highly popular throughout the East, even as far as Egypt. He was yet perhaps more so with the people than with the army, in which, though the best men were proud of him as a distinguished commander, he practised a Cassian _severitas_. By part of his army, and by the population, he was proclaimed emperor, as a report is said to have got abroad that M. Aurelius was dead. It was a misfortune for the empire that this report was not true; for Cassius was perfectly equal to the management of affairs, and the empire would thus have been spared the shameful reign of Commodus. That Cassius should have dreamt of restoring the republic,[51] is not to be believed of so able a general; but he meant to govern the empire according to the principles of his predecessors. Thirty days[52] had not passed, before Cassius was murdered by a centurion, the tidings having come in the meanwhile that Marcus was still alive: this murder plainly proves that part of the army disliked the strictness of the general. The provinces unwillingly returned to their obedience. That Faustina had a share in the rebellion of Cassius, as a biographer wants to make us believe, has been most convincingly disproved by others. The letters of Faustina and Marcus are very interesting; but one is already shocked at their Latinity: several obsolete forms are met with over and over again; as for instance, _rebellio_ instead of _rebellis_, like the old _perduellio_ instead of _perduellis_. There are, however, no historical sources more wretched than the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_. They are without any exception altogether silly; and they put together the most glaringly impossible things, without being at all startled by it. To separate the several _Vitæ_ from one another, is quite impossible.