There is yet another effort made to drag Ulpian into this same chapter, namely, when Lampridius says that part of Antonine’s scheme for the murder of Alexander was to deprive him of his tutors, one of whom he banished (Ulpian), while Silvinus, the distinguished orator, whom the Emperor himself had recommended, was put to death. Both of these men suffered because they were great and good men. Now, Ulpian we know, Julius Paulus we know also (though quite why he was left by Alexander’s side when good men were banished we are not told; unless it be that, for the moment, he was hiding his light under a bushel); but who on earth was Silvinus? His name is not given amongst that exhaustive list of nonentities marshalled out by Lampridius (_Alex. Sev. vita_, xxxii.) as the men who had failed to teach Alexander Latin, after an effort which lasted from his earliest babyhood up to the time of his death; neither is he mentioned in any other place, either by this author or in any other record of Antonine’s cruelties; on which account we feel inclined to relegate him, with other doubtful blessings, to the special limbo reserved for all similarly inspired terminological inexactitudes, and proceed to recount the rapidity with which Mamaea found means to make up for lost time in acquiring her authority. Needless to say, even here Lampridius’ fabrications are as difficult to reconcile with Dion and Herodian’s stories as those two authors are impossible to square with one another. Of course the two last were both eye-witnesses of the scenes they recount, and tell us so, with some pride, a circumstance which in no way hinders them from seeing things double, and calling them different aspects of the same truth, after the manner of theologians when they are in a conciliatory frame of mind. For the murder of Antonine Lampridius assigns no adequate reason, giving instead two suppositions of his own—first, that the Praetorians feared Antonine’s vengeance on account of the attack which they had made on him some months previously, and for which he had then and there forgiven them; but, says Lampridius, despite this forgiveness, the soldiers killed him in cold blood. Second, that on account of the hatred he had testified towards them (presumably in not seeing to their donatives), they resolved to rid the Republic of this pest, and began by putting to death, first, the friends of the Emperor by various foul and indecent means, and then, having got these out of the way, they openly attacked Antonine in the latrinae, and killed him.