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The shivering Romans wrapped their cloaks around them, wholly forgetting that drops of perspiration were trickling down their brows from the heat; and while the skaters pelted the spectators with snowballs, the audience, shouting in delight, enthusiastically cheered the Imperator who so generously provided for the amusement of his subjects. Let us now seek Carinus in his own palace.
Carinus, smiling, raised himself on his couch, and motioned to the noisy revellers to be quiet. "Since when has the word 'Augustus' in the Roman tongue meant shame and loathsomeness?" Sophronia boldly continued, gazing defiantly at Carinus.
Carinus, the other son of Carus, who had remained in Italy, having collected a force to attack Diocletian, the two armies met at Margum, in Moesia, where the soldiers of Carinus had the advantage at first, but Carinus himself being killed during the battle by his officers, who detested him for his cruelty and debauchery, both armies joined in acknowledging Diocletian emperor in 285.
"I will marry this girl," he says, turning to one of the courtiers. "You wedded the daughter of a proconsul yesterday, O my lord." "I will divorce her to-day. Who is this slave's father?" "A carpenter at the court." "I will appoint him proconsul." "This will be your ninth wife within four months." Carinus drew the Phrygian down beside him and laid his head in her lap.
Carinus no longer had these sainted virgins dragged to blazing pyres, but gave them to his soldiers; and virtuous women who did not recoil from the most terrible death trembled in the presence of the shame which scorched the purity of their souls more fiercely than the flames of the burning oil.
Manlius remained with Carinus to amuse him; he taught the dancing girls the dazzling arts of the Indian bayaderes, and conquered Ævius by producing on every occasion, and at every toast, distiches more apt and beautiful than the court poet could fabricate.
"These few hairs of your beard which disfigure your glorious face and insolently tickle your majestic nose and lips are annoying you. O Carinus, have them removed! Your face is so feminine in its beauty, and would be fairer still were it not injured by these ugly signs of manhood!"
Their ranks were broken, and, for a moment, Diocletian despaired of the purple and of life. But the advantage which Carinus had obtained by the valor of his soldiers, he quickly lost by the infidelity of his officers. A tribune, whose wife he had seduced, seized the opportunity of revenge, and, by a single blow, extinguished civil discord in the blood of the adulterer. Part I.
With these words she fell back lifeless, her staring eyes, even in death, fixed upon Manlius. The armies of the imperial rivals met between Belgrade and Szeudrö. The Imperator Carinus' troops were perfectly fresh; Diocletian's legions were wearied by fatiguing marches. Carinus ordered his tent to be pitched on the top of a hill, whence, at Manlius's side, he watched the conflict.
"The Senate would not accept the abdication, and compelled the immortal Carinus to continue to wear the purple." Mesembrius was obliged to lean on his crutches again. "Oh, my poor feet! Oh, this terrible gout in my knees! Foolish old man that I am; what have I been saying? I swing myself on a horse? If I could at least sit comfortably in my wheel-chair! Such a foolish old fellow!
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