Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/183

 the plots, all and sundry, which disaffected functionaries might attempt against the person of the; Emperor.

Now, venality is a vice not confined to the modern world ; then, as now, it was possible to find men who considered that their usefulness was underestimated, and that their position inadequately represented their merits. The record of at least three such personages and their attempts has come down to us : the first was that instituted by Pomponius Bassus and his colleague Silius Messala, who had adopted Mamaea's line of argument as to the inadvisability of allowing Antonine's mistaken religious policy to continue ; the second, that of Seius Carus, who in 221 attempted the corruption of the Alban Legion in either his own or Alexianus' interest — and in both of these plots we are led to infer that Julia Mamaea had a considerable finger.

The question of Seius Carus is one of considerable interest from this point of view. The gentleman was wealthy and of the patrician order, which facts did not prevent him, according to Dion, from spending his money freely amongst the soldiery, obviously with an ulterior motive. Unfortunately for him, he hit upon the wrong legion, the body which was now quartered near Rome and had joined Antonine so readily at Apamea in 218. In the year 220 this legion had set up an inscription to Antonine's Victoria Aeterna, which monument had expressed the greatest possible devotion to the reigning Emperor, and gave the lie direct to