, the insolence of the
Praetorians was unendurable and their unbridled license and arrogance
terrorized the entire population, especially the upper classes. Going
anywhere in broad daylight was dangerous, even going to the Baths of Titus
from the Esquiline was risky. Anyone like Falco was certain to feel safer
indoors. And the tense uncertainty of those twenty-four days made
everybody restless, feverish, fidgety and morose: civil war between
Severus and Pescennius Niger, lord of the East, was inevitable. How
Clodius Albinus, in control of Gaul, Spain and Britain, would act, was
problematical. We were all keyed-up, apprehensive and wretched.

Our suspense was shorter since it turned out that Severus had made up his
mind and begun to make his rapid and effective arrangements as soon as he
heard of the murder of Pertinax. Pertinax was murdered on the fifth day
before the Kalends of April and so swiftly travelled the imperial couriers
who were his friends and who arranged to set out at once and carry Severus
the news, that the first of them rode more than eight hundred miles in
eight days and reached him at Caruntum in Pannonia on the Nones of April.
Severus was cautious, kept secret what he had heard and moved seventy-two
miles nearer Rome to Sabaria in Pannonia, where, after the news was
confirmed beyond question, he harangued the soldiers and was by them
saluted Emperor on the Ides of April. At once he assured himself of the
support or acquiescence of his officers and won over the local authorities
and garrisons all over Illyricum, Noricum and Rhaetia. Bands of his most
trusted soldiers set off towards Rome by every road. He gathered his
forces, made sure of their loyalty and began his march. He was already at
Aquileia when the news of the death of Julianus reached him there on the
Nones of June. He marched straight to Rome and on the tenth day before the
Kalends of July, the day of the summer solstice, was outside the city,
accompanied by the delegation of senators who had met him at Interamnia
and surrounded by the six hundred picked men who acted as his personal
guards, who, it was rumored, had not taken off their corselets day nor
night since they left Sabaria.

The next day, the ninth day before the Kalends of July, we heard with
amazement that the Praetorians had been cowed, had surrendered their
standards to Severus and had been disarmed. Certainly knots of them hung
about the streets and squares, all in ordinary