for a very long time had remained stationary in its progress, had been
made angry and inflamed by the blow which she struck her chest on
hearing of her son's death; this helped to undermine her constitution
and she made sure of her demise by voluntary starvation.

[Sidenote:--24--][And so this queen, sprung from a family of common
people and raised to a high station, who had lived during her husband's
reign in great unhappiness on account of Plautianus, who had beheld her
younger son butchered in her own lap and had borne ill-will to her elder
son while he lived, finally receiving such tidings of his assassination,
withdrew from power while in the full flush of life and thereafter did
herself to death. Hence a person reviewing her career could not deem
infallibly happy all those who attain great authority; indeed, in no
case unless some true and undefiled pleasure in life belongs to them,
and unswerving, permanent good fortune.--This, then, was the fate of
Julia. Her body was taken to Rome and placed in the tomb of Gaius and
Lucius. Later, however, both her bones and those of Geta were
transferred by her sister Mæsa to the precinct of Antoninus.

[Sidenote:--25--] Nor was Macrinus destined to survive for long,--a fact
of which he doubtless had previous indications. A mule bore a mule in
Rome and a sow had a little pig with four ears and two tongues and eight
feet. A great earthquake occurred, blood flowed from a pipe, and bees
formed honeycombs in the Forum Boarium. The hunting-theatre was smitten
with thunderbolts on the very day of the Vulcanalia [Footnote: August
twenty-third.] and such a blaze ensued that all its upper circumference
and the whole circuit of construction and the ground-level were burned
and thereupon the rest of it caught fire and fell in ruins. No human aid
availed against the conflagration, though every possible stream of water
was directed upon the blaze, nor could the downpour from the sky, which