that date; indeed, until the religious mistake in 221, any such plot would have been utterly impossible, though there is plenty of evidence concerning the various attempts of the years 221 and 222, of which almost certainly this conspiracy was one. The execution was obviously connected, in Dion's mind, with Antonine's third marriage. He says that the real reason, as every one knew, was because the Emperor wanted to play David to Bassus' Uriah, with Annia Faustina taking the hackneyed part of Bathsheba.
But it is a stupid story. Antonine was married to a woman of his own choosing, and certainly did not want the friend of his grandmother, even though to please that relation he did take Annia almost as soon as her husband was dead. This is again the only possible explanation of Dion's phrase that "This inhuman monster (i.e. Antonine) would not allow Annia Faustina to spoil her beauty by weeping for her departed husband," a story either adapted from the similar lie related of Caracalla and his mother, or designed to do honour to the work of the unconscionable traitor Pomponius. It is quite true that Maesa found ample means of drying any tears that the usual decencies extracted from the Lady Annia; but, as things turned out, no one seemed more anxious than this scion of the imperial house of Commodus to marry the present Antonine, despite all his relations' epithets, and, through these, what later commentators have found to say against the boy.
Annia Faustina was the only wife of Antonine
