentianus her Husband had free Power from him to go whither they would and lived in the greatest Security not like the Pledges of an Usurper but the Children of a Senatour He forbad the Fortune of their House so much as to be cast in their Teeth and some who were rude to them upon that Account were by his Order prosecuted and punished for it Here follows a Letter from the Emperor Marcus Antoninus to Faustina his Wife VErus formerly wrote the Truth to me concerning Avidius Cassius when he said That he had a greedy Eye upon the Empire For I suppose you have heard what the Expresses bring of him So come thou to Albano that we may consider together of Matters by the Will of the Gods and fear nothing This obviates what Marius Maximus says of Faustina who desiring to defame her makes her accessary to the Usurpation of Cassius Her Answer in which she presses him to be very severe was this I Will come strait to Albano to morrow as you command However I now advise that if you love your Children you would prosecute this Rebellion most severely And you may assure your self that unless you oppress them they will you Another Letter of Faustina to Marcus Antoninus upon the same Subject MY Mother Faustina in the time of the Defection of Celsus advised your Father her Husband Antoninus Pius that he should first shew his kindness to his own Family and next to Others Because he cannot be a good Prince who does not take care of his Wife and Children You see what Age our Son Commodus is of Pompeianus your Son-in-Law is already Old and a Stranger Mind what you do about Avidius Cassius and his Associates Do not spare Men who have not spared you and who if they had conquered would neither have spared me nor our Children I shall follow you in your Journey quickly I could not come to Formiae because our Fadilla is Sick But though I find you not at Formiae I shall overtake you at Capua which City may do good both to me and our Children in our Healths I desire you to dispatch Soteridas the Physician to Formiae I cannot trust to Pisitheus he knows not what Physick to give to a young Girl I receiv'd your Letter which you sâ—nt by Calphurnius and I shall answer it if I stay by Caecilius the old Eunuch a trusty Man whom you know and by whom I will send you an account by Word of Mouth what the Wife of Avidius Cassius and Son and Son-in Law are reported to say of you By these Letters one may see that Faustina was not at all Privy to the Enterprise of Cassius upon whom she is so severe What Antoninus writ to her again the following Letter shews us You it is true my Faustina Advise very well in your love to your Husband and Children I have Read your Letter in which you desire me to prosecute the Accomplices of Cassius But yet I shall spare his Children Son in-Law and Wife and write to the Senate to be Favourable to all the Party For there is not any thing that more recommends a Roman Emperour to all the World than Clemency This made Caesar a God This Consecrated Augustus This particularly adorned your Father with the Title of Pious In a word if they had gone according to the judgment of my Advice upon the War not so much as Cassius should have been killed So be then satisfied The Gods protect me my Piety is pleasing to the Gods I have declared our Pompeianus Consul for the next year
at Civita Vecchia in the Twelfth Year of his Age when Bathing and the Water happening to be a little too hot he commanded his Servant to take the Man that attended the Bath and throw him into the Furnace In whose stead the Servant threw in a Sheep-skin which he did to make him believe that it was indeed the Bagnio man by the filthiness of the Stench He had the Title of Caesar given him when a Boy together with Verus a Brother of his and in his Fourteenth Year he was entred into the College of the Priests He was declared Prince of the Roman Youth at the same time that he put on the Man's that is the Roman Gown before which he had already given a Largess to the People He put on that Gown upon the Nones of July the Day that Romulus died and the Year that Cassius revolted from Marcus Antoninus He went with his Father into Syria and Egypt and returned with him again back to Rome Then by a Dispensation of the Law as to his Age he was made Consul and upon the Fifth of the Calends of December under the Consulships of Pollio and Aper he was declared Emperor He is declared Emperor A. C. CLXXXI in Conjunction with his Father and triumphed with him the Senate having decreed it so to his Honour He went with his Father to the German War But as for such of the Officers of his Court and of his Attendants as were Persons of Virtue he could never endure them All the worst sort of Men he gladly kept in his Service and if they were removed from him he was sick till he had them again Hence he made a Tavern and His Debauchery a Bawdy house continually of the Court never sparing for Cost or Modesty playing at Dice and hiring the lewd Women of the Town which were any thing pretty to be with him to make a Sport with in all manner of Debauchery Sometimes he went about the Markets with small Wares like a Pedlar sometimes he was a Horse-Merchant sometimes he drove his own Chariots in the Coach-men's Cloaths He eat and drank with Gladiators pimped to the Whores with Washes and appeared to be born rather for the most infamous uses than for that Place unto which Fortune raised him He turned off at his coming to the Empire his Father 's old Servants and his old Friends And one day he made an attempt upon the Modesty of a Son of Salvius Julianus who was one of his Commanders But being repulsed he ever after stuck upon the skirts of his Father All the best sort of Men about the Court were turned away either in disgrace or by removing them to other places which were unworthy of them The Mimicks represented him as a Burdash for which he presently banished them He quitted the War which his Father had almost finished and granted to the Enemy every thing that they desired and then came to Rome where when he triumphed he had one Soaterus in the Chariot with him at his back to whom he many times turned about and kissed him publickly and so he did in the Cirque In the Evenings he gave himself the Liberty to run up and down to the Taverns and the Bawdy-houses he made Men Governours of the Provinces who were either the Companions of his Crimes or recommended by as ill as those that were which brought him so much on the one hand into the hatred and on the other into the contempt of the Senate that he set himself in Revenge upon the destruction of that great Order In fine the Cruelty of Commodus was a thing that moved Quadratus and Lucilla to enter into a Conspiracy to kill him not without the privity of Tarruntinus Paternus the Captain of the Guards The care of giving him the fatal Blow was committed to Claudius Pompeianus his Kinsman who going in to him with a Ponyard prepared for that purpose as he had his Opportunity to strike he broke out first into these Words The Senate sends you this whereby detecting his Design too soon he A Conspiracy against him defeated failed to accomplish it the Company taking the Part of Commodus Upon this in the first place Pompeianus and Quadratus were put to Death then Norbana and Norbanus with Paralius and his Mother and Lucilla was banished Another Reason of Commodus his falling into so great an odium being upon the Account of Saoterus whose Power the People of Rome could not brook the Captains of the Guards very civilly drew this Man out of the Court under the colour of going to assist at some Sacrifice and as he was returning back again their Spies that they had set fell upon him and killed him This was worse taken by Commodus than the Conspiracy that had been form'd against himself and looking upon Tarruntinus Paternus to be the Author of it as he was and privy also to the intended Assassination of his own Person he first removed him from his Place and Power of Captain of the Guards by the way of doing him the Honour to make him a Senatour because these two Places were then inconsistent with one another and in a few days after he charged him not only with the said Conspiracy but with promising his Daughter in marriage to the Son of Julianus in order as he pretended that the Empire should be transferred upon Julianus So both Paternus and His cruel Severity Julianus and Vitruvius Secundus who was a particular Friend of Paternus and who was one of the Secretaries to Commodus were put to Death All the House of the Quintilii were extinguished except Sextus the Son of Condianus Quintilius who passed under the notion of being dead Vitrasia Faustina Velius Rufus and Egnatius Capito were put to Death the latter of which had been a Consul The Consuls Aemilius Junctus and Attilius Severus were banished and many others were severely treated in divers ways Commodus did not so easily appear after this in Publick nor suffer himself to be spoken with upon any Business but what was first referred to Perennis who knowing very we 〈…〉 Perennis governs all the Inclinations of his Master took the Opportunity which was now in his hands to aggrandize his own Person He persuaded Commodus that he had nothing to do but to pursue his Pleasures while he took care of th◠Affairs of the State to which Commodus consented without Difficulty So Commodus 〈…〉 ving with his Three Hundred Concubines o◠the handsomest he could get of the Ladie◠and the Mistresses of the Town and with Three Hundred other Bardaccio's which he had collected indifferently out of the Plebeians and the Gentry by their Beauties passed his time in Revels and in Feasts and the Baths sometimes he butchered the Sacrifices himself in the stead of the Sacrificator whose Office that was sometimes he fought upon the publick Stage with the Gladiators at Foils and sometimes at home with own Servants at sharps Perennis was the Minister in the mean
a Letter of his in the History of his life written by Marius Maximus which I have not thought fit to insert here because of its too great length but which is a certain Proof that Pertinax was one that had a Horror for the Station of an Emperor THE A Chrisâ— CXCIV Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR DIDIUS JULIANUS By AELIUS SPARTIANUS Addressed to the EMPEROR DIOCLESIAN DIdius Julianus who succeeded in the His Extraction Empire after Pertinax had for his Great Grandfather Salvius Julianus who was twice Consul the Governor of the City of Rome and which rendred him yet the more remarkable was that he was a Professor of the Law His Mother was called Clara Aemilia his Father Petronius Didius Severus his Brothers Didius Proculus and Nummius Albinus his Uncle by his Mother's side Salvius Julianus his Grandfather by his Fathers side an Insubrian of Milan and his Great Grandfather by his Mothers side was Salvius Julianus who was of the City Mahometa in the Kingdom of Tunis He was brought up by the hand of Domitia Lucilla who was the Mother of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus and by whose Interest he was first put into the Commission of the Viginti Viri Then he was made a Quaestor although a year His Advancement sooner than the Law permitted him in point of age Then he was made an Aedile and a Praetor by the favour of Marcus Antoninus And after his Praetorship he had the Command in Germany of the Twenty Second Legion called Primigenia After that he Governed in Gallia Belgica very well and very long where the Cauchi a People of Germany who bordered upon the River of Elbe making an Eruption upon him he resisted them so well with only the tumultuous Forces of the Province that he merited by it a Consulship In like manner he overcame the Catti Then he was translated to the Government of Dalmatia which he very well maintained against the bordering Enemies Next he was removed to the Lower Germany and after that he was made the General of the Provisions in Italy He was once accused by one Severus Clarissimus a Soldier of being in a Conspiracy with Salvius Julianus against Commodus But because Commodus had already put many Senators to death who were great and powerful Persons and because he was willing a while to forbear his further Cruelty Didius Julianus was discharged at that time and his Accuser Condemned after which he was remanded again to his Province Then he had the Government of Bithynia given him in which however he came short of that Fame that he had acquired in his other Governments Next he was made a Consul in Conjunction with Pertinax and he succeeded to Pertinax in the Proconsulship of Africa who therefore always called him his Collegue and his Successor But this was more especially remarked to be Ominous one day when Julianus came with his Kinsman to him when Emperor to be Contracted to a Daughter of Pertinax For as Pertinax received him with the respect and kindness that was due he said to him at the same time You Sir Areâ— my Colleague and my Successor and presently after that followed the death of that Prince Now he who first put up to be Emperor after the death of Pertinax was Sulpitianus who was then in the Camp of the Guards In the mean time the Senate assembled whither Julianus together with his Son-in-Law coming and finding the Doors shut and the two Tribunes P. Florianus and Vectius Aper standing at the Door those two Tribunes began to persuade him to possess himself of the Empire that was vacant To which he answering that it was already disposed of to another they nevertheless took him even against his will and carried him to the Camp where they found Sulpitianus who was the Governor of Rome and Son-in-Law to Pertinax haranguing the Soldiers in his own favour so strongly that they refused to hearken in the least to Julianus till he had wisely advised them not to make Choice of one who would Revenge the Murder of Pertinax who was Father-in-Law to him and then they all immediately tacked about to Julianus who giving it them under his Hand in Writing that he would restore the Memory of Commodus they proclaimed him engaging him to bear no displeasure however against Sulpitianus for the Pretensions which he had made to their Favour Then he Chose by their Advice Flavius Gentalis and Tullius Crispinus to be the Captains of the Guards and whereas he had promised that he would give the Soldiers a Bounty of five and twenty thousand Sesterces he gave them thirty In the Evening after he had Harangued them according to Custom he came from the Camp to the Senate to whom he intirely referred himself the Senate accepted him and first Inrolled him amongst the Families of the Patricians then they declared him Emperor The Tribunitian Declar'd Emperor and the Proconsular Powers were conferred upon him and his Wife called Mallia Scantilla and his Daughter Didia Clara were honoured by them with the Titles of Empress and Princess From the Senate he repaired to the Palace whither he took his Wife and Daughter with him but they went trembling and against their wills as if their minds gave them some secret Presages of an approaching Destruction He made Cornelius Repentinus his Son-in-Law the Governor of the City of Rome in the place of Sulpitian But in the mean time the Populace bore to Julianus a Publick hatred as if he would revive the times of Commodus and as if he had been the Murderer of Pertinax because he proposed to amend his Faults They pretended to say further that despising the Frugal Table of Pertinax he had from the first day provided himself another that was Luxurious full of all sorts of excellent Meats but this however was false For besides that his Table was sufficiently Frugal he did not Eat at all the first day till the Body of Pertinax was buried and then he did it with a great Melancholy upon him and spent all the night afterwards sleepless he was so concerned for his Friend's death The next Morning as soon as it was light the Senate and the Gentry coming to wait upon him at the Palace he admitted them and called them all with a great deal of Civility according to every one's Age his Father or his Son or his Brother Nevertheless the Populace both in the Forum and before the House of the Senate loaded him with perpetual Reproaches as if they hoped by that means to oblige him to lay down the Empire that he had received at the Hands of the Soldiers They threw a Shower of Stones at him and as he came to the Senate Cursed him publickly and Cursed him again as he was at his Devotions by which they wished he might never obtain any thing of the Gods In the mean time as they threw Stones at him he only waved his Hand towards them to Pacifie them and what he said to the
Senate was very sweet and prudent He thanked them that they had admitted him to Administer in Conjunction with them the Soveraign Power and for the Honor they had done not only to himself but to his Wife and his Daughter He accepted from them the Title of the Father of the Country but he refused to have his Statue set up in Silver which they offered him Going from the Senate again to the Capitol the Populace made a stop to him till they were forced aside partly by Blows with Sword in Hand and partly by good Words and promises of Money From thence he went to the Publick Games in the Cirque where the People Crowding themselves indifferently into all the Seats redoubled their outragious Reproaches against him and called aloud upon Pescennius Niger who was said to have already taken upon him the quality of the Emperor to come to the Succour of the City of Rome yet all this took he quietly and appeared to be of an extraordinary sweet Temper all the time of his Reign The People inveighed no less bitterly against the Soldiers who had kill'd Pertinax they said for Money To conciliate therefore the favour of these People several things which Commodus had well appointed and Pertinax had abolished Didius Julianus restored again He spoke nothing neither good nor bad as to Pertinax himself which seemed to several to be very strange but the only reason why he was silent of his Honor was the fear of the Soldiers who had killed him Now Julianus had no apprehension of any Opposition being made to him on the side either of the Forces in Great Britain or those in Illyricum But fearing especially those in Syria which were commanded by Pescennius Niger he sent a Centurion thither with Orders to cut him off Hereupon Pescennius Niger Niger and Severus revolt in Syria and Septimius Severus in Illyricum revolted from Julianus with the Armies under their Commands Being told of the latter from whom he had suspected nothing he came in Anger to the Senate and caused him to be declared an Enemy and the Soldiers with him unless they deserted him by such a day to whom Messengers were sent at the same time from the Senate to persuade them to renounce Severus and adhere to Julianus Amonst whom was Vespronius Candidus who was a great Senior in the Rank of the Consuls but hated of old by the Soldiers because of his Severities Valerius Catulinus was sent in the Quality of Successor to Severus as if it was an easie thing to be the Successor of a Man who had an Army to defend him Together with these was sent Aquilius the Centurion a known Assassin who having already murdered many Senators might try his Hand once again and do no less to Severus In the mean time Didius Julianus ordered the Guards to be exercised and their Camp to be refortified But as the Soldiers were become idle and dissolute by being accustomed to the Luxuries of Rome it was very much against their wills that they were brought to their Arms insomuch that they hired others for Money to supply their places and do their duties in their steads Septimius Severus took his march towards the City of Rome with the Army under his Command whilst the People there every day more both hated and derided Julianus Nor was he able to do any good upon the Soldiers of the Guards and thinking that Laetus was a Favourer of the Cause of Severus he ungratefully commanded him to be killed who was one that had formerly saved his life from the Hands of Commodus and Martia he commanded to be killed with him But whilst these things were in passing Severus possessed himself of the Fleet and City of Ravenna and the Embassadors of the Senate that had promised this Succour to Julianus changed sides and engag'd on the part of Severus Also Tullius Crispinus the Captain of the Guards who had been sent to make Head against his Troops received a defeat and returned back by Rome When Julianus saw all this he proposed to the Senate that the Vestal Virgins and all the Priests together with the Senate should march forth to meet the Army of Severus Arrayed all in their several Habits and should conjure and persuade him fairly to desist his Hostilities A vain thing indeed to suppose of an Army of desperate Soldiers Therefore Faustinus Quintillus an Augur and a Consul took the liberty to contradict him in that Proposal and boldly said to which many of the Senators gave their consents That a Man was not fit to Command who could not resist his Adversary by force of Arms. Julianus in great Anger sent for Soldiers out of the Camp to force the Senate into a Compliance with him or Massacre them upon the place But neither did this take For certainly it was very unreasonable that when the Senate had adjudged Severus an Enemy upon the account of Julianus the same Julianus should turn such a Butcherer of the Senate So he came to the Senate with another and a better Proposal which was that there might be an Act for the participation of the Empire betwixt Severus declar'd Partner in the Empire Severus and him and this was done immediately Every one now called to mind an Omen of all this which came from the Mouth of Julianus himself when he had the Empire given him For when the Consul had said in the name of the Senate I order Didius Julianus to be proclaimed Emperor Julianus prompted and corrected him thus say Didius Julianus Severus that is because Severus was a third name which he took from his Grandfather and Great Grandfather Some indeed deny that there was any such Order of his as that of murdering the Senate who had been so kind to him But however that is after passing that Act he sent immediately Tullius Crispinus his Captain of the Guards to Complement Severus He also Created Veturius Macrinus another Captain of the Guards because he understood that Severus had sent Letters to make him one In the mean time the People said aloud and Severus suspected as much that this Peace was but a Feint and that Tullius Crispinus was sent to him rather with private Orders to kill him So Severus with the advice of his Army chose to be his declared Enemy rather than his Partner and accordingly he writ to a great many Persons in Rome his Friends who secretly received and dispatched his Orders As for the rest Julianus tried all sorts of things by the Magicians that could be devised to mitigate the hatred of the People or to bridle the Arms of the Enemy And certainly the Magicians offered such Sacrifices for him upon this occasion as were by no means consonant to the Rites of the Romans They tried their Charms in Profane Verses and other Charms which they do with a Looking-glass but yet all went ill on the side of Julianus and all that they discovered from them was the coming in of the one and the
