From that day the life of Julia Domna was one of anxiety, and we may trust that it was one of pain. Even on the journey homeward her sons were ostentatiously armed against each other’s designs. Bassianus--or Antoninus, as he had now been named--was a strong, brutal, and imperious youth, as eager to murder his brother as he had been to shorten his father’s life. Geta was brighter, gentler, and more cultivated, and the affection of the legions for him kept Antoninus in check while they were with the army. When they arrived in Rome, their first business was the funeral of Severus. His pale wax image was laid on a lofty ivory couch, and the black-robed Senators and white-clad matrons watched it for seven days. Then it was borne to the old Forum, where the chorus of sons and women of the nobility sang the old funeral chants, and on to the great wooden tower, stuffed with spices and inflammable matter, in the Field of Mars; where, from the midst of the flaming pile, the released eagle symbolized the passage of the soul of Severus to the home of the gods. The quarrel between Antoninus and Geta at once broke out with greater menace than ever. They kept their separate apartments rigidly guarded in the palace, and a troop of soldiers and athletes watched day and night over the person of the younger Emperor. Some one suggested that the Empire should be divided, as it was later, and that Geta should take the Asiatic half. Herodian says--though one reads with suspicion his full reports of speeches that were made a century before--that Julia opposed this plan passionately. They must divide their mother, she declared, before they should divide the Empire. The gloom grew deeper over the palace, and the inevitable end did not tarry long. Antoninus one day professed that he wished to be reconciled, and invited Geta to meet him in his mother’s room. As soon as Geta entered, the officers whom Antoninus had at hand drew their swords. Geta flew to his mother’s bosom, and she put her arms about him; but they killed him in her embrace, and even cut the arm in which she clasped him. Once more the channels ran with the best blood of Rome, as Antoninus turned vindictively upon the supporters of his brother. Even ancient nobles who had survived several of these massacres, such as Claudius Pompeianus, the second husband of Marcus Aurelius’s daughter, now came to a violent end. The aged sister of Marcus Aurelius, Cornificia, was put to death for weeping at the news of the brutal crime. Dio assures us that no less than 20,000 men and women, including some of the finest of the time, were put to death in that awful carnage. Surely one of the chief causes of the deterioration of Rome--these repeated purges of its best elements--has been overlooked in the endless speculations about its fall!