earth supported with stakes and piles of wood, and defended on the
[Sidenote: _Hector Boetius_]
backe with a déepe trench or ditch, and also fortified with
diuerse towers and turrets built & erected vpon the same wall or
rampire so néere togither, that the sound of trumpets being placed in
the same, might be heard betwixt, and so warning giuen from one to
another vpon the first descrieng of the enimies.

[Sidenote: _Polydorus. Herodianus_. 211.]
Seuerus being departed out of this life in the yere of our Lord
211, his son Antoninus otherwise called also Bassianus, would faine
haue vsurped the whole gouernment into his owne hands, attempting with
bribes and large promises to corrupt the minds of the souldiers: but
when he perceiued that his purpose would not forward as he wished in
that behalfe, he concluded a league with the enimies, and making peace
with them, returned backe towards Yorke, and came to his mother and
brother Geta, with whome he tooke order for the buriall of his father.
And first his bodie being burnt (as the maner was) the ashes were put
into a vessell of gold, and so conueied to Rome by the two brethren
and the empresse Iulia, who was mother to Geta the yonger brother,
and mother in law to the elder, Antoninus Bassianus, & by all meanes
possible sought to maintaine loue and concord betwixt the brethren,
which now at the first tooke vpon them to rule the empire equallie
togither. But the ambition of Bassianus was such, that finallie vpon
desire to haue the whole rule himselfe, he found meanes to dispatch
his brother Geta, breaking one daie into his chamber, and slaieng him
euen in his mothers lap, and so possessed the gouernment alone, till
at length he was slaine at Edessa a citie in Mesopotamia by one of his
owne souldiers, as he was about to vntrusse his points to doo the
[Sidenote: _Sextus Aurelius_.]