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"Didn't Pertinax see some one's body kicked into the bushes?" There was silence. They all glanced at one another. Only Galen, sipping at his wine, seemed philosophically calm. "I personally should not be an eye-witness," Galen remarked. "I am a doctor, whose certificate of death not even Commodus would doubt. In the dark I might recognize Sextus' garments, even though I could not see his features.
It seems to me sufficient to take all those emperors who succeeded to the empire from Marcus the philosopher down to Maximinus; they were Marcus and his son Commodus, Pertinax, Julian, Severus and his son Antoninus Caracalla, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander, and Maximinus.
His ugly face and rather mirth-provoking blue eyes, the loose, beautifully balanced seat on horseback and the cavalry-like carriage of his shoulders, served their notice to the world at large that he would stick to friends of his own choosing and for purely personal reasons, in spite of, and in the teeth of anything. "As I said," remarked Sextus, "if Pertinax comes "
"I just saw a naked woman stab a man with her hairpin and kick his corpse into the shrubbery before the breath was out of it!" "Galen has deserted you," said Cornificia. The murder was uninteresting; nobody made any comment. "Not he!" Pertinax answered, and went and sat on Galen's couch. "You find me not man enough for the senate to make a god of me is that it, Galen?"
Yet under these distressed circumstances, Pertinax had the generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes invented by Commodus, and to cancel all the unjust claims of the treasury; declaring, in a decree of the senate, "that he was better satisfied to administer a poor republic with innocence, than to acquire riches by the ways of tyranny and dishonor.
From the senate Julian was conducted, by the same military procession, to take possession of the palace. The first objects that struck his eyes, were the abandoned trunk of Pertinax, and the frugal entertainment prepared for his supper. The one he viewed with indifference, the other with contempt.
We have no means of following the campaigns in detail; but thus much is certain, that in the end the Romans succeeded in crushing the barbarian tribes, and effecting a settlement which made the empire more secure. Marcus was himself commander-in-chief, and victory was due no less to his own ability than to his wisdom in choice of lieutenants, shown conspicuously in the case of Pertinax.
"He is a sick man," said Marcia. "I think he has a fever." Galen shook his head again. "I will not have it said I poisoned him." "Nonsense! Who knows that you mixed any poison?" "Sextus, for one," Galen answered. "Dea dia! There you are!" said Marcia. "I tell you, Pertinax, your Sextus may prove to be another Livius! He has been as ubiquitous as the plague. He knows everything.
"Freedom you may keep your money I shall not wait to receive it. Freedom for me and for Sextus and for all of Sextus' friends and freedmen. An order releasing Sextus from the guard-house instantly. Permission to leave Rome and Italy by any route we choose." "Write, Pertinax!" said Marcia. Narcissus glanced at Galen. "Galen," he said, "is one of Sextus' friends, so set his name down."
Yet even in the inquisition of these legal assassins, Pertinax proceeded with a steady temper, which gave every thing to justice, and nothing to popular prejudice and resentment. The finances of the state demanded the most vigilant care of the emperor.
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