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ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

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and trumpets, mourning women singing the praises of the deceased, and dancers. At the funerals of distinguished persons couches were carried, bearing the images of their ancestors, or the statues of other celebrated men it is said, a thousand of these were borne before the corpse of Sylla. The funeral couch, on which the body of the deceased was laid, was carried by the nearest relations, and followed by a train of mourners, who beat their breasts or tore their hair as signs of excessive grief. When the procession reached the appointed place, an orator made a speech in praise of the deceased; and the body, laid on its couch, was then placed upon the funeral pile, a large heap of wood, to which the nearest relation set fire. Slaughtered beasts, rich garments, and perfumes were thrown on the pile, according to the rank or wealth of the deceased; and when the whole was consumed, the last embers were quenched with wine, and the remaining ashes placed in the funeral urn and carried to the sepulchre. At imperial funerals, an eagle was let fly from the top of the pile to carry, as it was said, the emperor's soul to heaven.

The manner of administering justice among the Romans was similar to that in use in this country, as our customs were borrowed from theirs. It was usual, however, with them, for the accused person to wear a mourning robe during his trial, and to exhibit every mark of sorrow; and when the jury wrote their opinions on small tablets, and threw them into a box kept for the purpose, he was permitted to cast himself at their feet in order to move their compassion.

The punishments allowed by law were of several degrees, according to the nature of the offence: 1. Fine. 2. Imprisonment and fetters. 3. Stripes gently given with rods. 4. Return of the same injury that the criminal had done. posure to public shame. 6. Banishment. 7. Selling into slavery.

5. Ex

Death was inflicted in various ways: 1. Beheading; considered the easiest and most honourable mode of capital punishment. 2. Strangling, which was usually practised in the prison. 3. Throwing headlong from a precipice. 4. Crucifixion, which was the punishment of slaves, or of the meanest persons. 5. In cases of parricide, the criminal was scourged, and then sown up in a leather sack with a serpent, an ape, a cock, and a dog (probably signifying he was to be counted among the lowest of

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THE SONS OF SEVERUS.

the brutes), and thus thrown into the water. The modes of death, and horrible tortures invented by men who held power only to abuse it, we have frequent occasion to mention in the course of our history.

In closing this account of imperial Rome, it will be proper to mention the public ways which led from the capital to the other great cities of Italy. The most noble of these, the Via Appia, was carried to a distance of 350 miles. It was made of huge stones, generally a foot and a half square; and though it was constructed more than 1800 years since, many parts of it are as perfect now as when it was newly made.

CHAP. XXIX.

CARACALLA AND GETA.-MURDER OF GETA.-CRUELTY OF CARACALLA.-MURDER OF CARACALLA.-MACRINUS AND HIS SON. -HELIOGABALUS.-HIS FOLLIES AND VIOLENT DEATH.-PROTECTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.

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THE dying advice of Septimus Severus never touched the hearts of his sons: and during their rapid journey from York to Rome, they would never eat at the same table or sleep in the same house. The army, however, proclaimed them joint emperors according to their father's desire; and the senate received them with equal honours, A. D. 208. Caracalla and Geta showed their discord as decidedly in the capital as in the provinces the imperial palace was soon divided, and the doors and passages between the apartments of the two emperors were fortified and carefully guarded day and night, as in a besieged place. When they met in public they were surrounded by their respective guards, and ill-concealed their hatred, even in the presence of their afflicted mother. At length, some prudent counsellors advised the brothers to divide the empire; and proposed that Geta should make Alexandria or Antioch his capital, and leave Caracalla to reign at Rome.

The tears and entreaties of Julia, and the pride of the Romans, prevented this arrangement; and it would probably only have led to civil war, as many dreaded. After a little time Caracalla consented to meet Geta in their mother's apartment but it was not, as she fondly expected, with any

CARACALLA AND GETA.

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intention of reconciliation. While they were in conversation some armed men rushed into the room, and Julia was wounded in the hand and covered with blood, as she tried to protect her younger son from the assassins encouraged and assisted by Caracalla. As soon as Geta was murdered, his wicked brother hastened to the Prætorian camp, and related, with pretended horror, that he had narrowly escaped the murderous attempts of Geta, and had only slain him in self-defence.

angry

Geta was the favourite of the soldiers; but the gifts of Caracalla silenced their complaints, and the remaining son of Severus was permitted to reign without opposition. But he had no peace in his conscience, and often fancied he saw the forms of his father and brother rising up to threaten and upbraid him. His remorse, however, only led him to remove all who could remind him of his murdered brother; and it is said above twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death merely because they were Geta's friends. His mother, too, would have been destroyed, had she not prudently changed her tears into smiles, to avoid the wrath of her fierce son. Papinian, the Prætorian prefect, who had justly used an authority only second to that of the emperor's, during the last seven years of the reign of Severus, was put to death for refusing to make an oration to the senate in palliation of the crime of Caracalla. "It is easier," said he, "to commit such a crime than to justify it ;" and this reply led to the execution of the wisest statesman of the times.

