Macrinus and Julius Granianus of the latter of which there are Declamations now extant But in the Latin Learning his Proficiency was not over-great as it sufficiently appears by his Speeches which he made to the Senate and those others that he made to the Soldiers and to the People Nor did he very much love the Latin Eloquence But the learned Men in it he had a great esteem for and apprehended thir Pens for he was not willing that they should give him an ill report in their Writings therefore he thought them worthy to be By him upon all occasions and with every thing that he did publickly or privately if they had not been present at it he acquainted them himself and desired them to be informed carefully of the truth of all things and accordingly to represent them to the World He renounced the Title of Dominus that His Modesty and Moderation is Lord and ordered that they should write Letters to him as to a private Person reserving only the name of Emperor He refused the Jewels to his Shooes and his Cloaths which had been worn by Heliogabalus He went in a White Vestment as he is commonly Drawn and plain not Embroidered nor Fringed with Gold and of the Common Stuffs He carried himself so frankly with his Friends that he often obliged them to sit down by him and went to their Houses to their Entertainments without Ceremony and received them again continually to his own Table without a formal Invitation He was to be waited upon with as easie Access as a Senator whereas before in some other Reigns a Prince would not suffer himself to be seen He was Handsome His Personage as to his Person and well made as we see him at this day in his Pictures and Statues He had a Cavalier Meen and Stature his Strength answerable and he both knew his Vigour and took care to preserve it Some called him the Pious Alexander he was so amiable at least as a good and useful Prince all the Earth esteemed him He drew a Lot at the Temple of Fortune at the City of Palestrina in the time that Heliogabalus waited for his Life out of Virgil which was this Aen. 6. Siqua fata aspera rumpas Tu Marcellus eris Which was as much as to signifie That if he but escaped the present Danger that he was in he would be a glorious Emperor The occasion of his Name of Alexander Occasion of his Name was from hence In his Native City of Arca Caesarea in Phaenicia there was a Temple Dedicated to Alexander the Great whither upon the Festival of that Prince according to the Custom of the Country his Father and Mammaea his Mother went to assist at the usual Solemnities But by accident his Mother fell into Labour and was delivered of him in this Temple so she called him Alexander and the day of the Birth of Alexander the Son of Mammaea is the same with the day of the Death of Alexander the Great The Senate offered him the name of Antoninus But he refused it although he had an Affinity as well as Heliogabalus to the Emperor Antoninus Caracallus and an Affinity which was so much better than his as it was without the stain of his Bastardise For the Emperor Septimius Severus had Married a Noble Lady out of the East whose Horoscope as he had heard it was That she should be the Wife of a Prince though he was then but in a private Condition Which Lady 's Sister's Daughters were one of them the Mother of this Alexander and the other the Mother of Varius Heliogabalus So the two Sons were truely Cousin Germans to one another and equal upon that Foot in their Relation to Antoninus Caracallus But it was not only the name of Antoninus which he refused but the Senate by a Decree presented him the Title of Alexander the Great and he refused that also Now it will not be amiss here to subjoyn his Speech to the Senate in which he excuses his Acceptation of the one and the other Name Only in the first place I will report the Senate's Acclamations upon this occasion out of the Records of the City as I find them upon the Day but one before the Nones of March when the Senate being assembled in the Temple of Concord and Alexander at their repeated request dispensing at last with himself to repair to them though he knew that their Business was to treat of the Honours which they designed to give him they cried as he entred thus The Gods save our Innocent Augustus The Acclamations of the Senate Gods save the Emperor Alexander The Gods have given you to us The Gods preserve you The Gods have delivered you out of the Hands of the Impure The Gods Eternalize your Reign You suffered a great deal under the Impure Tyrant Impure and Obscene as he was you always regretted to see him The Gods have Rooted him up The Gods preserve your Majesty That Infamous Emperor hath justly been Condemned Under your Reign we are happy The State is happy to be subjected to you The Infamous Emperor hath been dragged for an Example That Luxurious Prince is justly punished The Profaner of all Honour hath been justly Punished The Immortal Gods give a long Life to your