Dio's Rome, Volume 6: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 6: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
But when nobody would cooperate with her and letters came from Macrinus
making certain announcements at which, in view of her circumstances, she
felt herself depressed in spirits, she renounced her ambitions out of
fear that she might be deprived of the title of Augusta and be forced to
depart to her native land, and al [lacuna] drea [lacuna] wom [lacuna] ad
[lacuna] eake [lacuna] and mos [lacuna] any one behol [lacuna] she
decided to do just the reverse and submit lest she be forced eventually
to return to Rome and be there compelled by Macrinus to remain at home
for the future for appearing to be opposed to his policy. Afterwards,
however, she was intending to take measures that would enable her to get
away by ship, if possibility still offered, when he ordered her, etc.]
as [lacuna] coöperated [lacuna] and letters [lacuna] of Macrinus
[lacuna] some for which [lacuna] judgment [lacuna] fearing that she
might be deprived of the title of Augusta and to [lacuna] native country
be forced to return [lacuna] to fear [lacuna] go to Rome [lacuna]
Macrinus [lacuna] seeming to do the opposite [lacuna] how [lacuna] might
depart and he ordered her to depart from Antioch with all speed and go
whithersoever she would. [And when she heard what was said in Rome about
her son] she no longer cared to live. The cancer in her breast, which,
for a very long time had remained stationary in its progress, had been
made angry and inflamed by the blow which she struck her chest on
hearing of her son's death; this helped to undermine her constitution
and she made sure of her demise by voluntary starvation.
[Sidenote:--24--][And so this queen, sprung from a family of common
people and raised to a high station, who had lived during her husband's
reign in great unhappiness on account of Plautianus, who had beheld her
younger son butchered in her own lap and had borne ill-will to her elder
son while he lived, finally receiving such tidings of his assassination,
withdrew from power while in the full flush of life and thereafter did
herself to death. Hence a person reviewing her career could not deem
infallibly happy all those who attain great authority; indeed, in no
case unless some true and undefiled pleasure in life belongs to them,
and unswerving, permanent good fortune.--This, then, was the fate of
Julia. Her body was taken to Rome and placed in the tomb of Gaius and
Lucius. Later, however, both her bones and those of Geta were
transferred by her sister Mæsa to the precinct of Antoninus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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