He [Footnote:  Pertinax is meant.] summoned some barbarians that had received a large sum of gold coin from Commodus in return for preservation of peace (the party was already on the road) and demanded its return, saying:  “Tell your people that Pertinax is ruler.”  The foreigners knew his name very well as a result of the reverses they had suffered when he made a campaign against them with Marcus.—­Let me tell you another similar act of his intended to cast reflections upon Commodus.  He found that some filthy clowns and buffoons, disgusting in appearance, with still more disgusting names and habits, had been made extremely wealthy by Commodus on account of their wantonness and licentiousness; accordingly, he made public their titles and the amounts they had acquired.  The former caused laughter and the latter wrath and grief, for there were some of them that possessed just the sums for which the emperor had slain numbers of senators.  However, Laetus did not remain permanently loyal to Pertinax, or perhaps we might even say not for a moment.  Since he did not get what he wanted, he proceeded to incite the soldiers against him (as will be related).

[Sidenote:—­7—­] Pertinax appointed as prefect of the city his father-in-law, Flavius Sulpicianus, a man who in any case deserved the position.  Yet he was unwilling to make his wife Augusta or his son Caesar, though we voted him permission.  He rejected emphatically each proposition, whether because he had not yet firmly rooted his own power, or because he did not choose to let his unchaste consort sully the name of Augusta.  As for his son, who was still a child, he did not care to have him spoiled by the dignity [Footnote:  Reading [Greek:  ogkho] (Reimar) for the MS. [Greek:  horkho].] and the hope implied in the name before he should be educated.  Indeed, he would not even bring him up in the palace, but on the very first day of his sovereignty he put aside everything that had belonged to him previously and divided it between his children—­he had also a daughter—­and gave orders that they should live at their grandfather’s house; there he visited them occasionally in the capacity of father and not of emperor.

[Sidenote:—­8—­] Now, since the soldiers were no longer allowed to plunder nor the Caesarians to indulge their licentiousness, they hated him bitterly.  The Caesarians attempted no revolt, because they were unarmed, but the Pretorian soldiers and Laetus formed a plot against him.  In the first place they selected Falco the consul for emperor, because he was prominent for both wealth and family, and purposed to bring him to the camp while Pertinax was at the coast investigating the corn supply.  The latter, learning of the plan, returned in haste to the City, and coming before the senate said:  “You should not be ignorant, Conscript Fathers, that though I found but twenty-five myriad denarii, I have distributed as much to the soldiers as did Marcus and Lucius, to whom were left sixty-seven thousand