Majesty The Judgments of the Gods appear in your Elevation Here Alexander gave them thanks and then they went on again Antoninus Alexander the Gods save you Antoninus Aurelius the Gods preserve you Antoninus the Pious the Gods preserve you We beseech your Majesty to take the name of Antoninus To do that Honour to the good Emperors of that Name to be called an Antoninus Purifie the Name of the Antoninusses What Heliogabalus hath Deformed let your Majesty Purifie Re-establish the Honour of the Name of the Antoninusses Let the blood of the Antoninusses know it self again Antoninus Marcus hath been injured Let your Majesty Avenge him Avenge the injury done to Verus Antoninus Avenge the injury done to Antoninus Caracallus whose Fortitude at least was admirable Worse than ever was Commodus was Heliogabalus only who really was no Emperor nor an Antoninus nor a Citizen nor a Senator nor a Gentleman nor a Roman Health and Life attend your Majesty The Lives of the Antoninusses attend Alexander and let him Prosper Let him be called an Antoninus and let him Prosper Let Antoninus Consecrate again the Temples of the Antoninusses Let Antoninus surmount the Parthians and Persians Let a Sacred Person receive a Sacred Name The Gods preserve you In you Antoninus we have all things with you Antoninus we have all things After these Accclamations the Emperor took the Liberty to speak thus to them Fathers of the Senate THis is not the first of my Obligations to you I am to thank you for the Honour of my Name of Caesar which you gave me so long since and for my Life which you also have preserved I thank you as for the Empire so for the Style of Augustus
and not another Man's Severâ—â— protesting that it was his own he told him of all the things which afterwards arrived to him By the Favour of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus he was made a Tribune of the People which he discharged with the greatest Exactness and all the Strictness that could be desired Then he married Martia of whom he says nothing himself in his History of his private Life But after he was Emperor he set up her Statues In the Thirty Second Year of his Age he was chosen a Praetor before a Number of others that were Competitors against him At the same time he was sent into Spain Upon which he dreamt that iâ— was said to him that he should restore the Temple of Augustus at the City of Tarragona which was falling into ruin and theâ— that from the top of a very high Mountain he had a Prospect given him of a 〈…〉 the Earth but particularly of the City oâ— Rome about which all the Provinces were joyning in a Consort of Harps Voices and sweet Flutes He gave the People the diversion of the publick Shews in his absence Then he had the command of the Fourth Legion called Scythica which was in Syria In his way to which he went to Athens for the Curiosity of observing the Studies and the Rites the Works and the Antiquities of that Seat of the Muses But because he received some Injuries there from the Athenians he became their Enemy and when he was Emperor he was willing to avenge himself of them by cutting short their Privileges Next he was removed to the Province of the Lionnois in Gallia to be the Lieutenant there And having lost his Wife and proposing to marry another he took the Care first to be informed being very well vers'd in the knowledge of Astrology himself in the Nativities of his Mistresses and as he had heard that there was a Lady in Syria who had found by her Nativity that she was to be married to a King he courted her and in fine married her whose Name His second Marriage was Julia by whom he was soon after made a Father His Exactness his Honour and his great Sobriety caused him to be so much beloved amongst the Gauls as never Person was He was translated from thence to the Government of Pannonia with a Proconsular Power From Pannonia to Sicily which was another Proconsulship and when he had made his return again to Rome he received of his Wife a second Son Being in Sicily he was accused of consulting the Chaldaeans and the Astrologers about his coming to the Empire for which he was ordered to be heard before the Captains of the Guards who it then being the time that the Emperor Commodus began to fall into an universal odium acquitted him and crucified the Man that calumniated him He was Consul the first time in Conjunction with Apuleius Ruffinus by the particular appointment of Commodus After his Consulship he continued an entire Year at Rome without Employ and then by the recommendation of Laetus he was preferred to the Command of the Army in Germany He had lived till now at Rome in a very little House with one small Plat of Ground to it But as he went to take the Possession of this last Charge he purchased himself a spatious Villa where once taking a small Repast together with his little Infants and Fruit being brought his Eldest Son who was then of the Age of Five Years distributed it