and not another Man's Severâ—â— protesting that it was his own he told him of all the things which afterwards arrived to him By the Favour of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus he was made a Tribune of the People which he discharged with the greatest Exactness and all the Strictness that could be desired Then he married Martia of whom he says nothing himself in his History of his private Life But after he was Emperor he set up her Statues In the Thirty Second Year of his Age he was chosen a Praetor before a Number of others that were Competitors against him At the same time he was sent into Spain Upon which he dreamt that iâ— was said to him that he should restore the Temple of Augustus at the City of Tarragona which was falling into ruin and theâ— that from the top of a very high Mountain he had a Prospect given him of a 〈…〉 the Earth but particularly of the City oâ— Rome about which all the Provinces were joyning in a Consort of Harps Voices and sweet Flutes He gave the People the diversion of the publick Shews in his absence Then he had the command of the Fourth Legion called Scythica which was in Syria In his way to which he went to Athens for the Curiosity of observing the Studies and the Rites the Works and the Antiquities of that Seat of the Muses But because he received some Injuries there from the Athenians he became their Enemy and when he was Emperor he was willing to avenge himself of them by cutting short their Privileges Next he was removed to the Province of the Lionnois in Gallia to be the Lieutenant there And having lost his Wife and proposing to marry another he took the Care first to be informed being very well vers'd in the knowledge of Astrology himself in the Nativities of his Mistresses and as he had heard that there was a Lady in Syria who had found by her Nativity that she was to be married to a King he courted her and in fine married her whose Name His second Marriage was Julia by whom he was soon after made a Father His Exactness his Honour and his great Sobriety caused him to be so much beloved amongst the Gauls as never Person was He was translated from thence to the Government of Pannonia with a Proconsular Power From Pannonia to Sicily which was another Proconsulship and when he had made his return again to Rome he received of his Wife a second Son Being in Sicily he was accused of consulting the Chaldaeans and the Astrologers about his coming to the Empire for which he was ordered to be heard before the Captains of the Guards who it then being the time that the Emperor Commodus began to fall into an universal odium acquitted him and crucified the Man that calumniated him He was Consul the first time in Conjunction with Apuleius Ruffinus by the particular appointment of Commodus After his Consulship he continued an entire Year at Rome without Employ and then by the recommendation of Laetus he was preferred to the Command of the Army in Germany He had lived till now at Rome in a very little House with one small Plat of Ground to it But as he went to take the Possession of this last Charge he purchased himself a spatious Villa where once taking a small Repast together with his little Infants and Fruit being brought his Eldest Son who was then of the Age of Five Years distributed it amongst the Children his Play Fellows so liberally that his Father said to him Not so fast my Son you have not the Riches of a King The Child of Five Years old answered But I shall have So being gone to his Command in Germany he acquitted himself in that sort that he raised his Name which was already ennobled to a far higher pitch of Glory Hitherto he had followed Arms but in the Quality of a private Person But now the News coming that Commodus was killed and that Didius Julianus who for the present was upon the Throne was universally hated the German Legions encouraged him no less than he declined it to put up for the Empire They declared him Emperor upon the Ides of Declared Emperor by the Army August at the same time he gave them a Bounty of Fifty Thousand Sesterces which was more than any Prince had ever done before and having secured the Provinces which he left at his Back he hastened his March to Rome Every one opened the way to him in all the places where he came The Armies of Illyricum and Gallia swore Fidelity to him And every where they received him as the Avenger of the Murder of Pertinax In the mean time Didius Julianus prevailed with the Senate to declare him an Enemy and the Senate sent their Commissioners to his Army to command the Soldiers in their Names to depart from his Service It is true it put him first into a great concern but afterwards he managed the thing so that he corrupted those very Commissioners so that they spoke to the Soldiers for him and came over themselves to his side Julianus who was soon advertised of a Conduct so extraordinary obtained then a Decree of the Senate in which it was declared that the Empire should be participated betwixt himself and Severus but whether this was with a sincere or a treacherous Intention it is uncertain because in truth he had before sent some known Assassines to him to kill him and others at the same time to kill Pescennius Niger who had also taken up the Empire against him upon the Authority of the Forces in Syria However it was Severus escaped their Hands and writ Letters to the Guards at Rome to abandon and slay Julianus which was executed upon him accordingly as he was in the Court and Severus was invited to enter into Rome who with a Fortune which hath never happened to any before him became a Conqueror as it were with a Word Enters Rome and so marched on to Rome at the Head of his Troops He kept himself all the while in his Camps and Tents in his march in Italy no less than if he still appeared there with the face of an Enemy The Senate deputed a Hundred out of their Body as their Envoys to compliment and congratulate him who came up to him at the City of Teramo in Abruzzo He received them when they saluted him all in Armour and in the midst of his armed Troops The next day all the Domesticks of the Court arrived to pay their Reverences to him He presented the Envoys of the Senate with seven hundred and twenty Pieces of Gold and dismissed them But yet if they pleased he welcomed them to stay and to return to Rome in his Company Then he immediately made Flavius Juvenalis the Captain of the Guards who was one that Julianus had chosen to be a third Captain of the same under him In the mean time the Trouble was very great at Rome amongst the
Niger Afterwards he received Plauâ—ianus into favour again and banished his Enemies who entred the City as it were in Triumph and went up to the Capitol and yet in Process of time for all that he killed him He gave the Man's or the Roman Gown to Geta his youngest Son and married his Eldest to a Daughter of Plautianus He made them both Consuls but Geta his own Brother he killed Then the Parthian War came on upon his going to which he first treated the People with the Games of the Gladiators and gave them a Largess But still he put to death several Persons whether for real or pretended Causes whilst these things past Some because they Rallied upon him others because they held their Tongues and said nothing Some because they had said He was an Emperor that had not his name for nothing A right Pertinax a right Severus As for the Parthian War certainly it was The Parthian Expedition generally said that Severus affected it out of a desire of Glory rather than that he was carried upon it by any necessity He imbarked his Army at the Port of Brindisi from whence continuing on his Journey he came into Syria where he prepared himself to make Waâ— upon the Parthians in their own Country after he had driven them out of their Footings iâ— this Together with which by the advice oâ— Plautianus he hunted after the Reliques of thâ— Faction of Pescennius Niger and slew theâ— without Mercy Others he slew pretendinâ— that they had consulted the Astrologers anâ— the Diviners concerning his death Particâ—larly he suspected every one that was but proper to make an Emperor of Whilst his Sons were yet little which was the time for Men to try their Fortunes either he heard that it was said by them or he imagined that they said so But yet as to some who were murdered he excused himself and denied that it had been done by his order and particularly Marius Maximus says he did it in the Case of Laetus His own Sister making him a Visit from the Town of Napoli di Barbaria where he was born had brought her Son along with her and as she was one that was scarce able to speak the Latin Tongue she made the Emperor blush for her very much who gave her several rich Presents and made her Son a Senator but when that was done he ordered her to go back to her own Country again and take her Son with her who soon after died The Summer being over because in those Parts the Winter is the best Season for War he entred into the Kingdom of Parthia and obliging the Enemy to give way to him he marched forward and set himself down before Ctesiphon which he took But as his Soldiers had lived but upon the Roots of the Herbs which they found whereby they had contracted great sicknesses and particularly the Flux which hindered their Marches he satisfied himself with the Conquest which he had made having killed a great number of the Enemy and put to slight their King which gained him the Title of Conqueror of the Parthians His eldest Son the Caesar Bassionus Antoninus of thirteen years of Age was upon this occasion by the Army proclaimed a Partner in the Empire with his Father and his younger Son Geta Antoninus was declared at the same time Caesar Wherefore Severus gave to the Army a very large Donative and all the Booty of the Town of Ctesiphon according to their desire which they were become the Masters of From thence he returned a Conqueror into Syria The Senate offered him the Honor of a Triumph which he refused Refuses a Triumph beâ—â—â—se he could not sit in the Chariot by reason of the Gout which afflicted him But he permitted his Son to receive it in his Place to whom the Senate had decreed a Triumph in relation to the successes over the Jews For all things had passed well in Syria as well as Parthia under the Conduct of Severus In fine being come to Antioch he granted to his eldest Son the Roman Gowâ— and appointed him to be Consul with himself Accordingly they both entred upon their Consulships in Syria After which having gratified the Army with a Bounty upon that Subject they took their way to Alexandria In this Expedition he made a great many Laws to Establish the Rights of the People of Palestine He forbad Men to turn Jews under a great penalty and he made the like Ordinances as to the Christians He granted to the City of Alexandria the Privilege of a Senate besides which he changed their Laws in several things He was much pleased with his Voyage into these Parts to see the Worship of the God Serapis and because of the singular strangness of the Animals and places which he saw here He viewed Memphis and Memnon the Pyramids and the Labyrinth with great Care and great Satisfaction It would be too tedious to pursue the Life of this Prince in Matters of a lesser Note Therefore his diminishing the Power of the Pretorian Guards at Rome after Julianus was conquered and killed and his consecrating Pertinax a God contrary to the Will of the Soldiers were bold and great Actions He seems to have deserved the Name of Pertinax which once he assumed not so much for his Affection to Pertinax the Emperor as for the austerity of his manners and his own pertinaciousness in what he did As one of the Enemy who was taken had cast himself humbly at his Feet and said to him Sir what would your self have done in my place He not at all softened with so prudent an Expression commanded him to be killed without remorse He was bent upon utterly extirpating the Parties that were against him and almost from no place did he come off less than Conqueror He conquered Abgarus the King of Persia His other Successes The Arabians yielded themselves under his Obedience He made the Adiabeni Tributary to him He fortified Great Britain which is the greatest Ornament of his Reign with a Trench drawn cross the Island from the one Ocean to the other from whence he received the Title of Conqueror of the Britains He put his Native Country of Tripoli into a Condition of the greatest Security and a lasting Peace by subduing those most Warlike Nations which lie all about it for which the Tripolines in return presented him with Oyl and Corn every Year in abundance and gave for that purpose some fruitful Fields for ever to the People of Rome As he was of a Temper to be implacable towards such as transgressed their Duty so on the other hand he was of a singular good Judgment in making Choice of Persons to serve him who were Men of Fidelity He was much addicted to the Studies of Philosophy and Eloquence and had a desire to know the rest of the Sciences He was a mortal hater of Robbers He writ his own Life himself faithfully as he was a private Man and as he Emperor in which however
he excuses as much as he can the Fault of his Cruelty The Senate gave this Judgment upon him that either he ought never to have been born or he ought never to die Because he seemed at once to be too Cruel to keep and too useful to lose In the mean time as to his Affairs within his His Wife suspected own Family he was not so very Prudent For the Virtue of his Wise Julia was much to be suspected She was also an Accomplice in a Conspiracy that was form'd against him yet he spared her and kept her with him Whilst he lay lame of the Gout in his Feet which retarded the Operations of the War which the Army bore impatiently they had nominated his Son Bassianus to march as Emperor at the Head of them Severus immediately upon this called a Council of War to which causing himself to be taken up and carried and placed upon the Tribunal and having cited to it all the Tribunes Centurions Captains and the principal Officers of the Army that had been the Authors of that Action together with his Son he demanded of them all Whether they were returned to their Duty who all except his Son whom he had pardoned prostrating themselves before him for mercy says he I hope now you are satisfied it is the Head that rules and not the Feet Another very remarkable Expression of his is being one whom Fortune had raised from a low Birth by several degrees to the Empire with the Assistance of Letters and the Knowledge that he had acquired in Arms says he I have been all things and all 's worth nothing He died at York in Great Britain in an advanced His Deaht Age and the Eighteenth Year of his Reign of a very violent Malady the Gout after having subdued the Nations which were troublesome to the Repose of that Country He left Two Sons Antoninus Bassianus and Geta to which latter he gave the same Name of Antoninus in Honour of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus He was interred in the Sepulchre of Marcus Antoninus for whom of all the Emperors he had that Honour and held his Memory so dear that he consecrated even his Son Commodus Antoninus a God and thought that for the future the Name of Antoninus ought to be inseparable from the Person of the Emperor as well as that of Augustus for ever The Senate his Children and those of his Family joyned to make a magnificent Funeral for him and he was likewise enrolled in the Number of the Gods The publick Works of his that are extant are chiefly these the Septizonium his Baths and his Jani The Judgment that was passed upon him after his Death was so much the more to his Honour as his Son and those Princes that came after proved unfortunate to the State when all things were abandoned into the Hands of Robbers that made a Prey of all the Grandeur and the Riches of the Romans He was so little curious of fine Cloaths that his Vest had scarce any Studs of Purple upon it and over that he wore a loose shagged Coat He eat little and loved above all things the Pease Beans and Pulse of his own Native Country he sometimes drank pretty freely often quite abstained from flesh He was handsome as to his Person big with His Personage a long Beard his Hair naturally curl'd of an awful Countenance a sweet Voice but something of an African Tone with it to the last After his Death he was more beloved than ever he had been during his Life because People then had ceased to envy him and because they were out of the fear of his Cruelty I remember I have read in Aelius Maurus the manumitted Servant of Phlegon of Tralles that this Prince when he died rejoyced infinitely that he left behind him two Sons of the Name of Antoninus to succeed in the Empire and to be of equal Power with one another after the Example of the Emperor Antoninus Pius who was succeeded at once by Marcus Antoninus and Verus Antoninus who yet being the Sons of that Prince but by Adoption it pleased Severus so much the more to think that his two Sons were his own and derived of his own Blood that is Bassianus Antoninus whom he had by his first Wife and Geta Antoninus whom he had by Julia. But he was much mistaken in his good hopes as to them both The untimely Murder of the one and the Vices of the other equally deprived the State of reaping any Good by them And really when I have sometime reflected upon this I have with astonishment observed may it please your Majesty O Dioclesian that seldom any of the great Men have ever left a good and an useful Son behind them But either they have died all without Issue or if they have had Children their Children have been such that it had been better for their Glory to have left none at all To begin with Romulus he left the World no Children nor Numa Pompilius who were of any Service to the State What shall I say of Camillus Had he any Children like himself What had Scipio What had the Cato's who were all such great Men What shall I say of Homer Demosthenes Virgil Salust Terence Plautus and so many other excellent Persons What shall I say of Caesar What shall I say of Tully but that it had been much better that he had left no Children neither What shall I say of Augustus himself who had not a good even adoptive Son though he had all the World to chuse out of Trajan was also mistaken in the Choice that he made of his own Country man and one of his own Blood But to omit any more adoptive Sons for the sake of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus who were Two such Divinities What had been happier than Marcus Antoninus if he had not left Commodus his Heir what more Glorious than Septimius Severus if he had never begotten Bassianus who murdered his Brother for a Crime maliciously invented by himself and then charged it upon him who married his Mother-in-Law who was as good as an own Mother to him and in whose Arms he had before killed her Son his Brother who killed Papinian that Sanctuary that Treasure of all the Doctrine of the Laws only because he would not justify so cruel a Fratricide Therefore in comparison with this Son Severus the Father though he was in all Respects a hard or rather a cruel Prince was accounted Pious and worthy of the Consecration of a God who as he lay on his Death-Bed sent they say to this his Son that Divine Oration in Salust of the King Micipsa to his Children But it was so quite lost upon Bassianus Antoninus that he lived long in the hatred of the People to whom although he gave a Bounty of those Coats called Caracalla from whence himself hath the Name of Caracallus and though he built those Baths of his Name which are very Magnificent yet that Holy
new-born hi◠Flesh red he was extreme white and wa◠therefore called Albinus And that this is true appears by a Letter of his Father sent on purpose to notifie it to Aelius Bassianus the then Proconsul of Africa who as the same Letter signifies was a Relation of the Family of the Albini as well as he A LETTER of Cejonius Posthumius to Aelius Bassianus I Had a Son born upon the 7th of the Calends of December so white all his Body over he was whiter than the very Linen that he was received in I have therefore given him the Name of Albinus and have dedicated him to the Family of the Albini which is common to me with you I wish you to love him and to continue as you do to love the State yourself and us He passed all his Infancy in Africa took his Greek and Latin Learning pretty well but had a Martial Heart and was of a haughty Disposition by Nature Amongst the little Boys of his Age at School he was often they say singing that Verse of Virgil Arma amens capio nec sat rationis in armis repeating especially the first part of it Arma amens capio that is I am for being a Soldier right or wrong and come what will They say that several things happened after his Birth which were so many Omens of his future Omens of his Advancement Greatness And certainly the same day there was born a Calf as white as Snow with Horns upon his Head of a deep purple which Horns were a long time afterwards to be seen in the Temple of Apollo at the City of Cumae where himself had bestowed them when he was a Tribune Enquiring at the same Temple one day of the Oracle about his Fortune he was answered in these Verses of Virgil Hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu Sistet eques sternet Poenos Gallumque rebellem Accordingly it is very true as to what the latter Verse says of the Gauls that Clodius Albinus did subdue many Nations of them Another Omen was this whilst he was a little Infant a Fisher-man happened to take a Tortoise which was of a very great bigness and made a present of it to Albinus's Father who being a Person of some Learning and looking upon it as a good Sign accepted it and ordered the Shell of it to be kept and set apart for the use of his young Son to wash in because it was a peculiar Custom in the Imperial Family for the young Princes to wash in Shells of Tortoises It was a rare thing to see Eagles in that place where Clodius Albinus was born and yet upon the seventh Day after which was appointed for the Solemnity of giving him his Name seven young Eagles were taken out of a Nest and brought to the side of his Cradle which his Father not rejecting the good omen ordered to be well kept and that they should take great care of them These things therefore and such others that occurred were so many assured Presages of his future Elevation which are more particularly pursued by Aelius Cordus to whom I must refer the Reader if he shall desire any further satisfaction He betook himself to the Army early in his Youth and became known to the Emperors the Antoninusses by the means of Lollius Serenus Baebius Maetianus and Cejonius Post humianus who were all related to him He was some time a Tribune of Dalmatian Horse After His Military Preferments that he commanded the First and Fourth Legions He kept the Army in Bithynia which next he Commanded very well to their Duty in the time of the Rebellion of Avidius Cassius The Emperor Commodus translated him from thence into Gallia where after having defeated some Nations on the other side of the Rhine he gained himself a famous name equally amongst the Romans and amongst the Barbarians insomuch that it moved Commodus to honour him the more to offer him the Title of Caesar with the leave to present the Soldiers with a Bounty upon it and to wear a Cloak of Scarlet in his presence All which he prudently and with great satisfaction declined as if he suspected that Commodus's design was only to find Persons whom to involve in his own ruin and whom to Massacre under some sort of pretence He had not served in the Office of an Aedile above ten days before he was made a Quaestor and sent with precipitation to the Army His Praetorship which he passed under the Reign of Commodus was very famous For to the usual Games with which he entertained the People Commodus himself added Fights both upon the Theatre and Amphitheatre Then the Emperor Severus made him a Consul which was done about that time that he proposed to have called him to his Succession in Conjunction with Pes 〈…〉 nius Niger He was advanced in years and even older than Pescennius Niger as Severus says when he was set up to be Emperor The Senat◠had a more than ordinary kindness for him because of the Antiquity of his Family Therefore Severus having changed his first Sentiments as to the Honour that he had intended to Pescennius Niger and him and resolving to preserve the Empire to his own Children and having beaten and killed Pescennius he in the next place sent the following Letter to Clodius Albinus which I have met with in Cordus in these Words The Emperor Severus to Clodius Albinus Caesar his most beloved and dearest Brother Greeting PEscennius Niger having been vanquished by my Arms I sent my Letters of it to Rome which the Senate who have the greatest Affection for you received very agreeably I desire you to assist me in the Government of the State with the same Spirit by which you make your self to be so beloved being now become the Brother of my Soul and my Brother in the Empire Bassianus and Geta salute you My Wife Julia salutes you and presents her recommendations to her Sister Pray preserve the Army in their Duty to the State and to Us my Soul my Dearest my entirely Beloved Now the Persons who were sent with this Letter by Severus being such as had the greatest Affection for his Service so that he knew he could confide in them he ordered them to delivered it to Clodius Albinus in Publick but when they had done they should say that Treachery of Severus they desired privately to speak to him about some things which were of the secrets of the Camp and the Court. And having taken him aside as if it were only to deliver what they were charged with five strong Men of their Retinue having Ponyards hid under their Robes should fall upon him and kill him And certainly they did not betray the Confidence imposed in them nor were wanting in their Endeavours to execute their Orders For when they were come to Albinus and had given him the Letter which he Read and had told him that they had some other things in particular to discover to him which
