This time Maesa herself does not seem to have tried to influence the boy. If we can believe Lampridius’ statements, that crafty old sinner had already managed to worm herself back into the friendship of the boy and his mother, by putting the odium of recent troubles entirely on to the shoulders of her daughter Mamaea. In consequence, it was with a bold carriage that she appeared in public with the Emperor, and in private used her influence with Julia Soaemias, begging her to make it clear to the dear boy that his refusal to take the consulship would be his own undoing. Rome would never endure such a breach of the usual order. The obvious thing would have been for Antonine to go away, but he seems to have thought, right up to midday on 1st January, that the Senate and his relations would give way first. Then, suddenly yielding to his mother’s entreaties, he consented to the plan, and, going to the Senate, he associated Alexander with himself in the consular dignity, thereby signing his own death warrant. January 1, 222, was the beginning of the end. It is very pitiful to see the multitudinous wiles by means of which, all through his reign, craft circumvented what the Emperor obviously knew was his correct and proper course. Sometimes, as we see, it was his zeal for religion to which they appealed, sometimes his love for his mother. In each case the result was the same, the Emperor did what his political instinct told him was unwise, in response to what he considered a higher motive. The adoption had not carried with it the authority which the women desired; the office of Consul was, therefore, vitally necessary for Alexander’s promotion. Antonine was bound to refuse his consent to the plan; he was permanent Consul if he liked, and would associate no one with himself of whom he disapproved. What did it matter to him if people talked of the discord; had they not done so ever since Maesa and Mamaea started out on their electioneering campaign? The truth would certainly be better for him than his relations’ lies; for himself, he was not afraid of danger, though Soaemias, the well-meaning and artless, was, and for her sake Antonine gave himself up, an unwilling victim, into the hands of his enemies. It was shortly after midday when he went to the Curia accompanied by the self-satisfied little enormity, and there, in the presence of his grandmother, he consented to give the women all that official power and authority which they had hitherto struggled vainly to obtain. Henceforward, both Dion and Lampridius tell us that the Emperor sought his cousin’s life to take it from him. Not that the continual reiteration of the accusation, when contrasted with the utter futility of Antonine’s masterful inaction, is in any way convincing; this we have already pointed out, and can add nothing to the discussion here.