Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/58

 published bulletins of victories : witness the Parthian medal of Macrinus, the record of a great victory for the Roman troops over Artabanus ; the real fact being a colossal defeat followed by a peace, the latter purchased in a manner disgraceful to both the people and the arms of Rome.

Inscriptions are unfortunately few and far between, owing to the fury with which Alexander and his relatives pursued Elagabalus' memory. Undoubtedly it was no new thing to call upon the Senate to execrate the memory of a murdered rival. It was, in fact, one of that body's most important functions during the period under discussion. Rarely has the work been done so thoroughly and effectively, which says something for the zeal of Alexander and the money he spent in extirpating all reference to the memory of Elagabalus.

The works of Valsecchius and Turre, amongst seventeenth-century scholars, are illuminating on the subject of the length of Elagabalus' reign. Tristran's attitude shows the slavishness of tradition ; certain of Saumaise's emendations show the same tendency despite his usual impartiality ; in fact, all have accepted the tradition of wickedness without the least question as to its fons et origo. This work proposes to take the texts as they exist, and endeavour from their unwitting statements of the boy's psychology to convict them of untruth. From their unsupported charges of secret crimes, to show that real crimes were largely non-existent, and