Papinian said that to accuse the Innocent who had been murdered was in the nature of another Murder But all this however does not very well agree Because it was not for the Captain of the Guards to form the Emperor's Speeches and then it is certain that Papinian was for no other reason killed but as he was a Fautor of Geta. As the Soldiers were hurrying him away to his Execution he said That he should be very imprudent who was the Captain of the Guards after him if he did not severely revenge the Cruelty that was shewn to his place Which was afterwards done For Macrinus his Successor was the Author of the Death of Bassianus and was afterwards himself made Emperor in the Camp whose Son Diadumenus was immediately new named Antoninus Diadumenus to gratify the Soldiers because the name of an Antoninus was so dear to them Bassianus Antoninus Caracallus lived Forty Three Years and reigned Six He was Nobly buried and left a Son who was afterwards called Varius Antoninus Heliogabalus the dear Name of Antoninus being so fixt in the Hearts of Men that it was no more to be removed than that of Augustus from the Person of the Emperor He was a Prince of ill manners and crueller than his too cruel Father He eat and drank freely but was hated by his Servants and by all the Men of the Sword only the Guards The Works which he left His publie Works behind him at Rome were the famous Baths of his own Name in which there is one Room so Curious that the Architects say it is altogether inimitable He left also a Portico of the Name of his Father representing the principal Actions of his Father's Life with his Wars and Triumphs He received the Name of Caracallus from a Garment so called which he first brought up and gave to the People of Rome for a Bounty He repaired the Via Nova which is below his Baths so well that you will scarce find a Street in Rome that is fairer than it He erected stately Temples in all places to the Honour of the Goddess Isis whose Sacrifices he celebrated with much greater Reverence than ever had been used before at Rome His Body was interred in the Sepulchre of the Antoninus's that the same place should receive his Reliques which had given him that Name It is now fit that I should relate how it is said that he came to marry his Mother-in-Law Julia she was very handsome and as she happen'd one day in negligence to discover her Body a little naked Ah Madam said he to â—er I would if I might Sir said she again If you please you can you are an Emperor and to give Laws to all the World and not take them from any He no sooner had understood the sense of those Words but his unbridled Passion led him to resolve upon the accomplishment of the Crime and so he really celebrated those Nuptials with her which His incestuous Marriage were in effect the same as to take to Wife his own Mother and to add Incest with his Mother to the Murder of his Brother It will not be improper here to remark a very picquant thing which was said of him As he had ascribed to himself the Titles in his stile of Germanicus Parthicus Arabicus and Alemannicus because of his Conquests over the Germans and those other Nations Helvius Pertinax the Son of the Emperor Pertinax smiling said His Majesty might be pleased to add Geticus Maximus In which word Geticus there is an equivocation with a double relation to Geta his Brother whom he had killed and with relation to the Goths called Getae whom he had overcome in some running Fights in his passage into the East The Death of Geta was prognosticated by several Prodigies as we shall shew by and by in his own Life which follows In the mean time we shall only observe farther that formerly when the Army had proposed Bassianus Antoninus to march at the Head of them in the place of Severus his Father who was so sick of the Gout that he could not well follow the War Severus was then for putting to death th 〈…〉 his Son Bassianus if the Captains of the Guards had not over-persuaded him against it On the contrary others say that the Captains of the Guards were for punishing Bassianus with Death but that his Father was against it because he was not willing that the foolish Rashness of a young Man should be resented so severely as for his own Father to kill him when the Soldiers rather were the great occasions of the Crime However it is this most cruel Prince Bassianus Antoninus Caracallus who in a word was a Parricide Incestuous an Enemy of his Father Mother and Brother was yet by Macrinus that killed him out of fear of the Soldiers and especially those of the Guards after his Death made a God A Temple was given him and an Order of Priests appointed to serve him Even the Temple of Faustina built by Marcus Antoninus at the Foot of the Mountain Taurus was re-dedicated to him and his Son Antoninus Heliogabalus translated the same again afterwards to either Jupiter Syrius or the Sun or himself but to which of the Three I cannot very well assert THE LIFE OF ANTONINVS GETA BY AELIUS SPARTIANUS Dedicated to the EMPEROR Constantine the Great IMP. CAES. P. SEPT GETA PIVS AVG. IMP. CAES. M. OPEL. SEV MACRINVS AVG M OPEL. ANTONINVS DIADVMENIANVS CAES IMP. CAES. MAVR ANTONINVS PIVS AVG. IMP. CAES. MAVR SEV ALEXANDER AVG. MAXIMINVS PIVS AVG. GERM. P. 318. Vol. 1. His other name of Geta was what he had from either his Father's Brother or from his Grandfather whose names were Geta. There were yet other reasons for the addition of that name of Antoninus to this of Geta. Severus would have had it to be a Rule that all Princes in the time to come should be Entitled Antonini in the same manner as they are Augusti Which was the effect of his great love to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus whose Son he was pleased to call himself and whose Wisdom and the Precepts of his Philosophy he always endeavoured to imitate And not only the effect of his love to that Prince who was an Antoninus but by Adoption but of his Love and Honour also to Antoninus Pius the Successour of Hadrian by reason that it was Antoninus Pius who had preferred him from a Practicer in the Law to be the Keeper of the Exchequer which was a happy Rise to him and which had opened him the way to those great Advantages that afterwards he came to attain unto who thought therefore that he could not borrow a name from any Prince better than from one whose Reign had been so happy nor a name more honourable than that that had already run through four Emperors Being skilful in the Doctrine of Astrology as many of the Africans generally are he said one day because he knew the Nativity of Geta I admire
dear Juvenalis who was the Captain of the Guards to him to think that my Geta shall be a God in whose Nativity I see nothing to make him an Emperor Nor did his skill at all deceive him for after Geta had been killed by his Brother and his Brother apprehended that he had drawn upon himself the hatred of a Tyrant by the Crime he understanding that it would be sweetned if he did but declare Geta a God cried Sit Divus dum not sit Vivus Let him be a God so he is not an Emperor and so he Consecrated him by which the Murderer in some measure retrieved to himself the good Grace of the People again Geta Antoninus was born at the City of Milan under the Consulships of Severus and Vitellius upon the sixth of the Calends of June His Mother was Julia who was Severus's second Wife being her whom he had chosen to Marry because he had heard that she had it Good and bad Omens in her Nativity to be the Wife of a King though himself was at that time a private Person only in a good Employment in the State As soon as he was born it was told by one that a Hen had laid an Egg in the House which was of a Purple colour So the Egg was brought up but Bassianus taking it in his hands and letting it fall like a Child to the Ground that it brake Julia said to him laughing You wicked Villain you have killed your Brother Severus took more notice of this Expression at that time than any other Body but afterwards all the Company lookt upon it as a thing spoken as it were by Inspiration Another Omen that happened was this upon the same day and in the same hour that Geta was born a Plebeian of the name of Antoninus had at his Farm in the Country a Lamb kidded with a mark upon his Head of the colour of Purple and being informed by a Soothsayer that an Antoninus should succeed to the Empire after Severus he very fondly interpreted it of himself but however killed the Lamb in which consisted the sign of the death of Geta for fear that the Omen of so high a Fortune should bring him into danger I would add one thing more which the Event made People to interpret to the same purpose which is that when Severus one day Celebrated the Birth of Geta his Brother Bassianus killed the Sacrifice himself in the place of the Priest A Circumstance not then considered nor taken notice of but it was afterwards very well understood when that Brother had sacrificed his Brother Geta was in his temper a rough sort of a His Personage and Conditions Youth though not to a Fault handsome a little eager a lover of delicious Wines and good Chear There is this Story of him which is remarkable when he was a Boy His Father the Emperor Severus being for Eradicating wholly the Parties that opposed him said once to his Sons I do but rid you of your Enemies So Bassianus advised him to cut them off all Root and Branch them and their Children but Geta askt the question how many of them they were His Father telling him says he again Have they Parents and Relations living Yes Then says he there will be more People in Rome sorry for your Victory than there will be that are glad of it And certainly Geta's Opinion had carried it had not Plautianus the Captain of Guards and Juvenal who had great interests insisted upon the contrary in hopes of enriching themselves by the Confiscation of the Estates which was again seconded by the excessive Cruelty of Bassianus who persisting in his first Opinion and saying He would have them all cut off them and their Children says Geta to him You who spare no Body would kill your own Brother Which as then spoken signified nothing but afterwards it appeared to be a sort of a Prophesie He had an excellent Memory to improve himself by what he read in the Antients and by what his Father taught him His Brother had always hated him but he was more beloved by his Mother Julia than ever Bassianus was by his He spoke agreeably though something Stammering he was curious in his Dress to excess and whatever was presented him he applied it to his own Ornament without giving it away to any body living After the Parthian War at what time his Father flourished in great glory as Bassianus was declared a Partner in the Empire with his Father so Geta was Created a Caesar and honoured with the name of Antoninus Geta. It was an usual diversion with him to propose to the Grammarians Questions about the several Cries and Voices of Animals As the Sheep Bleats the Swine Grunts the Dove Coos the Lion Roars the Elephant Brays the Frog Croaks the Horse Whinnies the Ass Brays the Ox Lows and to prove the use of the proper Latin Terms for each out of the Antients He read much in the Books of Serenus Sammonicus written to Antoninus As to the Table he took a pleasure to observe an Alphabet according to which as every Letter came on each day in its Course his Servants that knew it and were well skilled in the Arts of eating provided things of the names beginning with that Letter As for example for the Letter P. Puddings Plover Pullet Partridge Peacock Pig Piscis Plumbs and so upon other days for the other Letters in order Which is an Argument that from his Youth he had a gay choice of things and was a very pleasant Person After he was killed by his Brother a Party of the Soldiers who had not been Corrupted resented his Murder very ill saying all of them That they had promised Fidelity to the two Sons of Severus and ought to keep it equally to them both Accordingly they kept fast the Passes of their Camp and refused to give entrance to Bassianus till he had flattered them up and had appeased their Heats by giving them a Bounty which was vastly great After this Papinian and many others were Massacred who had either encouraged the good agreement of the two Brothers or had appeared to be of the Side of Geta. Persons of Quality of both the Senatorian and the Equestrian Orders were Butchered up and down publickly in the Baths and other places Papinian died by the Axe Bassianus finding fault with the Executioner that he had not done it with a Sword In the mean time he was so afraid of his own Person that he wore a Coat of Mail under his Purple when he went to the Senate to give them an account of what he did and of the death of Geta. At which time as Faustinus the Praetor repeated the Imperial Style saying Sarmaticus Maximus and Parthicus Maximus Titles which Bassianus had gained by his Victories over the Sarmatae and the Parthians Helvius Pertinax the Son of the Emperor of that name suggested it to him to say and add to the rest Geticus Maximus as if he meant it
could scarce think him an Emperor After Opilius Macrinus was also kill'd and the Senate was assured that Varius Heliogabalus the Son of Antoninus Caracallus was declared Emperor by the Army then it was that it was loudly represented in the Senate what an ignoble Person Macrinus was Aurelius Victor Pinnius spoke thus Macrinus a Slave the other day that drudged His mean Original in the servile Offices of the Emperor's Family a Bougre a Hireling He lived a paltry Life â—â—der Commodus Severus thought him not fit at first for the most miserable Employments but turned him out and banished him into Africa where to cover his Infamy he betook himself to Letters and came to plead some small Causes and to declaim and at last to be a Justice Then he was created a Gentleman and so at length arrived to be the Keeper of the Exchequer under Severus by the Favour of Festus who was an infranchised Slave of that Prince This relation however is not so undoubted but that others give us the Steps of his Promotion thus That he was a Gladiator and had sought in that quality publickly Obtaining afterwards his Freedom he went into Africa where he was a Notary and raising himself after that to be the Keeper of the Emperor's Exchequer from thence he succeeded unto the highest Honors Whilst he was the Captain of the Guards he contrived the Death of his Master with that dexterity of Intrigue that it could not be perceived that he had the least hand it it He gained upon a Quirry to give the Blow what with the Money he bribed him with and what with the great Promises that he made him And then it was so ordered that it should be said that he was killed in a Mutiny of the Soldiers because for his murdering his Brother and the Incest of his marrying his Mother he was so odious to them But no sooner was this done but Macrinus Make his Son Caesar possessed himself of his place and made his Son Diadumenus whom he immediately called by the Name of Antoninus Diadumenus his Partner with him in the same Then he sent the Body of the deceased to Rome to be interred in the Sepulchre of his Ancestors and commanded his Captain of the Guards who was his own late Colleague in that Office to take care of burying him in all respects honourably knowing that the Common People loved him for the Habits and the Largesses that he had given amongst them As he was afraid of a popular Emotion and that some body should intervene and hinder his Reign so he was glad to take the Empire as it were by surprise but yet in the mean time he served himself of that common Artifice to pretend that it was against his Inclination Particularly he was jealous of the Captain of the Guards his late Colleague because some People hoped that if he had the Consent but of one Legion he would not refuse an Opportunity in which they would be ready to serve him out of the hatred they had to Opilius Macrinus for his ill Life and for the ignobleness of his Education and Birth He took upon himself as I said the Name of Severus though he had no relation to that Prince which occasioned a good raillery upon both him and his Son Macrinus is a Severus as Diadumenus is an Antoninus Now to put a stop to any Commotion of the Soldiers he immediately gave a Bounty as well to the Legions as the Guards which was more than ordinarily large and as it is the Custom so to do his Money supplied the defect of his Innocence and what he wanted in one he made up with the other by virtue whereof he continued in the Empire for some time although he was a Man of all manner of Vice He writ Letters to the Senate concerning the Murder of Antoninus Caracallus in which he stiled him a God protesting as to himself that he was innocent and had known nothing of it and so he added to the Crime that he had committed Perâ—ury to begin his Reign withal It is fit to know what a sort of an harangue â—t was which he made when he writ to the Senate upon this occasion that we may see â—he Confidence of the Man and the Sacrilege with which he commenced his Reign The Heads of it were these done in the joynt Names of the Emperors Macrinus and Diadumenus We should have been heartily glad Fathers of His Messages to the Senate the Senate to have had our Sovereign Antoninus yet in safety and returning to you in Triumph We should all have been happy in such a flourishing State of the Empire and under a Prince who was a Successour of the Antonini and given us from the Gods But since this Happiness hath not befaln us by reason of a Mutiny of the Soldiers which hath deprived us of it we make you acquainted with what the Army hath done as to us in the first place and next we with your Consents decree an Apotheosis to be given immediately to our late Prince whose Murder the Army hath thought no Man more worthy to avenge than his own Captain of the Guards to whom himself had left it to chastise the Faction had he escaped their hands and lived In another place says he They have presented me with the Empire which I have therefore taken into my Protection and I shall continue it if the same thing be pleasing to you Fathers of the Senate which is so pleasing to them to whom I have given a Bounty and done every thing as the Custom is for the Emperors to do upon these occasions Again My Son Diadumenus whom you know the Army hath made my Partner in the Empire and hath not denied him the Name of Antoninus Indeed they have done him a greater Honour by that Name than by that degree of a Prince which we desire may be approved by you Fathers of the Senate as a good and happy Omen that you shall never want a Prince of a Name which you do so dearly love Again We and all the Army have equally decreed the Honours of a God unto Antoninus Caracallus And though we might with the Authority of Emperors command the same from you Fathers of the Senate yet we rather desire you to do it and to dedicate to him two Statues on Horseback two more standing in Military Habit and two others sitting in a Civil one We dedicate also two triumphal Statues to the Emperor Severus All which Fathers of the Senate you will command to be performed at our earnest Request When this was read in the Senate they took the news of the death of Antoninus Caracallus very well and hoping that Opilius Macrinus would maintain the publick Liberty they first made him a Patrician who was a Man originally of no Family and little known then they made him High-Priest a Title annexed to the Emperors who sometime before had been a Clerk to the minor Priests And lastly they
Father will take the Care not to be wanting and it shall be my best endeavours not to be wanting to the Glory of the name of Antoninus I am sensible it is a name in which the Emperors Pius Marcus and Verus have gone before me who were Persons to whom it is a difficult thing to answer worthily I can only say I will do all that is in my power and in the mean time upon the joynt occasion of my Reign and my Name I promise you the same as my most honoured Father hath done who hath but considered you at you deserve The Greek Historian Herodian hath omitted these passages and speaks Diadumenus under no higher a quality than a Caesar However after this Harangue a Coin was stamped at Antioch in the name of Antoninus Diadumenus the other which was to be in the name of Macrinus was deferred till they had the express Orders of the Senate to whom Letters were sent to acquaint them with what was past and with the New Antoninus who desired their approbation And whether it was as some say because their hatred to Antoninus Caracallus made them willing to have any other Emperor rather than him they accepted of this Change freely Had Macrinus lived he intended to have given to the People of Rome a Present of some Vestments after the example of the Donation of Caracallus and also to establish a Charity for the maintenace of the Children of some Poor Families whom he intended to call by the name of his Son to the end as his own Words in the Edict are to render so much the more agreeable and more recommendable the glory of the name of Antoninus At the same time he says that he wishes that he was present with the People of Rome that his Son their new Antoninus might with his own hand distribute a Largess of Corn amongst them In the next place he ordered the Colours and the Standards of the Antoninusses to be put up in the Camp He erected the Statues of Antoninus Bassianus Caracallus in Gold and Silver and Celebrated a Festival of seven days for the Honour of the name of Antoninus Antoninus Diadumenus was certainly one of His Personage the beautifullest Youths in the World He was pretty tall with bright yellow Hair black Eyes and a pretty long Nose his Chin perfectly handsome and a grace to his whole Face a full kissing Lip and then he was naturally Stout and proper in his Exercises When first he was dress'd in the Imperial Robes of Scarlet and Purple and the other Military Ensigns of the Empire he shined like a Star or as one newly dropt from Heaven and every body loved him for the Charms of his Beauty In the next place as to the Omens which prognosticated Omens of his Reign his Reign they are indeed stupendous The day that he was born his Father over-seeing and examining the Purple Robes of the Emperor in his Office had ordered some of them to be brought where his Son Diadumenus was born in two Hours after And as some Children that are born have a skin upon their Heads in the nature of a Coif being a natural sort of a Cover upon the Head which is afterwards taken away by the Midwives Diadumenus instead of this had a perfect Diadem in the place of it which was a thin but strong Flesh made of a great many Veins and Fibres like the strings of a Bow from whence he was called at first Diadematus but as he grew up he was called by the Name of Diadumenus from his Grandfather by the side of his Mother and there is not much difference betwixt the one Name and the other At a House of his Father 's in the Country twelve Lambs were kidded all of a Wool of the colour of Purple except one which was of divers Colours The same day that he was born an Eagle came and dropt a Ring-Dove into his Cradle as he slept and retired without doing him any hurt Other Doves from whence the Soothsayers prognosticated great Riches and Honour came and made their Nests in his Father's House As he was one day walking in the Fields an Eagle came and took from off his Head his Cap and afterwards dropt it upon the Head of a Statue of an Emperor He was born not only upon the same day of the Month but in the same hour and almost under the same Constellations as was the Emperor Antoninus Pius Therefore the Astrologers said That he would be both the Son of an Emperor and an Emperor himself A Woman who was of his Kindred observing that he was born upon the Birth-day of that Prince cried Let him be called an Antoninus But Macrinus was afraid to do that because it was an Imperial Name which none of his Family had ever had and he thought it was safer to let it alone especially the Report being already put about of the greatness of his Birth Another Omen that still more particularly deserves our observation is this as Diadumenus was in his Cradle in a Garden a Lyon that had broken loose and was very fierce came and lick'd him and left him without offering him the least violence but yet meeting his Nurse he fell upon her and bit her so cruelly that she died This is what hath seemed to me to be worthy of memory concerning Antoninus Diadumenus whose Life I had even intermixt with the Actions of his Father but that my Honour for the Princes of his Name obliged me to Great Honours paid to the Name Antoninus such a particular Account of him And certainly it was a Name so amiable to these times that it seems as if he who was not call'd an Antoninus was not fit to be Emperor There is a Letter of Opilius Macrinus in which he declares that he glories not so much of his elevation to the Empire whereof he was the second Person in rank before as Captain of the Guards as of being the Father of a Son of the Name of Antoninus which at that time was so Famous that not any Name of the Gods themselves was more Therefore said one It is a thing void of all Reason and unsuitable to the Dignity of Commodus to covet as he did the Name of Hercules as if that of Antoninus was not Honour enough For would he be a God he could never more eminently be so than as he was an Emperor of so excellent a Name I mention this in this place only to shew how highly the Antoninusses were valued to have their Names set above the very Gods And yet all this was wrought by only the Charms of three Princes of that Name whose Wisdom whose Goodness and whose Piety consecrated them for ever to Posterity that is Wisdom in the Person of Marcus Antoninus Goodness in his Brother Verus and Piety in the first of the three Antoninus Pius I come now to the Letter which I mention'd of Opilius Macrinus Opilius Macrinus to Nonia Celsa his
