arsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the time; and he was
very active, seldom at Rome, but flashing as it were from one end of the
empire to the other, wherever he was needed, and keeping excellent
order. There was no regular persecution of the Christians in his time;
but at Lyons, where the townspeople were in great numbers Christians,
the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in and made a horrible
massacre of them, in which the bishop, St. Irenaeus, was killed. So few
country people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a peasant, came
to be used as a term for a heathen.

Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great builder and road-maker.
The whole empire was connected by a network of paved roads made by the
soldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, straight, smooth, and
so solid that they remain to this day. This made communication so
rapid that government was possible to an active man like him. He gave
the Parthians a check; and, when an old man, came to Britain and marched
far north, but he saw it was impossible to guard Antonius' wall between
the Forth and Clyde, and only strengthened the rampart of Hadrian from
the Tweed to the Solway. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and his
last watchword was "Labor!" His wife was named Julia Domna, and he left
two sons, usually called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire; but
Geta was soon stabbed by his brother's own hand, and then Caracalla
showed himself even worse than Commodus, till he in his turn was
murdered in 217.

[Illustration: SEPTIMUS SEVERUS.]

[Illustration: ANTIOCH.]

His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called Julia Saemias, who lived at
Antioch, and had two daughters, Saemias and Mammaea, who each had a son,
Elagabalus--so called after the idol supposed to represent the sun,
whose priest at Emesa he was--and Alexander Severus. The Praetorian
Guard, in their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose Elagabalus, a
lad of nineteen, who showed himself a poor, miserable, foolish wretch,
who did the most absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess,
and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheasants. Sometimes he would
get together a festival party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, or
short, all bald, or gouty; and at others he would keep the wedding of
his namesake god and Pallas, making matches between the gods and
goddesses all over Italy; and he carried on his service to his god with
the same barbaric dances