The cause in] the case of Bassus was that he had a wife both fair to look upon and of noble rank; she was a descendant of Claudius Severus and of Marcus Antoninus.  Indeed, the prince married her, not allowing her even to mourn the catastrophe.  Now of his marriages, in which he both married and was bestowed in marriage, an account will be given presently.  He appeared both as man and as woman, and performed the functions of both in the most licentious fashion [lacuna] about [lacuna] and [lacuna] by whom [lacuna] own [lacuna] Sergius [lacuna] and [lacuna] out of [lacuna] any [lacuna] making [lacuna] him [lacuna] blame for [lacuna] slaughter the [Sidenote:—­6—­] [lacuna] and of knights [lacuna] Caesarians [lacuna] [lacuna] were destroyed [lacuna] nothing [lacuna] but by killing in Nicomedea at the very start of his reign Gannys, who had arranged the uprising, who had introduced him into the camp and had likewise caused [the soldiers to revolt, who had presented him with the victory over Macrinus, one who had reared and managed him,—­by this act he came to be regarded as the most impious of men.  To be sure, Gannys was living rather luxuriously and was fond of accepting bribes, but for all that he brought no injury upon anybody and bestowed many benefits upon many people.  Most of all, he always showed a deep respect for the emperor, and he was thoroughly satisfactory to Maesa and Soaemias, suiting the former because she had brought him up and the latter because he practically lived with her.  But these were not the reasons why the emperor put him out of the way, seeing that he was willing to give him a marriage contract and appoint him Caesar.  It was rather that Gannys compelled him to live temperately and prudently.  And his own hand was the first to give his minister a mortal blow, since no one of the soldiers had the hardihood to take the initiative in his murder.—­These events, then, took place in this way.

[Sidenote:—­7—­] [lacuna] Another pair executed were Verus, who had likewise mustered courage to make an attempt upon the sovereignty while in the midst of the third (Gallic) legion, which he was commanding; and Gellius Maximus, on the same sort of charge, though he was lieutenant in Syria proper and at the head of the fourth (Scythian) legion.  For to such an extent had everything got upside down, that these men, too, one of whom had been enrolled in the senate from the ranks of the centurions and the other of whom was the son of a physician, took it into their heads to aim at the imperial office.  I have mentioned them alone by name, not so much because they were the only ones who appeared entirely insane as because they belonged to the senate; for other attempts were made.  A certain centurion’s son undertook to throw into disorder the same Gallic legion, and another, a worker in wool, tampered with the Fourth, and a third, a private citizen, with the fleet in harbor at Cyzicus when the False Antoninus was wintering at Nicomedea.  And there were many others elsewhere,