Wife THE Blessing we have received my dear Wife is above all Estimation but perhaps you may think now that I speak of the Empire which is no such great matter Fortune bestows that upon unworthy Persons often I am made the Father of an Antoninus Thou art become the Mother of an Antoninus O happy we And Fortunate our House Now is our Reign happy and to be highly Renowned The Gods and particularly the good Goddess Juno whom you Worship grant that he may sustain worthily the merit of his Name and that I who am the Father of an Antoninus may also appear worthy of that Honour to all the World By this Letter we see how great an Honour he looked upon it to be that his Son was received by the Name of an Antoninus However this fine Son was killed together with his Father in the Fourteenth Month of their Reigns And it is to be observed that as young and as amiable as he was he was yet one that was very severe upon many Persons beyond his Age witness these two Letters following written to his Father and Mother which as they are Pieces contributing to this History so I have thought fit to insert them here The Emperor the Son to the Emperor his Father I Am apt to think Sir in consequence of my Love and Duty to you that you have not been sufficiently careful of your self in sparing the Accomplices of the intended Revolt whether it is because you hope that your Mercy will make them more your Friends for the future or because they are your old Acquaintants and that therefore you spare them For first of all as they are Persons that have been once exulcerated in their minds against you they can never love you again and then when old Friends forget themselves so as to turn Enemies they make the most cruel Enemies of all Men. To which add what the Army cries Si te nulla movet tantarum gloria rerum Virg. Aen. 4. 274. Ascanium surgentem spes haeredis Iuli Respice cui regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus Debetur If Thirst of Glory cannot push you on Yet pray regard the Fortune of your Son To whom Rome's Empire has been destin'd long You must put them to death if you would expect to live in Safety For if those be spared others will not fail to trouble you as much according to the natural viciousness of Mankind Now whether himself or Caelianus his Master in Rhetorick formed this Letter it shews what a severe young Man he would have been if he had lived The other LETTER to his Mother was this CErtainly my Father the Emperor neither loves you nor himself to spare as he does his Enemies Therefore pray endeavour that Arabianus Thuscus and Gellius be dispatched for fear lest if occasion serve them they do not suffer us to escape them so easily These Letters says Lollius Urbicus in the History that he hath made of his time being betrayed to the Soldiers by his Secretary did Diadumenus the greatest prejudice and cost him his Life For some of them considering that he was but a Youth had been at first for saving him after they had killed his Father But when these Letters were produced and He is slain by the Soldiers read then they killed him also and both their Heads were carried about upon the top of a Javelin Then all the Army agreed to set up Varius Antoninus Heliogabalus being the reputed Son of Bassianus Antoninus Caracallus They say he was a Priest of the God Heliogabalus that is in the Phoenician Language the Sun but certainly the most impure and the most dissolute Man upon Earth and by some Fate sent entirely to dishonour the Roman Empire As there are a great many things to be said of him I shall reserve my self to speak of him in his place THE A. Christi CCXIX. Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Varius Antoninus Heliogabalus Dedicated to the EMPEROR Constantine the Great BY AELIUS LAMPRIDIUS VArius Antoninus Heliogabalus passed his Life in a manner which was so very impure that I should eternally excuse my self from committing it to Writing nor should it be known by my hand that ever such a Person was the Emperor of Rome if we had not had a Caligula a Nero and a Vitellius upon the same Throne before him But as we see the same Earth produces as well Poysons as good Grain and is diversified with things which are some wholsome and some hurtful here Vipers and there other Creatures that are tame and good for the Life of Man the prudent Reader will easily make himself an amends for such prodigious Tyrants if he pleases but to read the Reigns of Augustus Vespasian Titus Trajan Hadrian Aâ—toninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus in opposition to them For by the comparison he will perceive the Judgments of the Romans upon the one and the other how that these latter reigned long and ended their days at last with natural Deaths But the others were murdered shamefully dragged branded as Tyrants their Names thought unworthy so much as to be mentioned or not to be mentioned without horror After the Death of Macrinus and his Son the Empire was conferred upon Varius Antoninus Heliogabalus for this reason especially becaused he was the reputed Son of Bassianus Antoninus Caracallus He had been Reason of his Names before a Priest either of Jupiter or the Sun and had taken to himself the Name of Antoninus not only for an Argument of his Birth but because he knew that that Name was so very dear to the World that even the Particide his Father was loved for its sake His other Name from his Grandfather Varia was Varius Then he called himself Heliogabalus from the Name of the God in the Phoenician Language whose Priest he was and when he came to the Empire he was declared an Antoninus and he was the last of the Roman Emperors of that Name His Mother was Semiamira to whom he was so devoted that he did nothing in the Government without her She in the mean time lived in the manner of an impudent Courtezan and pursued her lewdnesses of all sorts in the very Palace For as it was under that Character that formerly Antoninus Caracallus had had commerce with her so the promiscuous Issue her Son might very well also be called Varius if it had been only from thence who after his Father was killed fled it is said for fear of Macrinus into the Temple of the God Heliogabalus as into an Asylum and made his Priesthood there his Protection But thus much as to his Name that holy Name of Antoninus so polluted by this Man but which is however so venerated by you Most Sacred Constantine that your Majesty hath the greatest Honour in the World for the Emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus setting them before you no less than you do Constantius and Claudius for your Royal Imitation whereby you indeed adopt the Virtues of the Antients
Majesty is used to say That to be an Emperor is a stroak of mere Fortune which raises sometimes very Indifferent and sometimes the Worst of Men to be so and your Majesty does very graciously to add to that That it lies upon the Persons themselves whom Fortune hath reduced under that necessity of an Empire to make themselves worthy of the Place where they are Thus much concerning therefore Varius Antoninus Heliogabalus It is what I have collected indifferently out of the Greek and Latin Historians Your Majesties Commands to me to present you with this Life in its place after the others which are antecedent to it and which your Majesty hath accepted was an Authority abundant to me to supersede all those thoughts that had otherwise made me unwilling and possessed me with a Reluctancy to meddle in a thing of this Nature I shall now proceed to the Lives of those that follow The first of which is that most excellent Prince Alexander Severus who was one of thirteen years Reign Then there will be Aurelian who was another excellent Prince and Claudius of whom being the Author of your Majesty's Race I should be afraid to write the real Truth to you lest those who have not all the respect that they ought for the praises which are due to great Souls should pretend that I Flatter if I did not know that I should be fully justified by others in all that I have to say To these is to be added Dioclesian the Father of an Age of Gold and Maximian the Father of an Iron Age as they commonly call them with all the rest to the Person of your Majesty whose Reign I would say Sir yours will be a Subject to employ the Eloquentest Pens and happy are they to whom Nature is so kind to have enabled them with gifts for so grand a Work Nor yet are we to omit Licinius or Marcus Aurelius Severus or Maxentius whose Rights are all devolved upon your Majesty and from whose Virtues we ought not to derogate For though it is the method of the Generality of Writers to take away from the unsuccessful and the beaten Side yet I shall think this an unfit thing to be done when I consider that when I shall have faithfully said all the good of them that I can find in our Memoirs to be never so true yet it will all but make so much the greater Accession to your Glory THE A. Christi CCXXIII. Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Aurelius Alexander Severus Addressed to the EMPEROR Constantine the Great By AELIUS LAMPRIDIUS AFter that Pest of an Emperor Varius Heliogabalus was killed who had really nothing of a true Antoninus in him and therefore as the Senate by their Authority degraded him from that name and erased it out of the Records so neither am I very willing to give it him Aurelius Alexander Severus his Cousin-German who was Born at His Extraction the City of Arca Caesarea in Phanicia in Syria being the Son of Varius Marcellus by Mammaea the Sister of Semiamira the Mother of Heliogabalus received the Empire to the general Relief and Comfort of Mankind He had some years before been Created Caesar by the Senate at the time of the death of Opilius Macrinus and now the Senate both made him Emperor and Honours done to him gave him the Title of the Father of the Country and invested him with the Tribunitian and Proconsular Powers and with the right of a fifth Reference all in one and the same day And for fear that such an accumulation of Honours should seem to be Precipitate I will here in the first place mention the Reason as well why he suffered it on his part as why the Senate had thought fit to do it on theirs because certainly otherwise it was neither for the Gravity of the Senate to confer all those things at once nor for the Reputation of a good Prince so to accept them The Army had several times been guilty of a Practice of making whom they pleased Emperors in a hurry and changing them as easily when they had done saying in the defence of themselves that they did not know that the Senate had on their part nominated any Person at all to the Empire For thus they had set up Pescennius Niger Clodius Albinus and Avidius Cassius as heretofore they did Julius Vindex and Lucius Antonius Severus was himself set up by them in one place about the same time that Niger was in another and Albinus in another and yet then the Senate had actually appointed Didius Julianus to succeed after Pertinax And this thing had occasioned Civil-Wars in the Empire in which Countrymen against Countrymen fighting what were they but Murderers one of another Upon this account therefore it was that all expedition was used to invest Alexander Severus with all the Honours of the Crown immediately and at once which he should otherwise have received successively and in the course of many years And this was yet further promoted by the very great inclination which both the Senate and the People had towards him after that Pest who had not only dishonoured the name of the Antoninusses but was a shame to all the Roman Empire So all the marks of Power and the Titles of Honour belonging to the Crown were given him with a forwardness in which every one appeared to have an Emulation to excel He was the first of all the Emperors that ever received so many Royalties all at one time and indeed his Quality as he had been already for some years a Caesar spoke for him but yet the honesty of his Life and Manners did it much more and it had gained him besides a great esteem that Heliogabalus had attempted to kill him but could not because of the Opposition to it of the Soldiers and the Senate And then that which Crowns all is he approved himself worthy of that Care that the Senate had taken of his Preservation worthy of the Affections of the Soldiers and worthy of the Sentiments all good Men had to prefer him as they did to the Empire His Mother being called Mammaea as I said he is mentioned by a great many by the name of Alexander Mammaeus from her This Alexander from a Child was so instructed in His Education and Masters the knowledge of the good Arts concerning the things as well Civil as Military that he willingly suffered not one day to pass in which he did not exercise himself in the one or the other His first Masters in his Infancy for the Elements were Valerius Cordus Titus Veturius and Aurelius Philippus a Servant of his Fathers who hath since writ his life His Master in the Grammar was Neon in Rhetorick Serapion and in Philosophy Stylion that is this was in his own Country and for the Graecian Learning At Rome for the Latin his Master in the Grammar was Scaurinus the Son of the famous Doctor of that name in Rhetorick Julius Frontinus Baebius
Macrinus and Julius Granianus of the latter of which there are Declamations now extant But in the Latin Learning his Proficiency was not over-great as it sufficiently appears by his Speeches which he made to the Senate and those others that he made to the Soldiers and to the People Nor did he very much love the Latin Eloquence But the learned Men in it he had a great esteem for and apprehended thir Pens for he was not willing that they should give him an ill report in their Writings therefore he thought them worthy to be By him upon all occasions and with every thing that he did publickly or privately if they had not been present at it he acquainted them himself and desired them to be informed carefully of the truth of all things and accordingly to represent them to the World He renounced the Title of Dominus that His Modesty and Moderation is Lord and ordered that they should write Letters to him as to a private Person reserving only the name of Emperor He refused the Jewels to his Shooes and his Cloaths which had been worn by Heliogabalus He went in a White Vestment as he is commonly Drawn and plain not Embroidered nor Fringed with Gold and of the Common Stuffs He carried himself so frankly with his Friends that he often obliged them to sit down by him and went to their Houses to their Entertainments without Ceremony and received them again continually to his own Table without a formal Invitation He was to be waited upon with as easie Access as a Senator whereas before in some other Reigns a Prince would not suffer himself to be seen He was Handsome His Personage as to his Person and well made as we see him at this day in his Pictures and Statues He had a Cavalier Meen and Stature his Strength answerable and he both knew his Vigour and took care to preserve it Some called him the Pious Alexander he was so amiable at least as a good and useful Prince all the Earth esteemed him He drew a Lot at the Temple of Fortune at the City of Palestrina in the time that Heliogabalus waited for his Life out of Virgil which was this Aen. 6. Siqua fata aspera rumpas Tu Marcellus eris Which was as much as to signifie That if he but escaped the present Danger that he was in he would be a glorious Emperor The occasion of his Name of Alexander Occasion of his Name was from hence In his Native City of Arca Caesarea in Phaenicia there was a Temple Dedicated to Alexander the Great whither upon the Festival of that Prince according to the Custom of the Country his Father and Mammaea his Mother went to assist at the usual Solemnities But by accident his Mother fell into Labour and was delivered of him in this Temple so she called him Alexander and the day of the Birth of Alexander the Son of Mammaea is the same with the day of the Death of Alexander the Great The Senate offered him the name of Antoninus But he refused it although he had an Affinity as well as Heliogabalus to the Emperor Antoninus Caracallus and an Affinity which was so much better than his as it was without the stain of his Bastardise For the Emperor Septimius Severus had Married a Noble Lady out of the East whose Horoscope as he had heard it was That she should be the Wife of a Prince though he was then but in a private Condition Which Lady 's Sister's Daughters were one of them the Mother of this Alexander and the other the Mother of Varius Heliogabalus So the two Sons were truely Cousin Germans to one another and equal upon that Foot in their Relation to Antoninus Caracallus But it was not only the name of Antoninus which he refused but the Senate by a Decree presented him the Title of Alexander the Great and he refused that also Now it will not be amiss here to subjoyn his Speech to the Senate in which he excuses his Acceptation of the one and the other Name Only in the first place I will report the Senate's Acclamations upon this occasion out of the Records of the City as I find them upon the Day but one before the Nones of March when the Senate being assembled in the Temple of Concord and Alexander at their repeated request dispensing at last with himself to repair to them though he knew that their Business was to treat of the Honours which they designed to give him they cried as he entred thus The Gods save our Innocent Augustus The Acclamations of the Senate Gods save the Emperor Alexander The Gods have given you to us The Gods preserve you The Gods have delivered you out of the Hands of the Impure The Gods Eternalize your Reign You suffered a great deal under the Impure Tyrant Impure and Obscene as he was you always regretted to see him The Gods have Rooted him up The Gods preserve your Majesty That Infamous Emperor hath justly been Condemned Under your Reign we are happy The State is happy to be subjected to you The Infamous Emperor hath been dragged for an Example That Luxurious Prince is justly punished The Profaner of all Honour hath been justly Punished The Immortal Gods give a long Life to your Majesty The Judgments of the Gods appear in your Elevation Here Alexander gave them thanks and then they went on again Antoninus Alexander the Gods save you Antoninus Aurelius the Gods preserve you Antoninus the Pious the Gods preserve you We beseech your Majesty to take the name of Antoninus To do that Honour to the good Emperors of that Name to be called an Antoninus Purifie the Name of the Antoninusses What Heliogabalus hath Deformed let your Majesty Purifie Re-establish the Honour of the Name of the Antoninusses Let the blood of the Antoninusses know it self again Antoninus Marcus hath been injured Let your Majesty Avenge him Avenge the injury done to Verus Antoninus Avenge the injury done to Antoninus Caracallus whose Fortitude at least was admirable Worse than ever was Commodus was Heliogabalus only who really was no Emperor nor an Antoninus nor a Citizen nor a Senator nor a Gentleman nor a Roman Health and Life attend your Majesty The Lives of the Antoninusses attend Alexander and let him Prosper Let him be called an Antoninus and let him Prosper Let Antoninus Consecrate again the Temples of the Antoninusses Let Antoninus surmount the Parthians and Persians Let a Sacred Person receive a Sacred Name The Gods preserve you In you Antoninus we have all things with you Antoninus we have all things After these Accclamations the Emperor took the Liberty to speak thus to them Fathers of the Senate THis is not the first of my Obligations to you I am to thank you for the Honour of my Name of Caesar which you gave me so long since and for my Life which you also have preserved I thank you as for the Empire so for the Style of Augustus
large Account of that City and its Inhabitants and of the English Factory there Likewise a Description of Madera St. Jago Annobon Cabenda and Malemba on the Coast of Africa St. Helena Johanna Bombay the City of Muscatt and its Inhabitants in Arabia Felix Mocha and other Maritim Towns on the Red-Sea the Cape of good Hope and the Island of Ascension By J. Ovington M. A. Chaplain to His Majesty Octav. Price 6 s. A plain Method of Christian Devotion laid down in Discourses Meditations and Prayers fitted to the various Occasions of a Religious Life Translated and Revised from the French of Monsieur Jurieu the two and twentieth Edition with a Preface By W. Fleetwood Chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty Price 2 s. 6 d. THE LIVES OF THE Roman Emperors FROM DOMITIAN where Suetonius ends to Constantine the Great Containing Those of NERVA and TRAJAN from Dion Cassius A Translation of the six Writers of the Augustéan History And Those of DIOCLESIAN and His Associates from Eusebius and Others With the Heads of the Emperors in Câ—â—per Plates AND A Chronology Running through the whole Time being the Space of two hundred and ten Years Dedicated to His Most Sacred Majesty By JOHN BERNARD A. M. VOL. II. London Printed for Charles Harper at the Flower de Luce over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet 1698. THE Lives in Vol. II. MAximine Father and Son Gordianus Father and Son Gordianus III. Maximus and Balbinus By Jul. Capitolinuus The Emperors from Gordianus III. to Valerian A Supplement Valerian Father and Son Gallienus Father and Son The Thirty Tyrants Claudius By Trebellius Pollio Aurelian Tacitus Florianus Probus By Flavius Vopiscus Firmus Saturninus Proculus Bonosus By Flavius Vopiscus Carus Numerianus Caesar Carinus By Flavius Vopiscus Dioclesian Maximian Constantius Chlorus Galerius By J. Bernard ADVERTISEMENT THE Continuation of These Lives from Constantine the Great inclusively down to Augustulus under whom that mighty Empire received its Period is now in Hand and will be finished with all Convenient Expedition ERRATA in Vol. I. PAG. 2. line 28. for Tirenta read Fronto p. 20. l. 7. r. in spilling their Blood Over l. 8. r. di Roma he p. 81. in the marg dele his Wife p. 87. l. 21. r. Cities Temples also He. p. 96. in the marg r. Honour done to his Wife p. 125. l. 23. dele Tho' p. 147. l. 32. for Coach r. Couch p. 147. l. 8. dele without Orders and r. unlawfully p. 164. l. 4. for virilis r. virisque p. 222. l. 27. for this r. their p. 252. l. 11. after him add p. 280. l. 15. for on r. or p. 285. l. 17. r. apply to himself p. 330. l. 9. dele about the Emperors p. 339. l. 24. dele when l. 25. r. when he said they had deserved p. 366. l. 15. r. he began ERRATA in Vol. II. PAG. 2. line 30. for Bells read Belts p. 6. l. 18. r. gave him p. 18. l. 17. for see r. secure p. 22. l. 33. r. Towns p. 28. l. 5. r. Palace p. 84. l. 33. r. the Aquaeducts p. 89. l. 26. r. the Senate's own Power p. 107. l. 11. r. devoted Sir p. 116. l. 9. r. a sudden p. 126. l. 6. for Pomilions r. Pavilions l. 16. r. of a God p. 134. l. 7. dele all p. 136. l. 19. r and in consort p. 177. l. 20. r. no small Miracle p. 299. l. 11. r. that you have taken p. 303. l. 16. r. there were three THE A. Christi CCXXXVI Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Maximin the First Address'd to the EMPEROR Constantine the Great BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS VOL. II. MAXIMIN the First was a Barbarian Born of a Village of the Province of Romania that is the Antient Thrace His Father's His Extraction Name was Mecca his Mother 's Hababa The one a Goth the other an Alan Under the Reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus he became first a Soldier Under the Reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus he Rise and Flourish'd insomuch that he succeeded him in the Empire and being unwilling after he was Emperor to have it known that his Father and his Mother were both Barbarians he ordered the Names of them which he had discovered at the beginning to be as much as was possible suppressed again and concealed from the World He was a Shepherd in the beginning of his Youth and as he grew he sometimes even then was the Champion of the Village of which he was His First Service as a Soldier was amongst the Horse because of his great size and strength of Body which fitted him more especially and cut him out for a Trooper He acquitted himself in that Quality to admiration He was of a Manly Look Rough-hewn Fierce Proud apt to Contemn which yet did not hinder him from being oftentimes Just in what he did The Occasion which introduc'd His Rise him into the Knowledge of the Emperor Septimius Severus was this That Prince upon the Birth of Geta his younger Son appointed a Divertisement of some Games and Exercises to be performed by the Soldiers and proposed Prizes for the Conquerors in pieces of Silver of fine Bracelets Collars and little Bells Maximin was as yet a Youth and could scarce speak the Latin Tongue However he took the Courage upon him in Words which were partly Latin and partly Thracian publickly to beg leave of the Emperor that he might try his Skill against some who appeared in the Lists and who were Men of a more than ordinary Account amongst the Soldiers Severus admiring him for his Size match'd him being a Barbarian not with the Soldiers but some of the stoutest Slaves and Drudges of the Camp of whom he overcame sixteen one after another for which he received as many Praemiums proportionable to the meanness of the Combat that is they were of an inferiour Value to those that were appointed for the Soldiers and withal he was ordered to be taken into the Army Another day as Severus went to the Camp he observed Maximin in the Crowd Dancing and Leaping after the Barbarian way Severus ordered a Tribune to Reform him according to the Discipline of the Romans Maximin understanding that the Emperor had spoken of him and being proud to be taken Notice of advanced to the side of the Emperors Horse and began to Run by him as he Rid. Severus to try his Running gave a loose to his Horse and took several Rounds till fatigued by reason of his Age and seeing Maximin still keep close by him You Thracian says he to him can you Wrestle as well as you Run Sir says Maximin as much as you please After this Severus dismounted and ordered some of the freshest and the strongest Soldiers to be pickt out to Wrestle with him Maximin overthrew seven of these one after another without Breathing for which he received the before mention'd Prizes in Silver and Severus besides did him the particular Honour to present His Preferment him with a Collar of Gold
