[Sidenote:--4--] This incident sheds some light on the character of Comazon, who got this name from mimes and buffoonery. [Footnote: This statement is an error on the part of Xiphilinus, who thought that "Comazon" (in Greek=The Reveler) was a nickname for a certain Eutychianus. Investigations, however, show that there was a M. Valerius Comazon prominent at this time and that the word should be taken as a proper and not as a vulgar noun.] He commanded the Pretorians and, though holding no position of management or superintendence whatever, except over the camp, [he obtained the consular honors] and subsequently actually became consul. [Also he became city prefect] not merely once, but twice and thrice, as could be recorded in no other case. Wherefore this, too, must be enumerated among the most illegal proceedings. [It was on his account, then, that Attalus was put to death. Triccianus came to his end on account of the Alban legion, which he commanded with good discipline during Macrinus's reign, and Castinus [Footnote: _C. Iulius Septimius Castinus_.] because he was energetic and was known to many soldiers in consequence of the commands he had held and his association with Antoninus. He had accordingly been sent out in advance by Macrinus without reference to other events and was living in Bithynia. The emperor put him to death in spite of having written concerning him to the senate that Triccianus had been banished from Rome, like Julius Asper, by Macrinus, and that he had restored him. He took similar vengeance on Sulla, who had been governing Cappadocia but had relinquished it, because Sulla both meddled in some matters that did not concern him and when summoned to Rome by Elagabalus had managed to meet the Celtic soldiers returning home after their winter in Bithynia, a period during which they had raised some little disturbance. These men perished for the reasons specified and no statements about them were communicated to the senate. Seius Carus, the descendant of Fuscianus, who had been city prefect, was killed because he was rich, great, and sensible, on the pretext that he was forming a league of some of the soldiers belonging to the Alban legion; and, on the basis of some charges preferred by the emperor alone, he was accused in the palace, where he was also slain.] Valerianus Pætus lost his life because he had stamped some likeness of himself upon gold pieces to serve as ornaments for his mistresses. [This led to the accusation that he intended to remove to Cappadocia, a country bordering on his own (he was a Gaul), for the purpose of starting a revolution, and that this was why he made gold pieces bearing his own figure.