Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/132

 include Julianus Nestor, Captain of the Guards to the late Emperor; Fabius Agrippinus, Governor of Syria ; Pica Caerianus, Governor of Arabia ; Aelius Decius Triccianus, a man of mean origin, whose death the 2nd Parthian Legion demanded on account of his cruelty towards them ; Castinus, a friend and officer of Macrinus ; Claudius Attalus, Lieutenant-Governor of Cyprus, a man who had been expelled from the Senate by Severus and stupidly readmitted by Caracalla. It was not clear on what count this man actually suffered, and in consequence the story of an enmity between him and Eutychianus, during the campaign in Thrace — when he is said to have cashiered the new Praefect of the Praetorian Guards — is regarded as sufficient reason for saying that Eutychianus demanded his death.

During this same winter there was another pretender to kingship, helped by another governor friend of Macrinus, a certain Senator Valerianus Paetus. This man's crime lay in the fact that, after the imperial custom, he had coined gold pieces bearing his own image and superscription, and distributed these amongst the people of Cappadocia and Galatia, which was considered tantamount to a declaration of imperial proclamation. His defence, when apprehended, was that the medals were actually intended for the adornment of his mistresses. The court found, however, that no sane man could reasonably possess this luxury in sufficient numbers to justify the coining of the amount of medals discovered ; besides which, his accomplice Sylla, Governor of Cappadocia, who had just before been tampering