him alone but his Son in Conjunction with him who is a Noble Youth for the greater Security of the State It is for you to Concur with Us to the Common Good and Safety to oppose in the mean time the wicked Designs of those that threaten us and as for Maximin and his Friends where ever they are to pursue them to Death We have adâ—udged him an Enemy together with his Son Now the Act of the Senate for Constituting â—he two Gordiani the Father and the Son Emâ—erors passed in this manner On the 6th â—f the Calends of June the Senate being Assem 〈…〉 led in the Temple of Castor and Pollux Junius â—yllanus the Consul read the Letter of Gordianus to them which he had received out of Africa The Letter was this Fathers of the Senate It was altogether against my Will that the People of this Country and the Army to whom the preservation of it is committed have called me to the Empire But with an eye to you I content my self to sustain that Necessity It is for you to consider what you will do For till I receive the Judgment of the Senate I shall be uncertain and full of doubt what course to take As soon as this Letter was read the Senate Answered it in these Acclamations The Gods preserve our Augustus and our Emperor Gordianus The Gods give a happy Reign to your Majesty who hath Delivered us May your Majesty who is our Deliverer Reign in safety The State is see in you We give you all possible Thanks Then the Consul moved the Senate and said Fathers of the Senate what is your Judgment as to the Maximins They cryed Enemies Enemies The Consul moved the Senate again and said What is your Judgment as to the Friends and Adherents of Maximin They cryed Enemies Enemies whoever kills them shall receive a Praemium Then these Acclamations followed Let the Enemy of the Senate be Crucified Let the Enemies of the Senate in all Parts be destroyed Let the Enemies of the Senate be burnt Alive The Gods save our two Emperors the Gordiani May you both Live May you both Reign together in Happiness We Decree the Praetorship to Gordianus the Third the Grandson We promise a Consulship to the Grandson of Gordianus Let the Grandson of Gordianus receive the Title of Caesar Let Gordianus the Third enter upon the Office of a Praetor When this Ordinance of the Senate was Rage of Maximin upon the News brought to Maximin he who was naturally fierce broke out into such a rage and passion you would think him more like a Lion than a Man He beat himself against the Wall and sometimes threw himself upon the ground He roared extravagantly and drew his Sword as if he would kill the Senate he tore in pieces his Royal Cloaths and struck at such as were next him and if his own Son had not retired out of his way they say he would have pull'd out his Eyes The reason of his Passion against his Son was this He had ordered him at their first entrance to the Empire to go and live at Rome which his Son out of his too great love to his Father having neglected Maximin thought that if but his Son had been at Rome the Senate would never have dared to attempt this Revolt Whilst he was in this extream Passion his Friends carried him to his Bed The next day because he could not otherwise contain himself nor lay aside the thoughts of his Resentments they set him to drown them in Wine which he did The day after he assembled a Council of his Friends to consider what was best to be done They said little some of them in their hearts applauded the Act of the Senate From this Council he went to his Army whom he harangued in a Speech which was full of Passion against Gordianus and the Africans that had set him up and especially against the Senate and then he exhorts them to Revenge their common Injuries The Speech was this My Fellow-Soldiers I am to tell you a Thing His Speech to the Army which you will not think to be any News to you you know the Country so well which is this The Africans have revolted and broken their Faith with me I would fain know when did they ever keep it with any Gordianus a feeble Old Man with one Foot in the Grave hath taken upon him the Empire And our Holy Fathers of the Senate have made his Son Emperor with him Those most Holy Fathers of the Senate who as they once Murdered the Thrice Noble Julius Caesar so now they have adjudged me an Enemy at the same time that I am Fighting for them and Conquering for them Nor is it Me only whom they have adjudged so but You and all that are with me Therefore if you are Men and Men of Bravery and Courage let us march against the Senate and against the Africans and you shall have all their Estates amongst you Having said this he gave them a great Bounty and began to March them towards Rome In the mean time Gordianus in Africa having displaced Capellianus from the Government of the Province of Mauritania because he was a Friend of Maximin Capellianus had put himself upon his defence and gathered together a Body of Men against him Gordianus the Father sent his Son Gordianus to meet and Fight Capellianus They Engaged one another with great obstinacy Gordianus was killed and lost the Battle which his Father much lamenting Young Gordianus slain and knowing that Maximin was very strong and that on the contrary the Africans were a People not sufficient for him to trust to and Old Gordianus kills himself full of Treachery he rather than to fall into the hands of Maximin put an end to his own days and Strangled himself Capellianus made good use of this Victory He slew and proscribed all he found of the Party of Gordianus he spared none as if he acted with the very Soul of Maximin in him He subverted whole Cities plundered the Temples distributed the Booty of the Temples amongst his Soldiers He cut in pieces Poor and Rich together ingratiating himself much with the Soldiers that in case Maximin should dye himself might have a fair hit for the Empire When the News of this was brought to Rome the Senate being more in fear than ever upon it of the Cruelty of Maximin which upon so much provocation given he had Reason as much as it was his Nature to exert they set up Pupienus Maximus and Clodius Balbinus to be Emperors together with Gordianus the Third a Youth who was the Grandson of Gordianus the First So they had three Emperors to support them against Maximin at once The first had been the Governour of the City of Rome had passed through many high Offices with reputation and was one of great Worth and Note but not of Birth As he was of the severer Life so was he the most Prudent and most Valorous of
all the three and therefore both the Senate and Balbinus his Brother who was a more easie Man committed the War against Maximin to him He went Balbinus tarried at Rome where there arose intestine Broils and domestick Seditions in a manner that was more violent than Balbinus was able to suppress till the Soldiers of the Guards cut in pieces several of the People Gallicanus and Mecaenas were particularly killed in this Fray and a great part of the City was burnt Maximin was well refreshed to hear of the death of Gordianus and his Son and of the Victory of Capellianus But when again he received the further News of the Act of the Senate for the constituting Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus Emperors he concluded that the Hatred of the Senate to him was Perpetual and that they did all really make him a publick Enemy so he was the more violent to advance his Expedition into Italy He crossed the Alps and came to Hemona a City which anciently stood in the way to Aquileia Some say he found this City empty and deserted which he was pleased to see as if it was that they had all ceded to the Power of his Arm. However it was when he came to Encamp on the Plain he could not find Provisions to recruit his Army For the People of the Country according to the Advices that were sent them had every where driven their Cattel and their Provisions and retired within the Town on purpose that Maximin and his Army should perish for want of Provisions This incensed his Army against him They did not think to be starved in Italy but to be mightily refreshed after their Journey over the Alps. They began first to murmur within themselves then to speak some things openly which he pretending to revenge upon them they Mutined still more but deferred to discover it till a convenient time which presented it self not long after He advanced to the City of Aquileia who shut their Gates against Maximus besieges Aquielia him and were resolved to defend themselves under the Conduct of Menophilus and Crispinus two Officers of the Order of the Consuls who were sent to them from the Senate He offered them Propositions whereon to Surrender To which the People had well nigh consented but that Menophilus and his Partner withstood them and said That they were assured of Conquering Maximin because Apollo the Tutelar God of the Place had discovered as much to them by his Soothsayers Hence the Party of Maximin after they were defeated took occasion to say That it was Apollo who fought against them and the Victory which was obtained was not a Victory of Maximus nor of the Senate but it was a Victory of the Gods At least they pretended to say this for themselves because they were ashamed indeed that so weak and so ill-provided a Place had held it out against so strong an Army Maximin passed the River upon a Bridge of Boats and began to lay close Siege to it This Service was hot on both sides Maximin and his Son went round the Walls as near as possible and sometimes encouraged on their Men sometimes made Overtures to those in the Town But all did them no great good Both his Son and he had many Reproaches thrown upon them because of the Beauty of the one and the Cruelty of the other At length thinking that it was the Laziness of his Officers which was the cause that the Siege was protracted he put some of those to death at a time when he the least should have done it because it made his Army the more dissatisfied with him In the mean time his Army was in a great want of Provisions For the Senate had sent Orders to all the Provinces and to the Governours of the Ports that they should suffer no Convoys to pass to him They had also sent Praetors and Quaestors to all Towns to keep strong Guards and to dispose all manner of things to his prejudice So that he who was the Besieger suffered the distress of Persons besieged And it was said that all the World conspired to hate him His Soldiers seeing this and fearing what might be the Consequences of it whose Wives and Children were assembled together upon the Mountain Albano not far off they took their opportunity when they were at leisure from Action and whilst Maximin and his Both the Maximins slain Son were reposed in their Tent about Noon to fall upon them and kill them Their Heads they fix'd upon Spears and shew'd them to the Garrison of Aquileia The Statues and Images that were of Maximin in the Camp were immediately defaced and taken down the Captain of the Guards to him killed with others of his particular Friends and the Heads of both the Father and the Son were sent to Rome This was the End of the two Maximins An End just upon the Father who deserved it for his Cruelty as much as it was severe upon the Son who was a good Prince All the Provinces received the News with great joy But the Barbarians regreted his loss His Army submitted whereof such as were declared publick Enemies were put to death the rest were received by the Town of Aquileia A great Convoy of Provisions was sent to them into their Camp which was almost starving and the next day they all took the Oath of Fidelity to Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus Adored Three new Emperors before their Images and acknowledged the two late Gordiani as Gods who had lost their Lives in the Cause against Maximin It is not easie to express the great Joy that appeared as the Head of Maximin was carried through the Country of Italy to Rome Every body was glad to run to meet it The Emperor Maximus was then at Ravenna where he had raised himself some Auxiliary Troops of the Germans and was making Preparations for the War But as soon as he received the News that the Maximins were both killed and that their Army had yielded and sworn Fidelity to him and his Colleagues he dismissed those Troops and immediately writ Letters of the Victory to Rome where it produced such an Universal Joy that every body repaired to the Altars Temples the Chappels and the Religious Houses to give Thanks unto the Gods for it The Emperor Balbinus who was by nature a Timerous Man and who trembled when he but heard the Name of Maximin offered a Sacrifice of an hundred Beasts and ordered the same to be repeated through all the Cities of Italy Then Maximus returned to Rome Coming to the Senate he Congratulated to them the Success of his Expedition and made a Speech After which he Balbinus and Gordianus went together to the Court attended with all the usual Acclamations of Joy and Victory It is fit to know what a Decree the Senate passed upon this and what a Day it was with the People at Rome when the News arrived of the Death of Maximin The Express sent with it from Aquileia took his
your self whether you will rather choose to have to be your Son in-Law Him or Messala who is of an Honourable Family and a very Powerful Orator a Learned Man and who if I mistake not would make a good Soldier if he was put to the War Thus that Prince speaks of the Younger Maximin I have little more to add concerning him besides a Letter of his Father's expressing the Reasons of his creating him Emperor in conjunction with himself I says he have permitted my Son Maximin to be made Emperor together with me both out of the Affection which a Father owes to a Son and also because the People of Rome and that Antient Senate may see and swear That they never had a more Beautiful Prince in their lives His Coat of Mail was all of Gold after the Example of the Ptolomies of Egypt He had another all of Silver His Shield was of Gold enriched with Precious Stones and his Javelin of Gold he had Swords of Silver and others of Gold He neglected nothing that could serve to assist his Beauty His Helmets were set with Jewels and Embossed As for what concerns his Pleasures and his Amours with which Aelius Cordus asperses him I must refer the Reader if he desires to know them rather to that Author than delay my prosecution of the Lives of the other Princes that follow in obedience to the Commands which I have received The Omens of his Reign were these A His Advancement foreshew'd Serpent came and twined it self about his Head as he slept A Vine which he Planted produced at the end of the Year large Grapes of the colour of Purple and grew to a wonderful greatness His Shield burnt by being exposed to the Sun His Javelin was cleft perfectly in two from the top to the bottom by Lightning Which the Soothsayers remark'd as an Omen that there should arise Two Emperors upon the Throne of the same House and the same Names but that they should not long Reign When he was under his Master that taught him Grammar a Lady his Relation presented him with a Homer in Purple written in Characters of Gold Being invited when a little Youth by the Emperor Alexander Severus to Supper out of respect to his Father and wanting the proper Vest to sit down in that Prince furnish'd him with one of his own As a Chariot of the Emperor Antoninus Caracallus passed the Streets empty immediately he leapt into it and sat himself down and was with much ado prevailed to come out again Caracallus was told of it and withal desired to have a care of such an Auspicious Boy Nay says Caracallus He is a great way off of being my Successor For at that time he was too inferior for that Matter by his Quality as well as his Years The Omens of his Death were these As Presages of his Death he and his Father were on their March against the Emperors Maximus Balbinus and Gordianus a Woman met them with her Hair all disheveled and in a mournful figure crying The Maximins the Maximins the Maximins as if she meant to say Help But she could speak no more and dyed The second days March at Night above a dozen Dogs set up a most miserable Howling about his Tent and in the morning were found dead Five hundred Wolves together entred into the City of Hemona after him that is the same which upon his arrival was deserted by all its People But it would take me up too much time to recite all the things of this nature He who is so over-curious to desire to know them I would wish him only to read Aelius Cordus who lets nothing escape him even to a Fable There are no Sepulchres of the Maximins extant Their Bodies were thrown into a River and their Heads burnt in the Field of Mars with great Insults and Rejoycings of the People I am not however to omit an Observation of Aelius Sabinus He says The Younger Maximin had a Face so fine and so well made that after his Head was cut off as much as it was macerated blackened and besineared with Gore any one might see that it was the Face of one who had been an extraordinary beautiful Person and therefore when the Head of the Father was carried about upon a Spear and great Joy made to see it People were almost as much on the contrary troubled to see the Head of the Son served so too A Greek Historian Dexippus adds that the Son together with the Captain of the Guards Anolinus was killed in the sight of the Father Others say that after the Father had seen his Son killed before his eyes he with his own Hand killed himself to avoid the Treatment of his Enemies However that is we cannot forbear to remember the extraordinary Firmness of the City of Aquileia to the Interests of the Senate against the Maximins They maintain'd the Siege with that Obstinacy that when they Womens Bravery wanted Strings for their Bows they served themselves of the Womens Hair to make Strings of which had been sometime done before by the City of Rome In Memory whereof and to the Honour of the Ladies the Senate there Dedicated a Temple to Venus with this Title Veneri Calvae To Venus the Bald. IMP. M. ANT. GORDIANVS AFR AVG. IMP. CAES. CLOD PVPIENVS MAXIMVS AVG IMP. CAES. D. CAEL BALBINVS AVG. IMP. CAES. M. ANT. GORDIANVS AVG. IMP. M. IVL. PHILLIPPVS AVG. IMP. CAES. C. MESSIO DECIO TR. AVG. P. 37. Vol. 11. THE Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Gordianus the First BY JULIUS CAPITOLINUS Address'd to the EMPEROR Constantine the Great THere were Three Princes of the Name His Extraction of Gordianus according to the Account of the best and faithfullest Historians The first of the Three or Gordianus the Elder was the Son of Maecius Marullus of the Family of the Gracchi and Ulpia Gordiana of the Family of the Emperor Trajan His Father Grandfather and Great Grandfather had been Consuls His Wife's Father and her Grandfather and Great Grandfather had been Consuls Himself had been a Consul and a very Rich and very Powerful one also He lived in the House which was formerly Pompey's the Great at Rome and he had more Land belonging to him in the Provinces than any one private Man besides After his Consulship in which the Emperor Alexander Severus was his Partner he was made the Proconsul of Africa by an Ordinance of the Senate Whilst he was a Youth he writ several His Studies and Munificence Poems now Extant in which he offers to outdo at least the Attempts of Cicero in Poetry upon the same Subjects And as Virgil writ Aeneids Statius his Achilleidos and Homer Illiads so Gordianus wrote his Antoniniados which is a Poem in Thirty Books and very Elegant Verse containing the Lives and Wars the Publick and Private Actions of the Emperors Antoninus the Pious and Marcus Antoninus Afterwards as he grew he Declaimed in the Publick School upon Controversies
have given Speech of Mauricius to the Africans us this necessary occasion of providing for our selves against that furious Creature Maximin For since we have killed his Receiver who was just such another as himself there is no safety for us unless we set up a New Emperor We have here a most Noble Person who is our Proconsul together with his Son a Consul his Lieutenant They were both of them threatned with Death by that Villain of a Receiver If therefore you will agree with me we will Constitute them our Emperors and Array them with the Purple and the Ornaments of the Empire according to the Laws of the Romans The Audience answer'd It is Just It is Just The Gods save the Emperor Gordianus We Welcome His Majesty to the Empire Be You Gordianus our Emperor and your Son Reign with you Having done this they went in haste to the Town of Thysdrus where Gordianus was They found the Venerable Old Gentleman reposed upon the Bed they told him the Resolution that had brought them thither and presented him with the Purple He threw himself upon the ground and refused it with all the earnestness in the World They took him up from the ground and at last when there was no possible remedy for it nor no other way to avoid the Peril which was undoubtedly Great from the Party of Maximin he suffered He is declar'd Emperor himself to be proclaimed Emperor Now he was of the Age of Eighty Years and had been the Governour of many Provinces in his time and his Actions had ever recommended him so to the People of Rome that he was lookt upon as one that altogether deserved the Empire After he was Declared his Party cast down the Statues of Maximin broke in pieces his Images and by common consent erased his Name out of the Publick Monuments But upon Gordianus they conferred the Title of Gordianus Africanus not only because he began his Reign in Africa but upon the account of his Relation to the Family of the Scipio's Some likewise surname both him and his Son Antonini others Antonii However that is after their Elevation at the Town of Thysdrus they came from thence to Carthage attended with all Princely Pomp. Gordianus the Son who before was the Lieutenant to his Father was appointed to be the Prince that should take the Field and be the General of the War An Embassy was dispatched to the Senate at Rome with Letters to give an Account of all this which Letters were very well received by the Senate whose President at that time was Valerian who was afterwards himself Emperor Private Letters also were sent to their Friends who were Men of Power and Quality to invite them to approve the African Revolution and to make themselves more their Friends by contributing their assistances to maintain it The Senate received the News of the setting Which is approv'd by the Senate up of two such Emperors against Maximin with so great satisfaction that they not only approved of what was done but made a choice of twenty Persons out of themselves amongst whom to divide the Country of Italy in order to defend it in the behalf of the Gordiani Of which number was Maximus and Balbinus who after the death of the same Gordiani in Africa succeeded to the Empire by the Authority of the Senate In the mean time an Embassy from Maximin arrived at Rome with the promises of an Abolition of what was pass'd to his prejudice But the Embassy of the Gordiani prevailed above it from which all the Good was to be expected that any one could desire It promised the Soldiers a great Bounty and the People Lands and Largesses It was a great deal more credited than that of Maximin so that the Senate proceeded thereupon to cut off Vitalianus who was the Captain of the Guards to Maximin at Rome For Vitalianus was his Creature and had already shewn himself of such another cruel Disposition as his Master the further effects whereof they dreaded and it is commonly said That the Method taken to do this was contrived for the greater privacy thus The Quaestor and some Soldiers with him who were Bold Men were sent to Vitalianus Vitalianus slain with Letters pretended to be arrived for him from Maximin The Letters were sealed as it were with Maximin's Signet Having deliver'd them they told him that they had some things to speak to him in private He took them from the Company into a long Gallery where as his Eyes were upon the Letters in his Hand and as he was expecting to hear what they had to say further they killed him and then persuaded the rest of the Guards that it was done by the Order of Maximin himself It is fit that I should give you the Decree of the Senate for Constituting the two Gordiani Emperors and the denouncing Maximin an Enemy An Extraordinary Assembly of the Senate being called the Consul attended with the Praetors Aediles and Tribunes of the People came to the House The Governour of the City of Rome was not with them He absented himself for Reasons he knew best And as he was a Favourer of the Maximins it was a kindness to the Cause of the Gordiani that he did so The Consul opened the Session with this Speech Fathers of the Senate The two Gordiani the Father and the Son who have both of them been Consuls and the one your Proconsul of Africa the other your Lieutenant are by a great Attempt of the Africans declared Emperors there Let us now therefore Thank the Town of Thysdrus and return our Thanks to our Beloved People of Carthage that they have thus delivered us from that Cruel Beast that Savage Beast Maximin What are you afraid of Gentlemen What look you about for What would you stagger at This is the thing you have always wish'd for Maximin is an Enemy Let the Gods immediately take him off and give us to know with joy the Prudence and the Felicity of Gordianus the Father and the Constancy and Virtue of the Son After this he read their Letters to them which were sent to the Senate and to himself Then followed these Acclamations of the Senate We give Thanks unto you O ye Gods Perfect the Deliverance of us from our Enemies which you have begun We all adjudge Maximin an Enemy We devote Maximin and his Son to the Region of Hell We declare the Gordiani our Emperors We acknowledge the Gordiani our Soveraigns The Gods Preserve the Emperors who are elected out of the Senate Let us enjoy our Noble Emperors as Conquerors Let us have the Presence of our Emperors at Rome with us Whoever kills the Publick Enemies he shall receive a Reward Junius Cordus calls this a Tacit Decree of the Senate but what that means I must explain in short for we have no Example amongst A â—acit Dcree â—at us of it at this day Only as when your Majesty calls your Chief Ministers into
