Triccianus came to his end on account of the Alban legion, which he commanded with good discipline during Macrinus’s reign, and Castinus [Footnote:  C.  Iulius Septimius Castinus.] because he was energetic and was known to many soldiers in consequence of the commands he had held and his association with Antoninus.  He had accordingly been sent out in advance by Macrinus without reference to other events and was living in Bithynia.  The emperor put him to death in spite of having written concerning him to the senate that Triccianus had been banished from Rome, like Julius Asper, by Macrinus, and that he had restored him.  He took similar vengeance on Sulla, who had been governing Cappadocia but had relinquished it, because Sulla both meddled in some matters that did not concern him and when summoned to Rome by Elagabalus had managed to meet the Celtic soldiers returning home after their winter in Bithynia, a period during which they had raised some little disturbance.  These men perished for the reasons specified and no statements about them were communicated to the senate.  Seius Carus, the descendant of Fuscianus, who had been city prefect, was killed because he was rich, great, and sensible, on the pretext that he was forming a league of some of the soldiers belonging to the Alban legion; and, on the basis of some charges preferred by the emperor alone, he was accused in the palace, where he was also slain.] Valerianus Paetus lost his life because he had stamped some likeness of himself upon gold pieces to serve as ornaments for his mistresses. [This led to the accusation that he intended to remove to Cappadocia, a country bordering on his own (he was a Gaul), for the purpose of starting a revolution, and that this was why he made gold pieces bearing his own figure.

[Sidenote:—­5—­] On these charges] Silius Messala and Pomponius Bassus [also were condemned to death by the senate:  they] incurred blame because they were not pleased with what he was doing.  He did not hesitate to write this statement about them to the senate, and called them investigators of his habits of life and censors of proceedings in the palace. ["The proofs of their plot I have not sent you,” he said, “because it would be useless to read them, in view of the fact that the men are already dead.”] There was another cause of dislike underlying [the case against Messala,—­the point, namely, that he sturdily made public many facts in the senate.  This was what led the emperor at the outset to send for him to come to Syria, pretending to have very great need of him, whereas his real fear was that Messala might bring about a change of attitude on the part of the senators.