slaughtered in twenty
hours. The streets were emptied, the theatres closed.

The blood that ran then must have been in rillets too thin to slake
Caracalla's thirst, for simultaneously almost, he was in Gaul, in
Dacia--wherever there was prey. African by his father, Syrian on his
mother's side, Caracalla was not a panther merely; he was a herd of
them. He had the cruelty, the treachery and guile of a wilderness of
tiger-cats. No man, said a thinker, is wholly base. Caracalla was. He
had not a taste, not a vice, even, which was not washed and rewashed in
blood. In a moment of excitement Commodus set his guards on the
spectators in the amphitheatre; the damage was slight, for the
Colosseum was so constructed that in two minutes the eighty or ninety
thousand people which it held could escape. Caracalla had the exits
closed. Those who escaped were naked; to bribe the guards they were
forced to strip themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught
his eye. He tried to violate her, and failing impotently, had her
buried alive. "Caracalla knows that I am a virgin, and knows why," the
girl cried as the earth swallowed her, but there was no one there to
aid.

Such things show the trend of a temperament, though not, perhaps, its
force. Presently the latter was displayed. For years those arch-enemies
of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, had been quiet; bound, too, by
treaties which held Rome's honor. Not Caracalla's, however; he had
none. An embassy went out to Artobane, the king. Caracalla wished a
bride, and what fairer one could he have than the child of the Parthian
monarch? Then, too, the embassy was charged to explain, the marriage of
Rome and Parthia would be the union of the Orient and the Occident,
peace by land and sea. Artobane hesitated, and with cause; but
Caracalla wooed so ardently that finally the king said yes. The news
went abroad. The Parthians, delighted, prepared to receive the emperor.
When Caracalla crossed the Tigris, the highroad that led to the capital
was strewn with sacrifices, with altars covered with flowers, with
welcomings of every kind. Caracalla was visibly pleased. Beyond the
gates of the capital, there was the king; he had advanced to greet his
son-in-law, and that the greeting might be effective, he had assembled
his nobles and his troops. The latter were armed with cymbals, with
hautbois, and with flutes; and as Caracalla and his army approached,
there was music, dancing and song; the