your Cabinet to Consult about Matters that are not immediately to be made known to all the World your Ministers are under their Oaths to speak nothing of them till such time as the Business is compleated so when any Publick Necessity in Antient Times press'd the State as for Instance an imminent Danger from the Enemy which obliged them either to take inferiour Measures perhaps or to make an Order which was no sooner to be known than done or that they would not have their Friends nor any body to know any thing of it then the Senate assembled themselves in Private and their Decree was Tacit They had no Clerks no Publick Servants no Assessors present the Senators did all and executed the Offices of the Necessary Men themselves that nothing that was done should be betrayed And in this manner it was that according to Junius Cordus the Decree of the Senate against Maximin passed to Conceal it so much the more from Maximin But as there are some Men who cannot keep a Secret for fear as it were that it should burst them and who blush that what they know should not be discovered by themselves and imagining that they shall be Men of no Consequence unless they make it appear that they are intrusted with great Matters Maximin notwithstanding this Secrecy soon came to the knowledge of what had passed and had a Copy of this very Decree sent him which was never known to be done before Hereupon he writ a Letter to Sabinus the Governour of the City offended at his absence from the Senate at the time when that Decree was carried because as he was a Friend of his he ought to have been there to have opposed it The Letter was this I Have read the late Secret Decree of those Senators of yours at Rome which perhaps you who are the Governour of the City know nothing of for neither was you present at it I have sent a Copy of it to you that you may consider what Measures to take and how to Conduct your self The Emotion which Maximin was in when he received the News of the Revolt of Africa and the Concurrence of the Senate to it was such as cannot be expressed He threw himself Extreme Passion of Maximin against the Wall tore his Cloaths drew his Sword as if he could kill all the World and seem'd absolutely like a Man out of his Wits His Statues and Images in the mean time as he was a declared Enemy were thrown down and the Senate made all the use imaginable of the Power which they had taken into their hands The Informers Calumniators Receivers and all those Firebrands of the Party of Maximin they condemned to death But this did not satisfie the People who dragged them also through the Streets and threw them into the Kennel Sabinus the Governour of the City who had been a Consul was then knockt on the head and left in the Street dead When Maximin had heard of these things he came presently to his Army and harangu'd them to this purpose My sworn Fellow-Soldiers you who are engaged in my Fortunes and who endure all the Hazards of the War with me whilst we defend the Honour of the Roman Name in Germany and with our Arms maintain the Country of Illyricum against the Barbarians I am to acquaint you that the Africans who are false to a Proverb are now Revolted They have set up the two Gordiani Emperors against me One of them so Old that he can scarce rise from his Chair the other so weakned with his Debauchery that he is as feeble as if he was as Old as his Father This is not all That Worthy Senate at Rome hath approved of the Fact of the Africans and those for whom and for whose Children's Good after them we carry our Arms have appointed Twenty Persons of the Order of the Consuls to make Head against us in Italy and have declared us all Enemies Now that which I say to you is Let us play the Men and marcâ— forthwith to Rome and let us Bravely and Conragiously as we always do cut our way through them all The Army was not so moved at this Speech but Maximin perceived a slackness in their March and a Backwardness which he did not relish So he writ a Letter to his Son who was a great way behind to hasten to him with all speed for fear the Soldiers should take the advantage of his Absence to set something on foot against him The Letter was this as it is in Junius Cordus THis Express who is one of my Guards will tell you the News that I have received both from Africa and Rome and also how my Army stands affected Pray make all the haste you can to me for fear of any Attempt that should be made as is usual He whom I have sent will acquaint you further Whilst these things passed Capelianus in Africa Capelianus ' s Opposition in Africa took up Arms against the two Gordiani He had always been an Enemy to the Father before he was Emperor and being the Governour of Mauritania for Maximin and an old Soldier Gordianus after he was Emperor turn'd him out which provoked him to raise a Body of the Moors with whom he hastily directed his March towards Carthage where all the People with a right Punick Infidelity were ready to revolt to him from the Gordiani again Gordianus the Father desired however to try the Fortune of a Battel He sent his Son to fight Capelianus and the Party of the Maximins that was with him The Son was then of the Age of six and forty Years younger than Capelianus and not so experienced in the matter of War because he had been more conversant in the Delights ordinary to Persons of his Quality than the Affairs of the Field They Engag'd Capelianus as he was the Bolder and the skilfuller Soldier won the day and Gordianus was killed upon the place The number of the slain in this Battel on the side of Gordianus was so very great that his Body after a long search which was made for The young Gordian slain the Elder strangled himself it could no where be distinguished amongst such a prodigious multitude That which facilitated the Victory was a great Storm which is seldom seen in Africa arose before the Fight and shattered the Forces of Gordianus so that it in a manner disabled them Gordianus the Father hearing this and considering that his Strength was now small and Maximin's great and that Capelianus was at his Heels That the Carthaginians were a People rarely true to their Trust and there was no more safety for him in Africa And being troubled to think that he should fall alive into the hands of his Enemies to avoid that he took a Cord and strangled himself This was the End of the two Co-Emperors of the Name of Gordianus As the Senate had Recognized them both so they afterwards Deified them They Reigned one Year and six Months THE Life
For the Philips killed him The Alans had sometime also the better of him in a Fight in the Plains of Philippi in Macedonia Licinius at the same time that he set up for the Empire it is said defaced this Sepulchre because he pretended to derive his Extraction from the Philips All which I have therefore been willing to observe most Excellent Constantine to the end that you should be unacquainted with nothing that might seem in any wise to be worthy of the knowledge of your Majesty THE Lives and Reigns OF THE EMPERORS MAXIMUS AND BALBINUS By JULIUS CAPITOLINUS AFter the Death of Gordianus the First and his Son Gordianus the Second in Africa which happened in the time that Maximin was marching against Italy in a great rage to revenge his own deposition from the Empire and their elevation to it in his Place the Senate full of fears of the Attempts and Fury of so Cruel an Enemy assembled themselves in the Temple of Concord upon the Seventh of the Calends of July being the Anniversary of the Games in Honour of Apollo to consider what course to take in order to their security against him Maximus and Balbinus were then two Persons of the first Note in the Senate who had been Consuls whereof the one that is Maximus excelled in Valour and in strictness of Discipline and the other Balbinus excelled as much in Goodness These two coming into the Senate and expressing in their very entrance their concern for the News of the Design of Maximin the Consul who was making a Report to the Senate of some things of another Nature was Answer'd by the Senator of the First Voice thus We trouble our selves here about Matters of small Moment and little better in comparison than Old Wives Stories at a time that really challenges the highest Consideration of the Senate For what have we to do to Treat now upon the Repairing of Temples and the Adorning a Basilica of the Baths of Titus and the Rebuilding the Amphitheatre when Maximin is at our Heels whom you with me have declared an Enemy The two Gordiani in whom our Security was are dead nor is there at this present any Remedy for us whereunto to recur Come Gentlemen appoint who shall be our Emperors What do you lose Time for Lest whilst you perplex your selves every one with your Fears your rather perish in those Fears than by Valour and Bravery seek to effect our Deliverance The Senate was in a profound silence upon this when Maximus whose Age as well as his Merits and his Valour and Severity of Discipline rendred him most Illustrious offering to speak his Opinion the next which was that it was necessary that there should be two Emperors appointed who should Govern in conjunction with one another Vectius Sabinus of the Family of the Ulpii desired the leave of the Consul to be heard which was granted and he spoke thus It is certain Gentlemen that in Changes that are so sudden as this there is nothing like Resolving and the Counsels which offer themselves to our Thoughts are rather to be immediately executed than disputed To what purpose are many Words and fine Speeches where Affairs are so urgent Let every one have a care of his own Neck and think upon his Wife and Children and the Estate which he inherits from Ancestors All which are under imminent danger from Maximin whose Nature it is to be Furious Truculent Barbarous but yet his Cause which as he thinks is so Just will make him still much worse He hath put himself at the Head of a good Body of Troops and fix'd every where his Garrisons and is marching towards Rome and you in the mean time spend the day in sitting and Consulting Without more Words which there is no need of a new Emperor is to be made Nay I would say two â—ew Emperors one to look after the Civil Affairs the other to be charged with those of the War 〈…〉 to reside at Rome the other to march with 〈…〉 Army against the Invaders I my self will N 〈…〉 ne the Persons Do you Confirm them if you please or if not produce better Maximus and Balbinus The one so great a Soldier that he has ennobled his Birth by the splendor of his Valour the other a Man of High Birth the Lenity of whose Temper and the Excellency of his Life which from his Youth he hath bestowed always in Studies and Letters is of the greatest Consequence to the State You have my Opinion Gentlemen which is perhaps more dangerous to my self than to you But yet neither is it very safe to you unless you make either some other or these Persons our Emperors The whole House unanimously answer'd It is Just It is Just We all agree to the Opinion of Sabinus Maximus and Balbinus the Gods save your Majesties The Gods have made you our Emperors The Gods preserve you Do you defend the Senate against the Robbers of the Party of Maximin We commit the War against the Robbers to you Let Maximin the Publick Enemy with his Son perish Pursue the Publick Enemy You are happy in the Judgment of the Senate The State is happy in you to sit upon the Throne What the Senate hath deferred to you undertake with Courage What the Senaete hath given you accept it freely So with these and such other Acclamations Maximus and Balbinus declared Emperors Maximus and Balbinus were constituted Emperors From the Senate they went first to the Capitol and assisted at the Sacrifices there Whilst they were at the Capitol the Populace contradicted the Election of Maximus because they fear'd his Severity and they desired that the Infant Gordianus Grandson of the Emperor Gordianus the First of about thirteen Years of Age should be made the Caesar From the Capitol Maximus and Balbinus went to the Rostra which is the Place to Harangue the People in upon the subject of their Election As they had done this the People there together with some Soldiers who joined them cried We all desire to have Gordianus Caesur Nor would they permit the Emperors who were attended with their Guards to depart from thence to go to the Palace till this was granted so that Gordianus was presently taken and carried into the Senate and the Senate the same day which was a new thing that they had passed the Act in the favour of Maximus and Balbinus to be Emperors Assembled a second time and passed another Act in the Gordiaus declar'd Caesar favour of Gordianus to be the Caesar The first Motion which the two Emperors after their Elevation made to the Senate was That the two Gordiani who were dead in Africa should be Deified Some say this Motion was made only for the Father who had strangled himself But as the Son died the honourabler death by being killed in the Field I choose rather to believe the Report of Junius Cordus in whom I remember that I have read that they were both Deified After this
Rome and the Princes of the whole Race of Mankind to whom and to whose Censures I have ever submitted my self and have religiously endeavoured to approve my Carriage and Actions And although I may take a great deal of confidence in the Testimonies which have been giveâ— given of me by the Princes the Predecessors to you yet it is the Gravity of your Judgments which will carry the greatest Weight with me and in which I shall choose to Glory The Gods long continue the Felicity of your Reigns to the Roman World As Scipio the Conqueror of Carthage it is said pray'd That the Gods would preserve the State in the Condition in which it then was because there could not be a better so when I reflect upon you and upon the Establishment which you have made of the Empire which was Tottering till you came unto it I can only pray that the Gods would preserve the same to you in that State wherein your selves have placed it Under these two Princes there was a War betwixt the Carpi and the People of Moesia About the same time commenced the War of the Scythians and the ruin of Istria Dexippus gives great Commendations of Balbinus he says that he resisted the Soldiers when he was killed with a Couragious Mind not fearing Death and that he was one who was well instructed in all things But as to Maximus he does not agree to the Characters which is given him by most other Grecian Historians A SUPPLEMENT OF THE EMPERORS FROM Gordianus the Third UNTO Valerian the First FRom the Death of Gordianus the Third unto the beginning of the Reign of Valerian it is accounted to be about Nine or at the most Ten Years In which short time these Fifteen following Princes of whom we have little left upon History besides their Names successively carried and lost the Empire of Rome I. Marcus The Senate upon the News of the Death of Gordianus immediately exerted their own Right and created Marcus Emperor according to Zonaras He was of their own Order a Venerable Person addicted to the study of Wisdom and Philosophy But he soon fell sick and died in the Palace at Rome II. Severus Hostilianus After Marcus the Senate by their Suffrages according to Zonaras also set up this Prince who likewise had the fortune to fall sick soon after and died III. Marcus Julius Philip the Father This was the Person who was the Author of the Murder of Gordianus the Third He associated his Son with him in the Empire His Wife was Marcia Otacilia Severa who it is thought was an occasion being her self instructed in the Christian Religion that her Husband was Favourable to the Christians IV. Marcus Julius Philip the Son He was otherwise called Caius Julius Saturninus Philippus But after his Assumption to the Empire by his Father he took the same Names with him They reigned together five some say six Years V. Jotapianus This Person set up himself for the Empire in Syria in the time of the Philips But was soon oppressed again and ended his Pretences with his Life VI. Marinus Some call him Publius Carvilius Marinus He was set Emperor up by the Legions in Garrison in Pannonia or Maesia at the same time that Jotapian made his Pretences in the East and was killed soon after VII Meslius Quintus Trajanus Decius the Father The Army in Illyricum advanced this Prince in opposition to the Philips He engaged the Emperor Philip the Father in a Battel at the City of Verona and slew him there Philip the Son was killed at Rome VIII Decius the Son He was called Quintus Herennius Etruscus Meslius Decius He reigned in conjunction with his Father IX Caius Valens Hostilianus Some Medals and Antient Inscriptions mention him and he is supposed to have set up himself against the Decii as did the two following But neither the Greek nor the Latin Historians are found to say any thing of him X. Lucius Priscus He was the President of Macedonia when he was set up to be Emperor against the Decii XI Valens Licinianus This is the same whom Trebellius Pollio makes the Nineteenth in his Catalogue and Account of the 30 Tyrants He had much of the Love of the People XII Caius Vibius Trebonianus Gallus the Father IMP. CAES. C VIBIVS TREBONIANVS GALVS AVG IMP. CAES. C. VIB. VOLVSIANVS AVG. IMP. CAES. AEMILLIANVS P. F. AVG. IMP. C. P. LIC. VALERIANVS AVG. IMP. C. P. LIC. GALLIENVS AVG. IMP. C. M. CASS. LAT. POSTVMVS AVG. P. 97. Vol. 11 XIII Vibius Volusianus his Son These two succeeded together to the Empire after the Decii with whom some joyn a Third namely XIV Hostilianus Perpenna He was preferred to the Empire by the Senate in the time that Gallus and his Son were Created by the Army XV. Caius Julius Aemilianus This Prince was Created by the Legions in Maesia and after the death of Gallus and his Son who were killed by their own Soldiers he reigned the space of three Months and governed the Empire with a deal of Prudence Then dying of a sickness he left it vacant to the Emperor Valerian In fine the History of these Princes and of the whole Interval from Gordianus the Third to Valerian is inveloped in so much Darkness that certainly it is very difficult to find any one place in which the Antient Writers are of any Agreement amongst themselves THE A. Christi CCLIV EMPEROR Valerian the First BY TREBELLIUS POLLIO VALERIAN was in the Province of Rhaetia when the Army set him up to be Emperor with the unanimous consent and approbation of the Senate and the People He was a Man of an Honourable Birth the Son of Valerius and he was one who in his time had passed through all the Gradual Offices and Honours of the State with great applause which paved the Way for him to the Throne To let you see the Esteem which the Publick Respect of the Senate to him had of his Merits and how well he stood in the opinion of the most Noble Senate at the time when he was chosen to be a Censor I will give you the Act of the Senate which passed for his Election Upon the sixth of the Kalends of November the Year in which the two Decii were the Consuls the Senate having received from those Princes Letters in which they left it to the Senate's Power to appoint a Person to the Place of a Censor met for the purpose in the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Motion being made and the Question put whom they should Choose instead of waiting to be asked their Votes severally according to the Custom they all cried with one Voice in the absence of Valerian who was then in the Field with the Emperors The Life of Valerian is a continued Censorship As his Manners are Better than all the World besides so let him be the Judge of the Manners of all the World Let him judge of the Crimes of the Senate who hath none of his own
