Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 1 (1897).djvu/200

CHAPTER VI

The death of Severus—Tyranny of Caracalla—Usurpation of Macrinus—Follies of Elagabalus—Virtues of Alexander Severus—Licentiousness of the army—General state of the Roman Finances

Greatness and discontent of Severus The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own powers: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind. This melancholy truth was felt and acknowledged by Severus. Fortune and merit had, from an humble station, elevated him to the first place among mankind. He had been "all things," as he said himself, "and all was of little value".^[1] Distracted with the care, not of acquiring, but of preserving, an empire, oppressed with age and infirmities, careless of fame,^[2] and satiated with power, all his prospects of life were closed. The desire of perpetuating the greatness of his family was the only remaining wish of his ambition and paternal tenderness.

His wife the Empress Julia Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology; which, in almost every age except the present, has maintained its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost his first wife whilst he was governor of the Lyonnese Gaul.^[3] In the choice of a second, he sought only to connect himself with some favourite of fortune; and, as soon as he had discovered that a young lady of Emesa in Syria had a royal nativity, he solicited and obtained her hand.^[4] Julia

1. Hist. August, p. 71 [x. 18]. "Omnia fui, et nihil expedit."
2. Dion Cassius, 1. lxxvi. p. 1284 [16].
3. About the year 186. M. de Tillemont is miserably embarrassed with a passage of Dion, in which the Empress Faustina, who died in the year 175, is introduced as having contributed to the marriage of Severus and Julia (1. lxxiv. p. 1243 [3]). The learned compiler forgot that Dion is relating, not a real fact, but a dream of Severus; and dreams are circumscribed to no limits of time or space. Did M. de Tillemont imagine that marriages were consummated in the Temple of Venus at Rome? Hist, des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 389. Note 6.
4. Hist. August, p. 65 [x. 3].