THE fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, and bringing upon the Imperial stage as grotesque¹ a figure, as any that have yet come under our notice. Three women—the sister and the nieces of Julia Domna—are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed with the Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome in the extraordinary period that followed it. But before we introduce the tragi-comic figure of Elagabalus, we must clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his faint shadow of an Empress.

 

Opilius Macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive old man. Accident had put the Empire within his reach. He timidly grasped it because no other offered to do so, and held it until another desired it. He was in his fifty-third year, a man of obscure African origin, an adventurer in the public service. He was married to Nonia Celsa, of whom we know only that her qualities were not generally believed to include the possession of virtue³. Their son Diadumenianus was a tall and handsome youth, with black eyes and curly yellow hair. When his father made him C?sar, and he donned a purple robe, the spectators are said to have melted with affection. He lived long enough to show, by urging his parents to deal more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so tender as his pretty looks had suggested.

“How happy and fortunate we are,” Macrinus wrote to his family, when his accession was secured. In little211 more than a year he would be flying over the hills of Asia Minor⁴, and he and his handsome boy would be cruelly put to death. He set out at once, with great display, against the unruly Parthians. But he soon purchased an ignoble⁵ peace from them, and repaired to the banquets and pleasures of Antioch. Anxious as he was about his position, he made the fatal error of keeping the troops in camp, and there soon passed from legion to legion an ominous⁶ murmur⁷. The soldiers contrasted his luxury with Caracalla’s sharing of their march and their cheese, and

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