so many Valerian hath a Son an Emperor and a Grandson a Caesar And what Hath he not all the Roman World on his side which will universally rise up against you Therefore Restore him and make a Peace with the Romans which will also be an Advantage to us as well as you Artabasdes the King of Armenia sent this Letter to Sapores I Share with you in the Glory of your Victory But yet I fear that you have not so much Conquer'd as sown the Seeds of more and more Wars The Son of Valerian and his Grandson and the Captains of the Romans all Gallia all Africa all Spain all Italy all the Nations which are in Illyricum and in the East and Pontus that either are the Allies or the Subjects of the Romans will be sure to re-demand the Person of Valerian So you have a Prisoner of one Old Man and in the mean time you render all the Nations of the Earth implacable Enemies to you and it may be to us who sent you our Succours as we are your Neighbours and are always concerned in the Troubles of your State Other Nations of the Bactriani the G 〈…〉 gians the Albanians and the Tartars rejected the Applications of Sapores to them and writ to the Roman Generals to promise them their assistances to deliver Valerian out of his Captivity Valerian nevertheless remained and died a Prisoner in Persia at an advanced Age. His Quarrel was pretty well reveng'd by Odenatus of Palmyra who getting together an Army asserted the Roman Interest greatly in those Parts insomuch that he took the Treasures of the King of Persia and what those Kings hold dearer to them than their Treasures he took his Concubines Prisoners Upon which King Sapores retired himself immediately within his own Kingdom and so ended the Persian War This is the Story of Valerian the Father who was 70 Years Old when he was with great Applauses first advanced to be Emperor I come next to Valerian the Son THE EMPEROR Valerian the Second BY TREBELLIUS POLLIO VALERIAN the Second was the Son of the precedent Prince and the Brother of Gallienus by another Mother He was Handsome Modest and very Ingenious for his Age of a Charming Humour and Manners far different from the dissoluteness of his said Brother His Father had made him a Caesar and Celestinus says that his Brother did afterwards receive him as Emperor in conjunction with himself There is nothing to be remembred of him more than that he was Nobly born very well educated and that he was miserably killed He was buried about the City of Milan with this Inscription put upon him afterwards by the order of Claudius The Emperor Valerian Some have understood it of Valerian the Father as if the Body of him who was a Prisoner in Persia had been returned out of that Country But that is a mistake and therefore to prevent it for the future I mention it as such here I pass on next to the Reign of Gallienus and his Son called Saloninus Gallienus being entirely devoted to your Service and to the glory of your Reputation to which I neither ought nor can refuse any thing THE Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR Gallienus the First BY TREBELLIUS POLLIO FRom whence should I begin the Life of Gallienus but from the time of the Captivity of his Father Who that is Valerian the First being taken and kept a Prisoner by the King of Persia though it was a great Affliction to all to see an Emperor of Rome treated so like a Slave the Army in the mean time without a Head the Generals murmuring and the Empire in a tottering condition especially in the East yet did Gallienus rather rejoyce in the Misfortune of his Father and carried himself so negligently that Macrianus and Balista together with the Reliques of the Army which they assembled with them in the East consulted in fine whom to set up to be Emperor in opposition to him For as for him his Name was scarce so much as mentioned amongst them Macrianus was accounted one of the most knowing Captains of that time and no Man fitter for the Government of Affairs than he Withal he was very Rich and one that could supply the publick Occasions out of his private Fortunes His Sons Macrianus the Second and Quietus were two stout young Men who loved the War and might be of good Example to the Legions upon all opportunities where the matter of Arms might call them Wherefore it was resolved in preference Several Persons set up for Emperors to others to commit the defence of the Empire unto Macrianus and his Sons This was in the Year that Gallienus and Volusianus were the Consuls Macrianus gathered himself an Army and took all the necessary precautions for his security against his Enemies He sent Piso who was one of the chief Persons of the Senate into Achaia to oppress Valens there who governed that Country with a Proconsular Power by the appointment of Gallienus But Valens finding that Piso came against him and that there was no other way to save himself but by an Absolute Authority and by setting up himself Emperor he did so and Piso withdrew from thence into Thessalia whither Valens sent those after him that killed him In the mean time Piso had also in Thessaly set up for an Empire with the Title of Emperor of Thessalia After this Macrianus leaving his Son Quietus in the East and the Affairs under him there in a peaceable Condition began his Expedition against Gallienus He came first into the Lesser Asia and then into Illyricum In Illyricum was Aureolus who pretended to Reign there being one that had taken Arms and the Empire upon him against Gallienus Macrianus had his Son Macrianus with him and a Body of five and forty thousand Men. With these he fought the Forces of Aureolus which were Commanded by his General Domitian but Macrianus lost the day and both he and his Son were killed and all their Army surrendred to the Emperor Aureolus The News of the death of Macrianus the Father and Son coming to Odenatus of Palmyra in Syria who had made his pretensions to the Empire of the East from the Captivity Odenatus attempts the Empire of Valerian Odenatus considering the Remissness of Gallienus on the one hand and the Usurpation of Aureolus on the other and indeed the disturbed Condition of the whole Empire every where hastned upon this opportunity with an Army to see if he could take the other Son of Macrianus Quietus who had been left behind in the East This Business was soon concluded by the Treachery of such as were about the Person of Quietus For they Confederating with Odenatus and particularly Balista the Captain of the Guards killed the young Man and threw his Body over the Wall to Odenatus to whom every one after that immediately submitting Odenatus be came the Emperor of almost all the East whilst Aureolus reigned in Illyricum and Gallienus reigned
it There is no Antient Family to be found now there to represent the Nobility and the Antiquity of its former People but what perhaps hath sprung from some Person or other who escaped the slaughter by being at that time absent on his business or in the service of the War After the Peace with Aureolus Gallienus with the assistance of him and Claudius as his General who was afterwards Emperor and who is the Head of the Family of Constantius the Caesar began the War afresh against Posthumius in Gallia Posthumius was assisted with many succours from the Celtae and the Franks and being joined by Victorinus whom he had made Partner with him in his pretended Empire he marched to the Battel against Gallienus They fought several times with variety of success on both sides The Victory at last Posthumius defeated fell to Gallienus who it is to be owned had sudden Valour which came hot upon him when he was in a Choler and well provoked In this Choler he went next to revenge himself of Byzantium where he did not expect to be received within the Walls But upon Conditions he was The day after he first disarmed and then put all the Garrison and Town in cold blood to the Sword contrary to his Faith and the Promises that he had made them About the same time the Scythians in Asia were beaten by the Valour and the Conduct of the Roman Commanders there and obliged to retire from their Incursions Winged with these Successes Gallienus flew Gallienus his return to Rome with great speed to Rome and Convocating the Senate he Instituted and Celebrated his Decennial Games the Pomp and the Pleasures whereof were as Exquisite as they were New He went to the Capitol in a Procession of the Senators in their Robes the Gentry the Soldiers clad in White all the People Slaves a very great many and Women marching before with Wax Tapers and Lamps in their hands These were preceded by a hundred white Oxen yoaked two and two with their Horns gilt and Cloths of Silk thrown over their Backs of divers Colours which made a great Show In like manner marched two hundred pure white Lambs Ten Elephants that were then at Rome One thousand two hundred Gladiators pompously dressed in Cloaths embroider'd with Gold such as the Ladies of Quality wear Two hundred tam'd Wild Beasts of several kinds very finely adorned Chariots full of Mimicks and all sorts of Players Pugils fighting but not with true but counterfeit Weapons Drolls playing the Anticks and others imitating the Gestures and Looks of the Cyclops which was wonderful All the Streets resounded with Acclamations and the Plays and the Noise In the midst amongst the Senators marched Gallienus himself in a Triumphal Gown and Tunick accompanied with all the Priests in their Robes There were five hundred Spears of Gold born on each side one hundred Standards the Standards of the Colleges of the Priests the Arms and Ensigns of the Temples and all the Legions Then went also separate Bodies of Men representing Captives of Vanquish'd Nations as Goths Sarmatians Franks and Persians to the number of no less than two hundred in a Body And with this Pomp did Gallienus vainly think to elude and put upon the People of Rome who nevertheless seeing through the disguise one Man favoured Posthumius another Regillianus another Aureolus another Aemilian and another Saturninus as they fancied Great lamentation was made for the Captivity of Valerian the Father and it was admired that his own Son should leave him so unrevenged when strangers and foreign Potentates had been ready to vindicate him But nothing of this moved Gallienus his heart was stupified with his Pleasures All his discourse to those that were about him was What have we for Dinner What are the Diversions that are prepared to day What will be the Play to morrow What are the Races to be run in the Cirque The Procession being over and the Hecatombs being offered to the Gods Gallienus returned to the Court where there was an Entertainment which when finished he appointed the other days for the publick Pastimes One thing I must not omit and that is an unlucky Jest which was made upon the Procession Amongst the pretended Captives which were ridiculously led in Triumph there was a Body of supposed Persians As this Body was marching some Drolls that had a mind to be pleasant came in amongst them and sought and look'd all about and viewed every ones Face and wondred and were very inquisitive till at last they were asked what they would have and what was it they wanted Say they we would see the Emperor's Father This coming to the ears of Gallienus no regard either to his Father or to Pity or his own shame could prevail with him but he ordered the Men to be burnt The People resented their deaths beyond expectation very ill and the Soldiers worse who were so troubled that they reveng'd it upon Gallienus himself not long after In the Year that Gallienus and Saturninus Success of Oednatus against the Persians were the Consuls Odenatus King of the Palmyreni in Syria whose Valiant Actions spoke him worthy to be the Emperor of all the East as indeed he was and so he declared himself because Gallienus minded either nothing or only his Luxuries and his Follies took up the War against Persia to revenge the Captivity of Valerian which was so little regarded by Gallienus his Son He presently possessed himself of the Cities of Nisibis and Charrae by the Surrender of the Inhabitants who blamed Gallienus for his Neglect Yet was not Odenatus wanting in his Respect to Gallienus neither He sent the Great Men of the Persians whom he took Prisoners to Rome to him to give him the opportunity of insulting over their Misery in their turn which he did in a Triumph though the Victory was not his own but Odenatus's and still he mentioned nothing of his Father nor upon the report which came of his Death but which proved afterwards false did he Deifie him till he was constrained to it Odenatus advanced to the City of Ctesiphon and besieged it with a multitude of the Persians therein He laid all the Country about waste and killed innumerable of the Enemy All the Great Men of the Persians out of all the Provinces flew to this Siege for the common defence They Fought Fortune was a long time various and the Victory hard in getting But however it fell at last on the side of Odenatus who as he had no other end in the War but to deliver Valerian so he daily pushed for it but the Circumstances of Places in a strange Country incumbred the good Prince with great difficulties Whilst these things passed in Persia the Scythians broke in into Cappadocia which they Ravaged and having made themselves Masters of some Towns after the War was a long time doubtful they withdrew from thence into Bithynia Therefore the Soldiers were at this time for
stand before the Street of the Sacra Via but is since taken into the Temple of Faustina which hath this Inscription upon it To Gallienus Junior Saloninus Now let us proceed to the Thirty Tyrants or Pretended Emperors who set themselves up in the time of Gallienus the First I shall be short upon them Some were Persons of no small Merit and did a great deal of good to the Publick But others of them deserve not much to employ our Time and Pains And we have already observed several things concerning them in the Life foregoing The Grandfather Gallienus was a considederable Man in the State in his time THE From CCLIV To CCLXIX Thirty Tyrants OR Pretended EMPERORS Who set themselves up against Valerian the First AND Gallienus the First By TREBELLIUS POLLIO I Come now with the Reader 's Pardon for the plain and familiar way in which I write to those Thirty Pretended Emperors or Revolters who set up themselves for the Empire in several parts of the World in opposition to Valerian and Gallienus I shall put them all together and the two Empresses with them for not the Men only but the Women pretended to revolt against Gallienus and I shall be the shorter upon them because I would not repeat the things that have been already mentioned concerning them and because some of them were Persons so obscure that there is little or no Notice taken nor any certain Account given of them in either the Greek or Latin Historians I. CYRIADES CYRIADES was one who first Plundered and then ran away with a great deal of Gold and Silver from his Father of the same Name into Persia To whom his Luxury and his ill Manners had been before a great Affliction because his Father was a good old Gentleman of quite another Life In Persia he joined and entred himself into the Service of Sapores the King whom he stirred up to make a War upon the Romans This War was first of all Conducted by Odomastes a Persian General and next by King Sapores in Person The Cities of Antioch and Caesarea Philippi were taken From the latter Cyriades assumed to himself the Title of Caesar which afterwards was improved into that of Emperor and all the East shook at the Terror or at least the Audaciousness of his Arms. Some say that he killed his own Father others deny it However it is when the Emperor Valerian came to the Persian War against Sapores this Cyriades was killed by his own Men. His Desertion and Flight his Parricide and great Luxury are the only Memorable things of him 2. POSTHVMIVS POSTHUMIUS was a very Great Man in War and as Virtuous in Peace and in all his Life and Actions of so grave and strict a Behaviour that when Gallienus establish'd his Son Saloninus Gallienus a Youth in the Government of Gaâ—lia he committed him to the care of Posthumiâ—s as his Guardian and as one whom he desired to be the Institutor of his Princely Accomâ—lishments Some say that Posthumius afterwards broke his Trust and killed Saloninus as the way to his own rise to the Government of Ga 〈…〉 ia in his place But it seems to be more true and more agreeable to the Manners of Posthâ—mius to believe that the Gauls vehemently haâ—ing Gallienus the Father and not enduring to have a Boy over them which the Son was set the Soldiers upon him to kill him and then made Posthumius Emperor All the Army there and all the Gauls embraced with joy the Government of Posthumius He behaved himself so well amongst them seven Years that he attained the Title of The Restorer of Gallia whilst Gallienus in the mean time followed his Luxury and his Riot and was a slave to the Amours of a Barbarian Woman At length Gallienus came against him and received a Wound with the shot of an Arrow The whole Nation of all the Gauls could not but extremely love him becaused he deliver'd them from the power of the German Invaders and restored the State of Gallia unto its Pristine security But yet as the Gauls are naturally a People fond of Novelties Posthumius upon the occasion of his Rigour was killed through the means of Lollianus who rebelled against him and Lollianus was set up Emperor by the Gauls in his stead The Judgment of the Emperor Valerian concerning the Merits of Posthumius when he made him the President of Gallia appears by this Letter WE have made Posthumius the Commander on the Quarter beyond the Rhine and the President of Gallia A Man the fittest for the Temper of that Nation He will keep the Camp the Courts of Judicature the Tribunals every particular Person in Order and in their proper Rights and he will maintain his own Dignity He is one whom I do most particularly admire and in my opinion deserving a Great Post I doubt not but you will thank me for him If I am mistaken in him you may assure your selves there is no where in the World to be found a Person that I can wholly approve I have made his Son a Tribune over thâ— Gallia Narbonensis who is a Youth that will â—ne day approve himself worthy of the Exampâ—â— of his Father 3. Posthumius Junior THis Posthumius the Son of the precedent was made by his Father first a Caesar and then Emperor with him in which Honour he died at the same time with his Father in the Rebellion of Lollianus The only Memorable thing of him is that he was a Master of so much Eloquence that his Controversial Declamations are said to be inserted into Quintilian who is the most Acute Orator of all the Romans of that kind as with the least reading in him any one will see immediately 4. LOLLIANVS BY the Rebellion of this Person it was that the Valiant Posthumius was killed after he had retrieved and secured the Interest of the Roman Empire in Gallia which were in danger to be lost under the Luxury of Gallienus Lollianus was a Valiant Man himself But yet the sense of his Rebellion made his Authority the less amongst the Gauls However he was not unprofitable to the Publick For he not only Reform'd several of the Cities of Gallia but likewise the Castles which Posthumius in his seven Years Reign had built upon the Enemies Country and which after his death the Germans by a sudden Irruption plundered and burnt he rebuilt and then he was killed by his own Soldiers only because they thought him too Assiduous and put too much Labour upon them Thus first of all Posthumius then Lollianus after him Victorinus then Tetricus to say nothing of Marius arose to be the Assertors of the Roman Name in Gallia I believe they were all given from Heaven for that purpose whilst Gallienus with his unheard of Luxury neglected the State at that rate that had the Germans broken out upon us in the same manner in consort with the Goths and Persians so that all had conspired to our ruin
Macrianus and Quieâ—us who sometime since were made Tribunes by â—he Emperor Valerian Take them to be your Colleagues in the Empire They cannot be safe because they are good under Gallienus Macrianus finding that his Meaning had been rightly taken answered I submit and as to the Soldiers I will give them a double Pay with my own Money Be you Balista a careful Officer to me and provide me Provisions in the places where it is necessary and I will make Gallienus a Man beyond any thing of a Woman loose and effeminate to understand the Power of his Fathers Commanders So Macrianus and his Two Sons were with the Consent of all the Troops made Emperors The Father and his Son Macrianus marched presently against Gallienus leaving the Affairs of the East in good order under the other Son Quietus They brought with them an Army of Five and Forty Thousand Men with whom they engaged with Aureolus in Illyricum or upon the borders of Thrace but they were beaten and both of them killed and Thirty Thousand of their Men afterwards yielded themselves to the Power of Aureolus Domitian was the General of Aureolus in this Battel a very brave and active Soldier who derived his Family from the Emperor Dâ—mitian and Domitilla Not to omit the Judgment of Valerian concerning this Macrianus and his Sons in a Letter which he sent to the Senate from the Borders of Persia I Have entrusted in my absence whilst I am upon the Persian War all the Affairs of the State relating to the Military part to Macrianus He is faithful to you Fathers of the Senate affectionate to me and the Soldiery both love him and fear him Upon all occasions he will act in concert with the Armies Nor are you Fathers of the Senate strangers to the bravery of Macrianus from his beginning to this day You have known him a Boy in Italy a Youth in Gallia a Man in Thrace in his full Prime in Africa an old Man in Illyricum and Dalmatia in all which places his Bravery hath been approved in several Battels in which he hath acquitted himself exemplarily well To this it is to be added that he hath Sons worthy to be of your Body and worthy of your Favour And so he goes on 12. Macrianus the Son THIS Youth had not been made an Emperor but only with Respect to the Prudence of his Father in whose Hands he was He was wonderfully Brave for his Age and had gained himself by it great Commendations But what signifies the Fortitude of any one Man in a Battel He was overcome and killed by Domitian together with his Father His Mother was a Lady of Quality His Father had raised himself to the Empire from the degree of a private Soldier 13. QVIETVS QUietus was a Youth worthy of his Father and his Brother in conjunction with whom as we have said he was made Emperor which he also deserved But when Odenatus the King of the Palmyreni who had pretended to the Empire of the East from the Captivity of Valerian heard of the entire defeat of both his Father and his Brother by Aureolus he came with a Force against this Youth vindicating as it were the Cause of Gallienus and slew him first and Balista soon after him Yet had Quietus and his Brother lived they might have done the State very great Service Their Family flourishes at this day and one thing is very remarkable of it that it is a Family which hath and hath always had such an Honour for Alexander the Great of Macedonia that the Men continually wear his Picture in their Rings and have it cut upon their Plate the Women wear it finely wrought in their Heads Bracelets Rings Gowns Borders Mantles and all manner of Dresses The other day a Gentleman of that Family Cornelius Macer giving an Entertainment in the Temple of Hercules he had a Gold and Silver Bowl there on which in the midst was engraved a Head of Alexander and round it was all the History of him contained in short and pretty Figures which every one that had an Honour for that great Man was very Curious to see I mention this because also there is an Opinion that such as carry about them such an Image either in Gold or Silver are divinely assisted in all that they do 14. ODENATVS ODenatus Prince of the Palmyreni in Syria was the Person that really secured the Affairs of the East by his taking up Arms against the Persians in the behalf of the captive Emperor Valerian His Wife Zenobia and his Sons Herod Herennian and Timolaus accompanied him in that Expedition He first reduced under his Power the City of Nisibis and all Mesopotamia Then he fought Sapores King of Persia and beat him and put him to flight He pursued Sapores and his Children as far as to the City of Ctesiphon He took the Concubines of Sapores Prisoners and a great deal of Booty He intended next to direct his Army against the pretensions of Macrianus who had set himself up against Galâ—â—enus But Macrianus with the Son of his own Name was killed in the Battel with Aureolus in Illyricum Then Odenatus feâ— upon the other Son Quietus who was left in the East and him he killed And after he had composed in a great measure the State of Affairs in the East himself and his Son Herod were likewise killed by Maeonius I believe that God was angry with the Roman Empire in that he did not continue Odenatus longer to us For certainly Odenatus and his Lady Zenobia together had reestablished not only the East but all the parts of the Empire He was a great Warriour and he is for ever Famous besides for an indefatigable Huntsman For from his Youth he accustomed himself to the Hunting the Lion the Leopard the Bear and the rest of the wild Beasts of the Field He was always in the Woods and upon the Mountains enduring the Heat and the Rain and all the Injuries that ordinarily accompany that Sport and this hardened him again for all Weathers which he suffered in his Wars with Persia His Lady Zenobia no less accustomed herself so that many say she was as valorous and as indefatigable as he A Woman the noblest of all her Sex and says Câ—rnelius Capitolinus the Beauty too of all the East 15. HEROD HErod the elder Son of Odenatus born to him not by Zenobia but a former Wife concurred with his Father in assuming the Empire of the East He was a Man of an extreme delicacy of Life wholly devoted to the Oriental and the Graecian Luxury His Tents were embroidered his Pavilions done with Gold and he had all things after the Persian mode Odenatus loved him and indulging him his Humour he gave him all the Royal Concubines the Riches and the Jewels that he took from the King of Persia Zenobia was a right Step-mother to him which only the more recommended him to his Father 16. MAEONIVS THis Person was a Cousin-German to the Excellent
