im
to the palace. 10. As Plau'tian ardently desired their death, he
readily gave credit to the relation, and, following the tribune, was
conducted at midnight into the innermost apartments of the palace. But
what must have been his surprise and disappointment, when, instead of
finding the emperor lying dead, as he expected, he beheld the room
lighted up with torches, and Seve'rus surrounded by his friends,
prepared in array to receive him. 11. Being asked by the emperor, with
a stern countenance, what had brought him there at that unseasonable
time, he ingenuously confessed the whole, entreating forgiveness
for what he had intended. 12. The emperor seemed inclined to pardon;
but Caracal'la, his son, who from the earliest age showed a
disposition to cruelty, ran him through the body with his sword. 13.
After this, Seve'rus spent a considerable time in visiting some cities
in Italy, permitting none of his officers to sell places of trust or
dignity, and distributing justice with the strictest impartiality. He
then undertook an expedition into Britain, where the Romans were in
danger of being destroyed, or compelled to fly the province. After
appointing his two sons, Caracal'la and Ge'ta, joint successors in the
empire, and taking them with him, he landed in Britain, A.D. 208, to
the great terror of such as had drawn down his resentment. 14. Upon
his progress into the country, he left his son Ge'ta in the southern
part of the province, which had continued in obedience, and marched,
with his son Caracal'la, against the Caledo'nians. 15. In this
expedition, his army suffered prodigious hardships in pursuing the
enemy; they were obliged to hew their way through intricate forests,
to drain extensive marshes, and form bridges over rapid rivers; so
that he lost fifty thousand men by fatigue and sickness. 16. However,
he surmounted these inconveniences with unremitting bravery, and
prosecuted his successes with such vigour, that he compelled the enemy
to beg for peace; which they did not obtain without the surrender of a
considerable part of their country. 17. It was then that, for its
better security, he built the famous wall, which still goes by his
name, extending from Solway Frith on the west, to the German Ocean on
the east. He did not long survive his successes here, but died at
York, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, after an active, though
cruel reign of about eighteen years.

[Sidenote: U.C.964 A.D.211]

18. Caracal