affront in rejecting him. It was reported to the prince that Asper had made some improper remarks, and moreover he affected to think that old age and disease constituted a second reason for relieving him of his duties, and therefore he delivered Asia into the keeping of Faustus, a man who had been overlooked in the order of allotment by Severus. As the time for him to govern turned out to be short, Macrinus bade him hold the office for the following year in place of Aufidius Fronto. To the latter he would entrust neither Africa (which he had drawn by lot), because the Africans begged that he be not allowed to come, nor yet Asia, though he had first transferred him thither. As a fitting recognition, however, Macrinus proposed that twenty-five myriads be given him to stay at home. Fronto, however, would not accept that, saying that he wanted not money but a position of authority, and accordingly later he received the province from Sardanapalus. Besides these events aid was extended to the orphans, whose hopes of support were small, from the [lacuna] age of childhood to military years. [Footnote: See note 2c, page 58.] [Sidenote:--23--] Now Julia, the mother of Tarautas, chanced to be in Antioch, and at the first information of her son's death she was so affected that she struck herself violently and undertook to starve herself to death. The presence of this very same man, whom she hated alive, became the object of her longings now that he had ceased to exist; yet not because she desired him to live, but because she was furious at having to return to private life; and this led her to abuse Macrinus also long and bitterly. Subsequently, as no change was made in her royal suite or in the guard of Pretorians attending her, and the new emperor sent her a kind message (not having yet heard what she had said), she took courage, laid aside her longing for death, and, without writing him any response, held some negotiations with the soldiers she had about her, especially [lacuna] and as they were angry with Macrinus [lacuna] as they had a pleasanter remembrance of her son, how she might attain the imperial position, rendering herself the peer of Semiramis and Nitocris, since she came in a way from the same regions as they; [Footnote: Boissevain's conjecture for the succeeding sentences (valuable, of course, only as the guess of an expert) is the following: