ish of a tortured mind, that his disordered
fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising
into life, to threaten and upbraid him. The consciousness of his crime
should have induced him to convince mankind, by the virtues of his
reign, that the bloody deed had been the involuntary effect of fatal
necessity. But the repentance of Caracalla only prompted him to remove
from the world whatever could remind him of his guilt, or recall the
memory of his murdered brother. On his return from the senate to the
palace, he found his mother in the company of several noble matrons,
weeping over the untimely fate of her younger son. The jealous emperor
threatened them with instant death; the sentence was executed against
Fadilla, the last remaining daughter of the emperor Marcus; * and even
the afflicted Julia was obliged to silence her lamentations, to
suppress her sighs, and to receive the assassin with smiles of joy and
approbation. It was computed that, under the vague appellation of the
friends of Geta, above twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered
death. His guards and freedmen, the ministers of his serious business,
and the companions of his looser hours, those who by his interest had
been promoted to any commands in the army or provinces, with the long
connected chain of their dependants, were included in the proscription;
which endeavored to reach every one who had maintained the smallest
correspondence with Geta, who lamented his death, or who even mentioned
his name. Helvius Pertinax, son to the prince of that name, lost his
life by an unseasonable witticism. It was a sufficient crime of Thrasea
Priscus to be descended from a family in which the love of liberty
seemed an hereditary quality. The particular causes of calumny and
suspicion were at length exhausted; and when a senator was accused of
being a secret enemy to the government, the emperor was satisfied with
the general proof that he was a man of property and virtue. From this
well-grounded principle he frequently drew the most bloody inferences.

Chapter VI: Death Of Severus, Tyranny Of Caracalla, Usurpation Of
Marcinus.--Part II.

The execution of so many innocent citizens was bewailed by the secret
tears of their friends and families. The death of Papinian, the
Praetorian Praefect, was lamented as a public calamity. During the last
seven years of Severus, he had exercised the most important offices of
the state, and, by his sa