It was
as good as anything else to play with; and, as the child tossed it
through the hall, the one woman that had loved Commodus caught it
and read on it that she and all the household were to die. Within
an hour Commodus was killed.
There is a page in Lampridus, which he quotes as coming from the
lost chronicles of Marius Maximus, and which contains the joy of
the senate at the news. It is too long for transcription, but as a
bit of realism it is unique. There is a shiver in every line. You
hear the voices of hundreds, drunk with fury, frenzied with
delight; the fierce welcome that greeted Pertinax--a slave's
grandson, who was emperor for a minute--the joy of hate assuaged.
The delight of the senate was not shared by the pretorians.
Pertinax was promptly massacred; the throne was put up at auction;
there were two or three emperors at once, and presently the purple
was seized by Septimus Severus, a rigid, white-haired
disciplinarian, who, in his admiration for Marcus Aurelius,
founded that second dynasty of the Antonins with which antiquity
may be said to end.
When he had gone, his elder son, Bastian, renamed Aurelius
Antonin, and because of a cloak he had invented nicknamed
Caracalla, bounded like a panther on the throne. In a moment he
was gnawing at his brother's throat, and immediately there
occurred a massacre such as Rome had never seen. Xiphilin says the
nights were not long enough to kill all of the condemned.
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