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Updated: June 28, 2025
The legions assembled to deliberate about Numerian's death and to choose his successor. Aper was brought before the assembly under a guard of soldiers. Through the exertions of zealous friends the candidature of Diocletian found great favor. At the first words pronounced by him from a raised platform in the presence of the troops, cries of "Diocletian Augustus "were raised in every quarter.
The impatience of the soldiery would brook no uncertainty: they rushed to the spot; satisfied themselves of the fact; and, loudly denouncing as the murderer Aper, the captain of the guard, committed him to custody, and assigned to Dioclesian, whom at the same time they invested with the supreme power, the duty of investigating the case.
A general assembly of the army was appointed to be held at Chalcedon, whither Aper was transported in chains, as a prisoner and a criminal. A vacant tribunal was erected in the midst of the camp, and the generals and tribunes formed a great military council.
"APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone. Sixth side. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed species of dog, with ugly flap ears. Seventh side. Eighth side. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees. SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior professions.
He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it. Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus.
Diocletian commanded the household or imperial body-guards when young Numerianus, the son of Carus, was secretly put to death by Aper his father-in-law, while travelling in a close litter on account of illness, on the return of the army from Persia.
Descending suddenly from the platform, he made straight for the Praetorian prefect, and saying, "Aper, be comforted; thou shalt not die by vulgar hands; by the right hand of great AEneas thou fallest," he gave him his death-wound. "I have killed the prophetic wild boar," said he in the evening to his confidants; and soon afterwards, in spite of the efforts of certain rivals, he was emperor.
The administration of all affairs, civil as well as military, was devolved on Arrius Aper, the Prætorian præfect, who to the power of his important office added the honor of being father-in-law to Numerian. The Imperial pavilion was strictly guarded by his most trusty adherents; and during many days, Aper delivered to the army the supposed mandates of their invisible sovereign.
This led him to become dissatisfied with himself, with the world, and with Divine Providence, and has left a stamp of profound and rebellious melancholy on all his works. As a young man he had studied rhetoric under Aper Secundus, and perhaps Quintilian. He pleaded with the greatest success, and Pliny gives it as his own highest ambition to be ranked next, he dare not say second, to Tacitus.
"No, no, the strong odour of amber issuing from his tent is only to disguise the scent of corruption, and Aper has long taken advantage of you by issuing orders in Numerian's name." The soldiers forced their way into Numerian's tent and found the old man's words confirmed. Numerian had lain dead a long time; his body was far advanced in decomposition.
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