[421] “_Medicis_ ministrisque conaretur persuadere, senem ut e medio quam primum quoquo modo tollerent.”—Lib. iii. p. 412. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died in Pannonia, when prosecuting a war against the German tribes. Dion Cassius alludes to the physicians who were in attendance upon Aurelius during this long campaign, when adverting to the report that the emperor’s death was caused by them, in order to promote his son and successor Commodus (“peremptus a _Medicis_ qui Commodo gratificabantur.”—_Excerpta_, p. 252). But Capitolinus, the principal authority regarding the biography of Aurelius, does not even advert to the report. On the other hand, he describes Aurelius’ fatal illness as one of seven days’ duration, and states that the emperor only dismissed Commodus from his presence on the last day, lest he should communicate the disease to him. (“Septimo die gravatus est; et solum filium admisit; quem statim dimisit, _ne in eum morbus transiret._”—_Scriptores Historiæ Romanæ_, vol. ii. p. 298.) [422] Lib. iii. p. 413. “Nam et _Medicos_ supplicio affecit, quod sibi parum obtemperaverant, jubenti senis maturare necem.” This, as stated in the text, was one of the first, if not the first, act of cruelty which Caracalla committed after Severus’ death. Dion affirms that, after murdering his brother Geta, he ordered about 20,000 of Geta’s supposed friends to be put to death; and amongst others he condemned to death, according to Spartian, a class which is medically not uninteresting—namely, all those who wore amulets or charms about their necks for the cure of agues, a custom which would appear to have been much in use both among the Greeks and Romans.—See Hart’s Herodian, p. 177. [423] As a further not uninteresting record of the habits of these times, as contrasted with our own, let me add (though the topic is not altogether medical), that after Severus died at York, worn out, according to Herodian, more by grief than by disease (moerore magis quam morbo consumptus), his body was burned, and the ashes left by the corpse inclosed in an urn of alabaster with perfumes (odoribus).—Herodian, p. 413. His sons, with their own hands, lighted the funeral pile. Dion states that, shortly before his death, Severus sent for the urn that was destined to contain his ashes, and addressed it in terms too truly significant of the vanity and emptiness of the highest earthly ambition and the greatest earthly success: “_Tu virum capies quem totus orbis terrarum non cepit._”—Dion, p. 307.