The remarkable number of inscriptions that still survive in the most distant parts of the Empire bear witness that Julia was already regarded as an active Empress, not merely as the companion of Severus. Probably she comes next to Livia--some would place her before Livia--in the general recognition of her political existence. But on her return to Rome she found a bitter opponent in the person of Severus’s chief minister, and for a time she confined herself to personal concerns. This minister, Plautianus, was a fellow-townsman, possibly a relative, of the Emperor, and enjoyed and abused his entire confidence. He was promoted to the command of the Prætorian Guards, whom Severus, after punishing them for the murder of Pertinax, had reorganized and enormously increased. Finding himself at the head of fifty thousand picked men, and entrusted, during the long absence of the Emperor, with the supreme affairs of State, Plautianus indulged his vanity in the strangest excesses. When his superb chariot drove through Rome, runners were sent ahead to warn the common folk that they must turn away, and not gaze on his august person; and there were more statues of him in Rome than of the Emperor. He even had a hundred Romans, of all ages, including many of noble birth, emasculated, in order that his daughter might be attended with all the splendour and security of an Oriental harem. Severus begged the hand of this privileged maiden for his elder son. Bassianus was then (203) in his sixteenth year, and had just been nominated Cæsar by his father. Plautianus consented, and a princely wedding took place. People remarked, as the rich gifts were borne through the Forum to the palace, that the Prefect of the Guards had been able to give his daughter a dowry that would have sufficed for the daughters of fifty kings.