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
[Sidenote:--35--] The governor of that country was Basilianus, whom
Macrinus had also made prefect in place of Julianus. Some interests were
managed also by Marius Secundus, although he had been created senator by
Macrinus and was at the head of affairs in Phoenicia. In this way both
of them were dependent upon Macrinus and for that reason put to death
the runners of the False Antoninus. As long, therefore, as the outcome
of the business was still in dispute, they and the soldiers and the
individuals were in suspense, some wishing and praying and reporting one
thing and others the opposite, as always in factional disturbances. When
the news of the defeat of Macrinus arrived, a riot of some magnitude
followed, in which many of the populace and not a few of the soldiers
were destroyed. Secundus found himself in a dilemma; and Basilianus,
fearing that he should lose his life instanter, effected his escape
from Egypt. After coming to the vicinity of Brundusium in Italy he was
discovered, having been betrayed by a friend in Rome to whom he had sent
a secret message asking for food. So he was later taken back to
Nicomedea and executed.
[Sidenote:--36--] Macrinus wrote also to the senate about the False
Antoninus [as he did also to the governors everywhere], calling him
"boy" and saying that he was mad. He wrote also to Maximus, the
præfectus urbi, giving him such information as one might expect, and
further stating that the soldiers recently enlisted insisted upon
receiving all that they were wont to have before, and that the rest, who
had been deprived of nothing, made common cause with them in their anger
at what was withheld. And to omit a recital, he said, of all the many
means devised by Severus and his son for the ruin of rigid discipline,
it was impossible for the troops to be given their entire pay in
addition to the donatives which they were receiving; for the increase in
their pay granted by Tarautas amounted to seven thousand myriads
annually, and could not be given, partly because the soldiers and again
because [lacuna] righteous [lacuna] but the recognized expenditures
[lacuna] and the [lacuna] could he himself and the child as [lacuna]
himself [lacuna] and he commiserated himself upon having a son, but said
that he found it a solace in his disaster to think that he had outlived
the fratricide who attempted to destroy the whole world. He also added
to the missive something like the following: "I know that there are
many who are more anxious to have emperors killed than to have them
live, but this is one thing I can not say in respect to myself, that any
one could either desire or pray that I should perish." At which Fulvius
Diogenianus exclaimed: "We have all prayed for it!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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