concerning him to the senate that Triccianus had been banished from
Rome, like Julius Asper, by Macrinus, and that he had restored him. He
took similar vengeance on Sulla, who had been governing Cappadocia but
had relinquished it, because Sulla both meddled in some matters that did
not concern him and when summoned to Rome by Elagabalus had managed to
meet the Celtic soldiers returning home after their winter in Bithynia,
a period during which they had raised some little disturbance. These men
perished for the reasons specified and no statements about them were
communicated to the senate. Seius Carus, the descendant of Fuscianus,
who had been city prefect, was killed because he was rich, great, and
sensible, on the pretext that he was forming a league of some of the
soldiers belonging to the Alban legion; and, on the basis of some
charges preferred by the emperor alone, he was accused in the palace,
where he was also slain.] Valerianus Pætus lost his life because he had
stamped some likeness of himself upon gold pieces to serve as ornaments
for his mistresses. [This led to the accusation that he intended to
remove to Cappadocia, a country bordering on his own (he was a Gaul),
for the purpose of starting a revolution, and that this was why he made
gold pieces bearing his own figure.

[Sidenote:--5--] On these charges] Silius Messala and Pomponius Bassus
[also were condemned to death by the senate: they] incurred blame
because they were not pleased with what he was doing. He did not
hesitate to write this statement about them to the senate, and called
them investigators of his habits of life and censors of proceedings in
the palace. ["The proofs of their plot I have not sent you," he said,
"because it would be useless to read them, in view of the fact that the
men are already dead."] There was another cause of dislike underlying
[the case against Messala,--the point, namely, that he sturdily made
public many facts in the senate. This was what led the emperor at the