amongst the Children his Play Fellows so liberally that his Father said to him Not so fast my Son you have not the Riches of a King The Child of Five Years old answered But I shall have So being gone to his Command in Germany he acquitted himself in that sort that he raised his Name which was already ennobled to a far higher pitch of Glory Hitherto he had followed Arms but in the Quality of a private Person But now the News coming that Commodus was killed and that Didius Julianus who for the present was upon the Throne was universally hated the German Legions encouraged him no less than he declined it to put up for the Empire They declared him Emperor upon the Ides of Declared Emperor by the Army August at the same time he gave them a Bounty of Fifty Thousand Sesterces which was more than any Prince had ever done before and having secured the Provinces which he left at his Back he hastened his March to Rome Every one opened the way to him in all the places where he came The Armies of Illyricum and Gallia swore Fidelity to him And every where they received him as the Avenger of the Murder of Pertinax In the mean time Didius Julianus prevailed with the Senate to declare him an Enemy and the Senate sent their Commissioners to his Army to command the Soldiers in their Names to depart from his Service It is true it put him first into a great concern but afterwards he managed the thing so that he corrupted those very Commissioners so that they spoke to the Soldiers for him and came over themselves to his side Julianus who was soon advertised of a Conduct so extraordinary obtained then a Decree of the Senate in which it was declared that the Empire should be participated betwixt himself and Severus but whether this was with a sincere or a treacherous Intention it is uncertain because in truth he had before sent some known Assassines to him to kill him and others at the same time to kill Pescennius Niger who had also taken up the Empire against him upon the Authority of the Forces in Syria However it was Severus escaped their Hands and writ Letters to the Guards at Rome to abandon and slay Julianus which was executed upon him accordingly as he was in the Court and Severus was invited to enter into Rome who with a Fortune which hath never happened to any before him became a Conqueror as it were with a Word Enters Rome and so marched on to Rome at the Head of his Troops He kept himself all the while in his Camps and Tents in his march in Italy no less than if he still appeared there with the face of an Enemy The Senate deputed a Hundred out of their Body as their Envoys to compliment and congratulate him who came up to him at the City of Teramo in Abruzzo He received them when they saluted him all in Armour and in the midst of his armed Troops The next day all the Domesticks of the Court arrived to pay their Reverences to him He presented the Envoys of the Senate with seven hundred and twenty Pieces of Gold and dismissed them But yet if they pleased he welcomed them to stay and to return to Rome in his Company Then he immediately made Flavius Juvenalis the Captain of the Guards who was one that Julianus had chosen to be a third Captain of the same under him In the mean time the Trouble was very great at Rome amongst the
flourish'd in the time of the Emperor Dioclesian to whom he dedicates the Life of Adrian as also those of Aelius Verus of Didius Julianus of Severus and of Pescennius Niger He has likewise left us the Life of Antoninus Caracalla but without any Dedication As for that of Antoninus Geta we find it addressed to Constantinus Augustus It seems also from the beginning of the Life of Aelius Verus as if he had written the Lives of those Emperors who reigned before Adrian And about the latter end of the Life of that Emperor he gives us a view of what he had designed in these words Having proposed to my self to write the History of all those who since the time of Julius have b◠〈…〉 called Caesars or Augustus or that have 〈…〉 â—rinces adopted or Natural Sons of the 〈…〉 ors or This relates to their Apotheosis Consecrated as Caesar's Kind 〈…〉 But we have no Reason to believe that he ever finished that Design since Vopiscus who lived after him affirms in the Life of Aurelian that the Life of that Prince had never been written by any one before himself As to the rest the Learned Salmasius tells us that in the Collection of Spartian ' s Works which he found in the Palatine Library there were further attributed to him the Life of Antoninus Pius and those of Antoninus the Philosopher of Verus of Pertinax of Clodius Albinus and of Macrinus which are published under the Name of Julius Capitolinus and also that of Avidâ—us Cassius commonly supposed to be written by Vulcatius Gallicanus and moreover the Lives of Commodus of Antoninus Diadumenus of Heliogabalus and of Alexander Severus which are attributed to Lampridius But I shall have occasion to speak hereafter of those which