The exact time of Antonine’s murder is, as we have said, most uncertain. Dion ascribes to him a tenure of power lasting 3 years 9 months and 4 days from the day of the battle in which he gained supreme command—8th June 218. This fixes the day of his death as 11th March 222. It is a statement with which the editors of the _Prosopographia_, Groebe, Salzer, and Rubensohn, all agree. The _Liber generationis_[59] gives 6 years 8 months and 28 days, and is supported by the _Chronicle_ of 354, which gives equally explicitly 6 years 8 months and 18 days. The discrepancy is at first sight most disconcerting, especially as the two latter statements are both—at least nominally—official. The coins limit the reign to four years at the outside, in consequence of which some explanation has to be found for the extraordinary addition of three years in both the _Chronicle_ and the _Liber generationis_. Mommsen has suggested that a deflection of the two first strokes of III in the number of the years has created the error in both these documents. Later writers have accounted for the difference between Dion’s VIIII months and the VIII of the Latin sources, as due to the omission of one stroke in the latter, the confusion in the number of days by the fact that an X has been omitted in the _Chronicle_. Mommsen’s emendation seems perfectly plausible, but the absurd quibbles used to bring into agreement what was in all probability for some time a moot point can be passed over without much mention. Rubensohn has a much more reasonable conclusion, namely, that the times given in the _Chronicle_ and _Liber generationis_ refer not to the date of the battle at all, but to the date of the proclamation or to the date of Julianus’ defeat, some time during the early days of May 218. Lampridius, of course, chips in with another discordant note, namely, that “A.D. pridie nonas Martias” the Senate received their new Emperor Alexander with acclamations, but for present purposes he may be left out of count, as we have no confirmation of this very late statement. Eutropius’ statement of 2 years and 8 months refers only to the residence in Rome, and Victor’s 30 months is utterly out of the question, as is also Lampridius’ statement that this monster occupied the throne for nearly three years. Still more disconcerting than the wild statements of the biographers is the fact that right up to 8th December 222 certain rescripts are dated with the names of both Antonine and Alexander, “Conss.”; two only, one in March and one in October, appear with Alexander as sole Consul, and this inscription occurs on a rescript dated “III non. Febr.,” when, if any other evidence is to be accepted, Antonine was still alive. It was on this count that Stobbe based his assertion that Antonine was killed, or at least put out of the government, as early as 5th or 6th January, and that Mamaea used her new power as soon as ever Alexander was officially recognised as Consul. It is certainly