power. The
jurisconsults, in fact, from this reign, begin to treat the emperor as
the source of all law, the Senate and the people being no longer
considered in the state. But this arbitrary rule, introduced by Severus,
is thought to have tended more than any thing else to destroy the vigor
of the Roman Empire, by leading the people to an abject dependence upon
their rulers.

The wife of Severus, Julia Domna, a Syrian lady of great beauty and
various accomplishments, became the mother of two sons, Caracalla and
Geta, and the emperor hoped that they would prove worthy of the high
office to which they were born. They soon, however, showed themselves
incapable of any serious study or employment, and were chiefly
remarkable for the hatred they bore toward each other. The court was
already divided into two factions, composed of the adherents of either
son; and the emperor, who in vain strove to remove their rivalry,
foresaw that one must fall a victim to the hatred of the other.

In A.D. 208 a war broke out in Britain, and Severus, although now more
than sixty years of age, and afflicted with the gout, so that he was
carried on a litter, set out at the head of his army, attended by his
two sons, and penetrated into the interior of Scotland. This was his
last enterprise, for he died at York, February 4, A.D. 211. He left his
empire to his two sons, who returned to Rome, and were acknowledged by
the Senate and the army.

[Illustration: Caracalla.]

Their discord, however, still continued, and they planned a division of
the empire, a measure which was then distasteful to all the Romans, and
which was only prevented from taking place by the tears and entreaties
of their mother, Julia Domna. Geta, the younger son, who was of a gentle
disposition, soon after, in A.D. 212, February 27th, was murdered by the
cruel and relentless Caracalla. Twenty thousand of his friends are said
to have been put to death at the same time, and his unhappy mother,
Julia Domna, was forced to receive her guilty son with feigned smiles
and words of approbation. Remorse, however, fastened upon Caracalla, and
the shade of Geta haunted him wherever he went. His cruelties now
redoubled. He put to death Papinian, the Praetorian Praefect, the splendid
ornament of the Roman bar; and his massacres filled every part of the
empire with mourning and terror. In A.D. 213 he left the city of Rome,
and never returned thither again; the rest of his reign was passed