are supposed to be written by Vulcatius and Lampridius As for the other that go under the Name of Julius Capitolinus Vossius had this Opinion of them viz. that the particular Collection of Lives above mentioned in the Palatine Library is no sufficient Reason for us to recede from the commonly received Opinion that Capitolinus was the Author of them nor ought we to be at all surprised that we find here as many Books as there are Lives nor yet at what Capitolinus himself somewhere tells us that he would if he saw it convenient include the Lives of two or more Emperors together in one Volume for in fine he was not always of the sa 〈…〉 â—ind having in the beginning designed a 〈…〉 lar Book for each Life and afterwards i 〈…〉 d several Lives in one as is evident from 〈…〉 〈…〉 ginning of the Lives of the Gordiani whereof we will treat more largely in the Life of Capitolinus As for the Stile of Spartianus and the other Composers of the following History which we find commonly joyn'd together Erasmus has this of them in his Ciceronian One can find nothing besides the Truth of the History in those Authors that is useful or entertaining for to speak the Truth of them they retain very little of the Purity of the Latin Tongue But here Erasmus is a little too severe and what Reputation soever he may have acquired for Learning and particularly for his Knowledge in the Latin Tongue yet in this case we ought no more to rely on what he says than on Horace in the Case of Plautus or on Quintilian in that of Seneca and some others who notwithstanding their Reflections have continued to preserve an inviolable Reputation Vulcatius Gallicanus THE Sâ—NATOR TO understand how far Vulcatius Gallicanus had engag'd himself to give us the History of the times wherein he lived we need only have recourse to those words of his in the Life of Avidius Cassius which is the only one he has left us viz. I design says he to Dioclesian Augustus to write the Lives of all those who either justly or unjustly have been stiled Emperor to the end to represent as it were at once to your view all that have arrived to the Imperial Dignity or been honoured by the Title of Augustus But it is certain that he never accomplished that Design since Vopiscus as I before mentioned tells us speaking of himself that he was the first that ever writ the Life of Aurelian and we may safely conclude that Vopiscus lived some time after Vulcatius since he makes mention of Trebellius Pollio at the beginning of the Life of Aurelian and of Julius Capitolinus and Aelius Lampridius at the beginning of the Life of Probus But those were all contemporary with Vulcatius But it may not be unworthy our observation that among the antient Collections of the Works of Spartian in the Palatine Library we find that of Avidius Cassius attributed there to him as the Learned Salmasius has remarked who seems inclinable to think that they are one and the same Author both by reason of the time wherein he lived and of the Stile and same Design of the History because as Lampridius relates he had proposed â—o himself to write an History of all the Emper 〈…〉 â—ho lived since Julius Caesar who had been 〈…〉 fied by the Title of Caesar's or Augustus and to make thereof as many Books as he should write Lives Which you may also read in the third Chapter of the Life of Avidius Cassius The Lives of all those who had either justly or unjustly been stiled Emperors as we have already remarked We may add to this that as it is certain that Lampridius never accomplish'd his Design so the Author of the Life of Cassius has also left his imperfect For as I have already said Vopiscus maintains that no one before him had written the Life of Aurelian and he has made no mention at all of Vulcatius when he had a very fair Opportunity of doing it where he tells us That in his Memoirs he would content himself to imitate Gargilius Martialis Julius Capitolinus Aelius Lampridius and others who in what they had transmitted to Posterity had been more observant of the Truth of the History than of elegance of Style But it may be said that he also comprehended Vulcatius in these words and others c. and that he would not express the Name of this Author because though he might propose to himself to write of all the Emperors yet that might only be perhaps out of some sort of Emulation of Spartianus and that there is great probability he contented himself with only the Life of Avidius or perhaps some one more that may be since lost To this also may be added that if this Life of Cassius had not been written by Vulcatius how comes it about that it never went under thâ—â—ame of Spartianus of Lampridius or of Ca 〈…〉 nus Or if there had been any Error in the Manuscripts it is probable some would have gone under one Name and some under another and yet we find in all the Copies and all the Editions the Name of Vulcatius Gallicanus prefixt to them which we find no where else and in that it is