Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/225

Rh over, Antonine used to mount on towers especially constructed for the purpose, and distribute to the crowd vases of gold and silver, clothes and stuffs of all sorts, fat oxen and other animals, clean and unclean, except pigs, which were forbidden to him by his Phoenician (not Jewish) custom. Presumably the distribution was by tickets, exchangeable for these gifts, of which he says each was at liberty to take what he could seize. In the scramble, many citizens perished either by crushing one another, or by throwing themselves, in their eagerness, on the lances of the soldiers. The consequence was that the festival became a misfortune to many families. But surely to make Antonine responsible for the greediness of the crowd is as absurd as to record the fiction that he smothered people with flowers, or took luncheon in the circus when he was interested in the games, and then evince such harmless amusements as proofs of cruelty.

As we recorded in the last chapter, it was certainly not long before Antonine discovered that he had made a vital mistake in adopting his cousin. We are led to infer that the boys had not seen much of one another for some time previously, as Mamaea had kept them apart, fearing her son's contamination. Now that Alexander was actually in the palace and in daily contact with the Emperor, incompatibility of temper was the natural result, though in several places we are informed that Antonine loved his cousin at least up to 1st January, which interesting fact may be doubted on psycho-