Until this period the best emperors, such as Augustus, Adrian, and Trajan, had been the most active; and the worst, such as Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, had chiefly confined themselves to their luxurious palaces. But Caracalla left Rome the year after the murder of Geta, and never returned there. He obliged the senate to accompany him in his journeyings, and to provide for his entertainment at an immense cost; and, in this manner, the wealthiest families were ruined, and the subjects in general burdened with taxes. Every province in turn was the scene of the emperor's rapine and cruelty, and no act of benevolence marked his travels. When at Alexandria, upon some slight provocation, he ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants; and after viewing the slaughter of thousands, he stopped the work of destruction, and coolly told the senate all were alike guilty, even those who escaped.

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DEATH OF CARACALLA.

Caracalla's maxim was, that if he secured the affection of his soldiers, the rest of his subjects were of little consequence. To that end he imitated the dress and manners of the common legionaries, treated them as familiar friends, and increased their pay. The death of Caracalla took place under very singular circumstances. An African astrologer foretold that Macrinus, the Prætorian prefect, would be the next emperor; and one of his enemies, wishing to ruin him, sent a letter to Caracalla informing him of the prediction. But as the letter arrived with many others, when the emperor was going to a chariot-race, it was given to Macrinus himself, and he at once determined to engage some one to destroy Caracalla in order to preserve his own life. He found a ready instrument in a soldier who had just been refused the rank of centurion. This man watched for an opportunity, and stabbed the emperor when on his way to the temple of the moon in Syria. The assassin was immediately killed by the guards; and the army, whom the murdered emperor had so much indulged, would not be satisfied till the senate promised to rank Caracalla among the gods, A.D. 217. Macrinus bribed the legions to proclaim him emperor; and they did so, on condition that he would associate his son, a promising youth then only twelve years of age, in the empire. But when his concern in the death of Caracalla was discovered he became very unpopular, and the murmurs of the legionaries, during an idle winter in Syria, increased day by day. Macrinus caused Julia to be put to death because she would not own him as emperor, and banished her sister Mosa from his court at Antioch. She retired to Emesa with an immense fortune, heaped together during twenty years of imperial favour; and in that place one of her grandsons, the eldest representative of the family, became high-priest in the temple of the sun. This temple contained a conical black stone called Heliogabalus, supposed to have fallen from heaven; and the young priest, in the heat of his zeal, took this name, and would never use any other.

The Roman soldiers who visited the temple were struck with admiration at the appearance of Heliogabalus in his splendid robes, and began to whisper to each other that he resembled their late emperor. The artful Mosa readily expended her wealth in purchasing military favour for her grandson, and at last a great part of the army were prepared to proclaim the Syrian priest, emperor of Rome. The success of Heliogabalus

REIGN OF HELIOGABALUS.

171

in the contest that followed was attributed to the appearance of his mother and grandmother on the field of battle, animating the soldiers with their words and looks. Macrinus and his son were slain; the whole army submitted to Heliogabalus, and the eastern provinces gladly acknowledged the first emperor of Asiatic birth, A.D. 218.

This young man, raised to absolute power at the age of fifteen, was an example of that sore evil, "folly set in great dignity." He spent the first few months of his reign in slowly journeying towards Italy, being occupied with the most trifling amusements by the way. In the meantime his picture was sent to the senate-house; and the graver Romans sighed when they found the new emperor wore the flowing priestly robes of silk embroidered with gold, an eastern diadem, and loads of ornaments, his eyebrows painted black, and his cheeks red and white. Heliogabalus entered Rome driving six white horses in a chariot containing his favourite black stone, which he wished to introduce as a new object of worship. A temple to the sun was soon built, and the chiefs of the state and army gratified the emperor by appearing in Phoenician tunics to assist at his expensive sacrifices. To crown his folly, Heliogabalus sent for the image of the moon, worshipped in Africa by the name of Astarte; and when it was brought to Rome he ordered the union of these foreign deities to be celebrated as a marriage festival throughout the empire. The religion of this young emperor was the strangest mixture of foreign ceremonies; he practised circumcision and abstained from swine's flesh in imitation of the Jews; and if he could have found any thing to copy from the Christians he would have adopted it, to annoy his subjects: for with all their tastes and feelings he loved to sport. To this end he associated his mother, Somias, and his grandmother, Mosa, with him in the empire, and allowed them to assemble a female senate, where they presided and regulated all the fashions of the day. At last he committed not only extravagant follies but shameless cruelties, and such abominations

as

even sank him in the esteem of the vilest among the

soldiers.

Mosa was so desirous to keep the imperial dignity in her family, that she persuaded Heliogabalus to adopt as his successor, Alexander, his cousin, the son of her younger daughter, Mammea. This young man had been differently educated, and

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