Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when the news reached her at Antioch. She mourned little over the removal of her son, says Dio, as she “had hated him when he was alive”; but the prospect of laying down her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in the prime of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She learned that, after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised the usual bribe to the troops, and obtained the Empire. Rumour quickly recognized in him the assassin of Caracalla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on him. Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would recognize her Imperial status, and not remove her guard of honour. He feared the attachment of the soldiers to Caracalla, and disavowed his share in the assassination. Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her first resolve to take her life by refusing food, she entertained a hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers, however much attached to Caracalla, had little idea of putting a Semiramis on the throne of Rome. Her plan miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed. Her sister and nieces returned to the paternal temple at Emesa, where we shall soon rejoin them, but Julia, failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary adventure by which they would shortly return to power, racked with the pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow on the breast in her first anger, decided to leave the world. She refused food, and died in May or June, 217. Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp at Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the Imperial gods and goddesses. CHAPTER XIII IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS The fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, and bringing upon the Imperial stage as grotesque a figure, as any that have yet come under our notice. Three women--the sister and the nieces of Julia Domna--are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed with the Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome in the extraordinary period that followed it. But before we introduce the tragi-comic figure of Elagabalus, we must clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his faint shadow of an Empress.