Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/186

 the very specious pleas here put forward, he would quite enjoy meeting his grandmother on her own ground. He had done it before, and had played the game successfully.

But the suggestion seems to have really appealed to his sense of the fitting; he was hard pressed; he was more anxious for the fate of his God than for the fate of the Empire (a crime for which other sovereigns have suffered similar fates at the hands of infuriated populaces), besides which, Dion tells us that Antonine loved his cousin, stupid and namby-pamby as he undoubtedly was.

And there was yet another side to the suggestion which commended itself to the Emperor's favourable consideration. In his present position Alexianus was a distinct menace to the government. Since Antonine's mistake about Vesta and Severa, his cousin had been used as a lever wherewith to raise popular indignation. There had been two plots, as we have pointed out, to dethrone Antonine; and, presumably, as Julia Mamaea was behind both, to replace him by Alexianus. Why not take the boy into his own keeping, adopt him as Maesa suggested, and, by taking their tool from their hands in response to their own appeal, neutralise the influence of both aunt and grandmother at one swoop? He could then train him in his own way. Alexianus was young — Herodian says about twelve years old — and ought, if he were a natural child, to be easily won by kindness, friendship, and joy. This information of Herodian's as to age is, for a wonder, corroborated by several reliable sources;