Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/271

 step, therefore, which Maesa had to take in this policy of alliance was to find the most influential marriageable woman in Rome and put her into the place that Aquilia Severa was holding to the jeopardy of all concerned. The lady appeared as if by a miracle. Amongst other persons who disapproved of Antonine's proceedings were the two Senators Silius Messala and Pomponius Bassus, of whom mention has already been made, as having been concerned in a plot for dethroning the Emperor. Both had been men of importance for years. Pomponius Bassus had been Consul under Septimius Severus and Governor of Mysia under Caracalla. In fact, so important were they in their own estimation, that nothing set bounds to their ambition. Already between them they had contrived the deposition of the Emperor Julianus, and the election of Septimius, and, like the great Earl of Warwick of fifteenth-century fame, they were by no means averse to putting their heads together once again, in order to rid the state of whomsoever they thought incapax imperii.

Now, this was just the work that Mamaea wanted. For other reasons, Maesa was not averse to the plot. The gentlemen held a secret court to examine into the Emperor's actions, and presumably they found him incapax, so set to work to corrupt the guards in the usual fashion.

Unfortunately for Antonine, that infamous system of informers which had flourished and been of such vital use under former Emperors (under his father Caracalla, to go no further back for an example)