and every moment subject to the stroak of Fate I may dye before I can present you with his whole life which I shall the less care now if I do because I have satisfied my Ambition and my great Desire thus far to honour his Memory THE A. Christi CCLXXiX Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR PROBUS By FLAVIUS VOPISCUS IMP. â— PROBVS AVG. DIVO CARO PIO CARINVS NOBIL CAES. IMP. C. NVMERIANVS AVG. IMP. DIOCLETIANVS P. AVG. P. 272. Vol. 11 Without further Preface then this great and famous Prince Probus who hath scarce his equal in the Roman History was born at the City of Sirmish in Sclavonia or the Lower Pannonia Probus ' s Birth-place and Parentage His Father was not of so good Quality as his Mother was His Estate was indifferent Affinity not great however as well in his private Life as after he was Emperor he made his Noble Actions speak for him Some say his Father's name was Maximus who after he had served very well in the Office of a Centurion rise to be a Tribune and died in Egypt leaving a Wife a Daughter and this Son There is one Greek Author who says that Probus was a Relation of the Emperor Claudius who was a most Excellent and most Noble Prince which may perhaps be the more Credited because I find in the Journal of Turdulus Gallicanus that after his death he was buried by Claudia who was the Daughter of Crispus who was the Brother of Claudius But I leave this to the Reader Probus signalized himself so in his Youth and was so agreeable in his Person and Manners How esteem'd by Valerian that the Emperor Valerian early conferred upon him a Legion when he was in a manner Beardless The same Emperor in a Letter to Gallienus proposes him to the imitation of all the Youth by which by the way one may take notice that no Man becomes very great in his Age but who lays down a good Foundation for it in his first years and then gathers within himself those Seeds which afterwards produce the Fruit of Great Actions The Emperor Valerian the Father to the Emperor Gallienus the Son HAving always had a good Opinion of Probus as young as he is I have made him a Tribune following therein both my own Judgement and that of all others who say he is worthy of his Name that is as Probus is his Name so Probity is his Nature and Character I have given him the Command of Six Cohorts of the Saracens together with the Troops of the Auxiliary Gauls and that Body of Persians which Artabasse thâ— Syrian hath submitted to us I desire you my dearest Son that as I would have this Youth tâ— be the Example for all Young Persons to imitate you would take that care of him and receive him with that respect which his Virtues his Merits and the Splendour of his Natural Partâ— do deserve The Emperor Valerian to Mulvius Gallicanus the Captain of the Guards YOU may wonder perhaps That I have made a Beardless Youth a Tribune contrary to the Constitution of the Emperor Hadrian But you will soon Cease to do so if you consider what a truly deserving Youth Probus is I never think of him but I compare together his Name and his Qualities they do so justifie one another If it had not been his name he might have been entitled Probus because of the Probity of his Temper and Actions You will therefore order that there be given him being but of an indifferent Fortune to make up the Occasions of his Station two Russet Tunicks two French Robes with Clasps two Linen Jerkins one Vessel of Silver of ten pound weight Ingraved one hundred Antonine's in Gold one thousand Aurelian's in Silver and ten thousand Philips in Brass And for his ordinary Pension ten Pound of Beef ten Pound of Pork ten Pound of the Flesh of the Goat a Pullet every two days one Quart of Oil every two days ten Quarts of Old Wine every day with Salt Herbs and Wood as much as he wants You shall withal order him the same Quarters as to the Tribunes of the Standing Legions In the War against the Sarmatae in which he was a Tribune he passed the Danube and acted with so much bravery so many things that he was publickly in a Council of War presented with four Spears two Crowns in the form of a Trench being of that sort Praemiums given him which are given to such as first enter the Enemies Camp one Civick Crown four Standards two Bracelets of Gold 〈…〉 â—n of Gold and one Piece of Plate of 〈…〉 weight of five Pound The Civick Crown was given him because he retook out of the Hands of the Quadi a Noble Youth called Valerius Flaccinus who was a Relation of the Emperor Valerian These Praemiums were all delivered to him by Valerian hims 〈…〉 who at the same time raised him to the Command of the Third Legion with this Elogium My well beloved Probus THough it may seem Early in respect of your Age that I prefer you to a Command in the Standing Forces of the Empire yet in respect of the Actions done by you I may rather be thought to have made it later than I ought Receive therefore into your Trust the Third Noble Legion which I have never given before but to a Person of more years and my self was in Gray Hairs when I first was preferred to it But Age is a thing I have no reason to wait for in you whose Bravery is so shining and your Manners so Charming I have ordered three Suits of Cloaths to be given you doubled your Pay and appointed your Standard-Bearer It would be too long a Work to run through the several Actions of this Great Man in the Reigns of Valerian Gallienus Aurelian and Claudius whilst he was yet in a private Capacity How often he Scaled the Walls entred the Enemies Trenches how many of them he hath killed Hand to Hand what Presents he received from the Princes his Masters and how he laboured by his Service to promote the good of the State A Letter of Gallienus speaks thus of him The Emperor Gallienus to the Tribunes of the Forces of the Province of Illyricum ALthough the Fatal Necessity of the Persian War hath concluded my Father a Prisoner in the Hands of the Enemy yet I have a Kinsman Aurelius Probus in whose Services I can confide with security That never to be named Tyrant had never usurped upon the Empire if Probus had been Present Wherefore I desire you all to obey the Counsels of a Man who is approved by the Judgement of both my Father and the Senate Now though Gallienus was a soft Prince which may seem to lessen the Authority of what he says yet it cannot be denied but let a Prince be never so soft he will not however trust himself but to one whom he knows to be very well qualified to serve him But though we should set aside the
sooner did the Aegyptians see him afterwards in Power in the time of Probus but they cryed We make Saturninus Emperor The Gods save your Majesty It is true he prudently retired presently from Alexandria again and went into Palestina But finding there that it was not safe for him to live after this in the Quality of a private Man he suffered the Soldiers that were about him to put upon him the Purple and adore him as Emperor The Purple was a Cloak taken off for the purpose of a Statue of Venus My Grandfather was in the Company when he was Adored I have often heard him speak of it Saturninus he said wept and expressed himself thus If I may speak it without Arrogance the Government hath lost an useful Subject It is certain I have re-established Gallia I have recivered Africa out of the possession of the Moors I have appeased Spain But what 's this It is all lost and the Merit of it will be abolished by this one Honour which you unhappily affect to give me The Company that was about him animating him on to the Enterprize he said You know not my Friends what a troublesome thing it is to be a Prince Drawn Swords by nothing but a Hair hang over our Heads every where Poniards and Darts threaten us Our Guards our Companions themselves are fear'd by us We eat not our Meat with pleasure and we are forced to Wars and Arms many times contrary to our Judgments Whatever one 's Age is to be sure it meets with Reproaches upon the Throne Is a Man Old he is disabled and past Service Is he Young he is Wild and Rash What shall I say of Probus who is so universally Amiable For whilst you make me Rival to him to whom I willingly Cede and whose Officer I desire rather to be you draw me into a necessity of Destruction I shall have only this Comfort that I cannot perish alone This says M. Salvidienus was truly his Speech Indeed he was one who had no small knowledge of Letters He had studied Rhetorick in Africa and at Rome he had frequented the publick Academies To be short I see some are mistaken about him to think that he was the Saturninus who pretended to the Empire in the time of Gallienus whereas this was altogether another Person This Saturninus was set up in the time of Probus and killed against almost the inclinations of that Prince For Probus writ several kind Letters to him and promised him his Pardon But the Soldiers who were about him would not give him leave to hearken to those Offers So the Party of Probus which was sent against him besieged Saturninus slain him in some Castle in which he was and killed him in the Action It would be tedious to descend to all the particulars of his Stature his Person his Shape his Eating and Drinking which others may that please trouble themselves about though the Example of them scarce signifies any thing But I shall proceed to the following Account of Proculus and Bonosus PROCULUS PROCVLUS was a Native of the City of Albenga in the Republick of Genoa amongst the Maritime Alpes of a Gentleman's His Extraction and Wealth Family but as well himself as his Ancestors were great Robbers so that what with the Cattel the Slaves and such things as he had gotten by that means he was very Rich. It is said that at that time that he took upon him the Empire he Armed two thousand of his own Slaves He had a Virago to his Wife who precipitated him into the Madness of putting up for the Empire Her Name was at first Viturgia afterwards she was called Sampson They had a Son called Herennianus to whom if Proculus could have supported himself in his Enterprize but five Years he said he would have secured the Empire after him It cannot be denied but that Proculus was an extraordinary and a very brave Man and had always passed his Life under Arms. He had Commanded in the Quality of a Tribune over several Legions and had done Actions of great Valour Not to omit a pleasant Passage which he glories in in the following Letter which I had rather give you in his own words than represent it my self Proculus to Maetianus his Kinsman wisheth Health I Have taken Captive out of the Country of Sarmatia one hundred Virgins Ten of which I lay with in one Night To the best of my power in fifteen days I have made Women of them all This is a Ridiculous Action you see and extremely Libidinous and yet he glories in it and reckons as a fine thing what was otherwise his Crime However being notwithstanding his Wickedness and his Lewdness a considerable Officer and one that acquitted himself always with great Courage the Colony of Lyons in France who had been severely Treated by the Emperor Aurelian and were very much afraid again of Probus soliciting him to it he set himself up to be Emperor Onesimus says which I do not remember that I have read in any one else That he was made Emperor in Raillery as it were first at a Game of Chess For being one day at an Entertainment at Play at Chess in which he went out King ten times one of the Company who wanted not Wit saluted him upon it as Emperor and said The Gods save your Majesty And setching him a piece of Purple put it upon him and then Adored him This gave occasion to the Company that was privy to it to joyn with him and they went next to gain the Army and so set up for the Empire Proculus was not a little serviceable to the Gauls For though he never fought but in the way of the Brigundages which he continually committed he gained himself and them some glory over the Germans Probus coming against him and ready to drive him almost out of the World he desired to take Refuge in the assistance of the Frank from whom he pretended to derive his Original But as it is familiar with the Franks to break their Faith and make no more than a Jest of it they betrayed him and so Probus He is slain overcame him and slew him His Posterity are at this time living at Albenga who in raillery will often say that they neither like being Robbers nor Princes So much concerning Proculus BONOSUS BONOSUS was of a House of Spain His Extraction but Born in Britain His Mother a Gaulese or a French Woman His Father either a Professor in Rhetorick as he the Son said or as I have found from others a Grammarian who dying when this his Son was very young his Mother who was a Woman of Wit educated him and taught him something of Letters He served as a Soldier first in the Foot and afterwards in the Horse He rose to be a Centurion then to be a Tribune and at last to be the General on the Frontier of Rhaetia No Man ever drank like Bonosus The Emperor Aurelian said often of him
sudden it was cryed the Emperor was dead which happened just after the greatest clap of Thunder that had frightned all The Servants of the Emperor's Bed-Chamber in grief for his Death set Fire to his Tent. The Flame whereof joyned with the Lightning occasioned a Discourse that he was killed with the Lightning But as much as I know of the matter I think it is certain that it was of his illness that he died I have the rather inserted this Letter because it is often said that by a certain Power of Fate the Roman Emperors are restrained from passing beyond the City of Ctesiphon and that Carus was for that Reason destroyed by Lightning because he offered to transgress that limit But let timidity cover it self under what Arts it pleases the Brave will despise them The most excellent Caesar Maximian does not nor will ever think it unpermitted to him to conquer the Persians and to penetrate beyond them too which I am of Opinion he will effect if we be not wanting ourselves to the promised Favour of the Gods There are many things which speak Carus a good Prince and amongst the rest this that presently after he was possessed of the Empire the Sarmatians who were grown so insolent upon the Death of Probus as to menace not only Illyricum but Thrace and Italy with an Invasion these Men he so dereated and broke chiefly by his Policy that in a few days he settled the Security of Pannonia killed sixteen Thousand of the Enemy and took twenty Thousand more of both Sexes Prisoners This I presume may be enough to say as to Carus Let us pass on next to Numerianus For tho' Carinus was both the elder Brother and the elder Caesar yet it is necessary to discourse of Numerianus the first in asmuch as he was the nearest at that time to his Father and followed his Death and his Story also is something the more admirable because of his Father-in-Law Aper After him will follow that of Carinus with whom the Emperor Dioclesian fought several Battels and had the Fortune at last to kill him NUMERIANUS CAESAR BY FLAVIUS VOPISCUS NUMERIANUS the Son of Carus was a Person extremely well disposed as to his Manners and truly worthy of the Empire He had a singular Genius for Eloquence His Parts and Learning both in Prose and in Verse He declaimed in Publick and was the Author of several things extant which are Noble in that kind In Verse he exceeded all the Poets of his Age. He disputed the Bays with the famous Olympius Nemesianus and he as far outdid the Iambicks of Aurelius Apollinaris as the Sun out-shines every thing else A Speech which he once sent unto the Senate was filled with so much Eloquence that they Voted him a Statue to be set up in the Ulpian Library not as to a Caesar but as an Orator The Inscription was To Numerianus Caesar the most Powerful Orator of his Time Accompanying his Father to the Persian War he created himself a Sickness with the excessive grief which he took at his Death which gave an opportunity to Arrius Aper his Father-in-Law to kill him as he was in a Litter He is murdered by which Aper designed to mount the Throne himself in his stead He kept the Murder private for several days telling the Soldiers when they enquired about his Health that Numerianus was not to be seen because he was obliged to keep out of the Wind and the Sun for his sore Eyes which he had till at last the Body stinking and the Treachery of Aper not being possible to be longer concealed they took him and brought him to the Head of the Army where after a great Harangue upon the occasion and a Tribunal raised it was proposed who should be the just Avenger of the Death of Numerianus and who the Prince to succeed to the Throne All with a Divine Consent cryed Dioclesian who then Commanded the Forces of the Houshold and had received before already many Presages of his future Reign Dioclesian was a Personage of great Note politick well affected to the State a lover of his Friends prepared for all Events as occasion required his Counsels always raised yet never Extravagant nor Impudent because he stifled within him the Motions of his unquiet Breast with an extraordinary Obstinacy He mounting the Tribunal and being proclaimed Emperor the Question next was How Numerianus was Killed Aper who had been the Captain of the Guards stood by Dioclesian drew his Sword and striking it through the Body of Aper upon the place said This is the His Death revenged Author of the Death of Numerianus So Aper was served but as his Actions deserved My Grandfather hath told me that he was in the Company when Dioclesian killed him with his own Hand and he said as Dioclesian made the Blow he cryed to Aper Be proud that you fall by so great a Hand as mine It is Matter of Curiosity and not commonly known I mean the Story which is proper to be told in this place of a Presage that happened to Dioclesian of his Elevation to the Empire My Grandfather hath told me that he received it from Dioclesian himself When Dioclesian served at the City of Tongres in the Netherlands where he was then a young Soldier and in an inferior Post talking with a Woman who was a Druid about his daily Expences at the Inn in which he lodged says she to him Dioclesian you are too Covetous you are too good a Manager Dioclesian in jest answered But I will be Generous when I am an Emperor Says she Dioclesian you need make no Jest of it Yes yes you will be an Emperor but you must first kill a Boar. From that time Dioclesian always had thoughts in his mind of the Empire as both Maximian and my Grandfather knew to whom he himself told this Story and laughed at it but not a word to any body else Therefore in Hunting wherever he could he always killed the Boars with his own hand so when Aurelian Tacitus Probus and Carus were all made Emperors before him says he I always kill the Boars but another runs away with the Dish and the sweet Bit. But when he had killed Aper which is a Latin Name for a Boar Now says he at last I have killed the Fatal Boar. And my Grandfather hath said that Dioclesian declared that he had no other reason for killing Aper with his own hand but to fulfil the Saying of the Druid and strengthen himself in the Empire for otherwise especially upon the first day of his Reign he did not desire to appear so Cruel if such a Necessity had not thereunto compell'd him Now I come to Carinus THE A Christi Cclxxxiii Life and Reign OF THE EMPEROR CARINUS BY FLAVIUS VOPISCUS CARINUS was one of the impurest of Men. I am ashamed to repeat what Onesimus hath written of him An Adulterer vicious with Boys whom he frequently debauched and passive in an Act
evident the Copiers were not mistaken Julius Capitolinus HE has written the Life of Antoninus Pius and addressed it to the Emperor Dioclesian whose Name he makes use of for the Life of Marcus Antoninus the Philosopher tho' none of the Editions have any Dedication prefix'd to them He ddicates also to Dioclesian the Life of the Emperor Verus to which if that be not rather to be attributed to Spartianus we may further joyn the Life of Pertinax For the Life which we have under the Name of Claudius Albinus is dedicated to the Emperor Constantinus and not to Dioclesian as Casaubon thinks in the beginning of his Notes on Spartian We have also by him the Life of Macrinus and those of the two Maximim and of the three Gordiani dedicated to the same Constantinus As for those of Maximus and Balbinus which we have also under his Name they are without any Dedication and as for the rest which he writ of other Emperors they are lost It is evident that he has not carried on the same Design throughout his Work of making a particular Book for each Life as he proposed at the beginning but has faln into another Method as he acquaint us himself at the beginning of the Lives of the Gordiani where he tells us expresly that he had changed his mind as to that and afterwards gives us his reason for so doing Aelius Lampridius THIS Author is one of those whom Vopiscus pretends to imitate in his Life of Probus We have Four Lives done by him viz. those of Commodus Antoninus of Antoninus Diadumenus of Antoninus Heliogabalus and of Alexander Severus the Two latter whereof are dedicated to Constantinus Augustus But we have some reason to doubt whether Lampridius was the Author of the Life of Alexander Severus It is true it is attributed to him in the Edition of Milan which is the first that was ever extant but that excellent Manuscript of the Palatine Library ascribes it to Spartianus as does also Robertus à Porta of Bolonia But that Collection of Spartianus's Works in the Palatinate whereof Salmasius speaks does not only ascribe this Life to him but also those of the Three Antonini which I have just now mentioned which if it be true there will not one remain for Lampridius But be is as it will we have no Reason to give more Credit to the Palatine Collection than to so many other Manuscrips of Spartianus which have been published Which notwithstanding if it seem to bear too much upon those of the contrary Opinion I shall be willing to persuade my self that Aelius Spartianus and Aelius Lampridius were the same Person it being easte to apply that of Ausonius to the present Case Three names are commonly affected by Persons of Quality Moreover besides those three or four Lives Spartianus writ some other between them and that of Marcus Antoninus whereof he makes mention in the beginning of the Life of Commodus and yet notwithstanding did not Compose the Lives of all the Emperors down to Constantinus or to Dioclesian as one may easily guess from the Life of Aurelian written by Vopiscus Thus as far as I see we may without much difficulty Concede that Aelius Spartianus and Aelius Lampridius were the same Person under three names as I have said before And if this or both were of the Family of the Aeliani from which the Emperor Adrian also was descended their Original was illustrious enough but this is all very uncertain and we can draw no satisfactory Conclusions from it Trebellius Pollio IN the first Edition of this Author which was at Milan we find him called Trevellius and not Trebellius according to Aventinus's Correction in the second Book of his Annals where he speaks of Ancient Writers But that in the Opinion of Vossius was not at all necessary For among Ancient Inscriptions says he you may find Trebellius Pelidianus Trebellius Marinus Proconsul Trebellia Tyche and such like We may add that Trebellius is formed from Trebius which is very frequently found among the said Inscriptions as Trebius Germanus Trebius Longus Trebia C. F. Filumena Nay as Salmasius remarks there are some Ancient Manuscripts to be seen wherein this very Author is called Trebius Pollio Be it as it will This Pollio says Flavius Vopiscus in the Life of Aurelian Has Composed an History of the Emperors both those that have render'd themselves famous and those that have led obscure Lives down from the two Philips to Claudius and his Brother Quintilius But there remains of this Authors neither the Lives of the Philips nor the Life of Decius who succeeded the Philips neither those of Gallus and Volusianus who came after Decius Also we have only one part left of the Life of Valerianus the Father towards the end but we have that which follows and also the Life of Valerianus the Son the Lives of the two Gallieni and of the thirty Tyrants who usurped the Empire in the time of Gallienus As to his Book which he Entitles of the thirty Tyrants it seems to have a respect to the thirty Tyrants which Commanded in Athens after Lysander and without doubt this Author had a fansie to parallel the Roman Empire with that State in having also thirty Tyrants in the time of Valerianus and Gallienus because there were several But he reckons no more than twenty nine wherefore to make up the number of thirty he adds Valens to them who liv'd before and indeed he himself owns that he revolted in the time of Decius But if we may exceed the time of Valerianus and Gallienus we may add a great many more besides Valens Howsoever so small a fault as this scarce deserves Criticising upon the Judgment of this Historian and there is yet less reason to reflect on him for his admitting two Women into his List of Tyrants viz. Zenobia and Victoria for it is common to denominate things from the Nobler Gender thus you see Women admitted into the number of Illustrius Poets as Sappho and Corinna but for this Trebellius excuses himself at the latter end of his Work He liv'd in the time of Constantius Chlorus Father of Constantinus as we may easily Conjecture since he mentions him in the beginning of the Life of the Emperor Claudius Brother of Quintilius Which agrees very well with what he says of his Uncles being a Familiar Friend of the young Tetricus one of the thirty Tyrants Vopiscus commends the diligence of this Historian at the beginning of the Life of Firmus Furthermore if we consider the time wherein he lived his Language and Stile are not unworthy of praise whereof Gesner in the first Tome of his Bibliotheca gives this Encomium that they are not without both Politeness and Nicety but that in some places his Stile rises a little too high for History and Vossius is of the same Opinion Flavius Vopiscus THIS Author a Sicilian Born at Syracuse has writ the Life of the Emperor Aurelian and also of Tacitus and his