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Rh son's political career and regulated his moral conduct, and it must be added, in justice to her, that his private virtues contrasted most favourably with the dissolute and infamous life of his predecessor. She abused her power, however, to such a degree that she compelled him to separate from a young wife to whom he was tenderly and sincerely attached, and of whom his mother was jealous. Another of her mistakes consisted in her never having been able to control the army, which was in a constant state of revolt; so great was their insubordination that the soldiery assassinated Ulpian under the very eyes of the emperor, and refused to be conciliated by her bounties.

At last, when the veterans of Septimius Severus were replaced by fresh recruits, the army revolted more against Mamaea than against her son, and put both mother and son to death.

Hence, notwithstanding the periodical murders which seem to form a part of the institutions of the Roman empire, we find a regular dynasty of empresses, all of them issuing from an Eastern temple, and