found among the soldiers. Thus [lacuna] of things accustomed to be said
with a view to flattery and not inspired by truthfulness they became so
suspicious as to ask that they be made public, and he sent them to us,
and the quæstor read them aloud, as he did other similar documents in
their turn. And a certain prætor, as the senate was then in session and
none of the quæstors was present, also read an epistle once composed by
Macrinus himself.

[Sidenote:--17--] The first letter having been read, appropriate
measures were passed with reference to both Macrinus and his son. He was
designated Patrician, and Princeps Iuventutis, and Cæsar. He accepted
everything save the horse-race voted in honor of the beginning of his
reign; from this he begged to be excused, saying that the event had been
sufficiently honored by the spectacle on the birthday of Severus. Of
Tarautas he made no mention at this time, in the way of either honor or
dishonor, save only that he called him Emperor. He ventured to term him
neither Hero nor Foe, and, as I conjecture, it was because the deeds of
his predecessor and the hatred of much of mankind made him shrink from
the former epithet, and the thought of the soldiers restrained him from
the latter. Some suspected that it was because he wanted the disgracing
to be the act of the senate and the people rather than his own,
especially since he was in the midst of the legions. He did say that
Tarautas by his wrongdoing had been chiefly responsible for the war and
had terribly burdened the public treasury by increasing the money given
to the barbarians, inasmuch as it was of equal amount with the pay of
the soldiers under arms. No one dared, however, to give utterance
publicly to any such statement against him and vote that he was an
enemy, for fear of immediate annihilation at the hands of the soldiers
in the City. Still, they abused him in their own fashion and heaped
insults upon him as much as they could, going over the list of his