In the course of the uncertainty numerous letter-carriers on both sides lost their lives, and numbers of those who had slain the followers of Antoninus, or had not immediately attached themselves to their cause, were censured.  Some perished on this account and some merely incurred a small loss.  Hence I will pass over most of this (it is all very much alike and permits of no considerable description in detail) and will give a summary of what took place in Egypt.

[Sidenote:—­35—­] The governor of that country was Basilianus, whom Macrinus had also made prefect in place of Julianus.  Some interests were managed also by Marius Secundus, although he had been created senator by Macrinus and was at the head of affairs in Phoenicia.  In this way both of them were dependent upon Macrinus and for that reason put to death the runners of the False Antoninus.  As long, therefore, as the outcome of the business was still in dispute, they and the soldiers and the individuals were in suspense, some wishing and praying and reporting one thing and others the opposite, as always in factional disturbances.  When the news of the defeat of Macrinus arrived, a riot of some magnitude followed, in which many of the populace and not a few of the soldiers were destroyed.  Secundus found himself in a dilemma; and Basilianus, fearing that he should lose his life instanter, effected his escape from Egypt.  After coming to the vicinity of Brundusium in Italy he was discovered, having been betrayed by a friend in Rome to whom he had sent a secret message asking for food.  So he was later taken back to Nicomedea and executed.

[Sidenote:—­36—­] Macrinus wrote also to the senate about the False Antoninus [as he did also to the governors everywhere], calling him “boy” and saying that he was mad.  He wrote also to Maximus, the praefectus urbi, giving him such information as one might expect, and further stating that the soldiers recently enlisted insisted upon receiving all that they were wont to have before, and that the rest, who had been deprived of nothing, made common cause with them in their anger at what was withheld.  And to omit a recital, he said, of all the many means devised by Severus and his son for the ruin of rigid discipline, it was impossible for the troops to be given their entire pay in addition to the donatives which they were receiving; for the increase in their pay granted by Tarautas amounted to seven thousand myriads annually, and could not be given, partly because the soldiers and again because [lacuna] righteous [lacuna] but the recognized expenditures [lacuna] and the [lacuna] could he himself and the child as [lacuna] himself [lacuna] and he commiserated himself upon having a son, but said that he found it a solace in his disaster to think that he had outlived the fratricide who attempted to destroy the whole world.  He also added to the missive something like the following:  “I know that there are many who are more anxious to have emperors killed than to have them live, but this is one thing I can not say in respect to myself, that any one could either desire or pray that I should perish.”  At which Fulvius Diogenianus exclaimed:  “We have all prayed for it!”