once at a horse-race uttered this among other cries:  “We are destroying the living in order to bury the dead.”  The emperor would often say:  “No man need have money but me, and I want it to bestow it on the soldiers.”  Once when Julia chided him for his great outlays upon them and said:  “No longer is any resource, either just or unjust, left to us,” he replied, exhibiting his sword:  “Cheer up, mother:  for, as long as we have this, money is not going to fail us.”

[Sidenote:—­11—­] To those who flattered him, however, he distributed possessions and money.

¶Julius Paulus [Footnote:  Undoubtedly a mistake for the Julius Paulinus subsequently mentioned.] was a man of consular rank, who was a great chatterer and joker and would not refrain from aiming his shafts of wit at the very emperors:  therefore Severus had him taken into custody, though without constraints.  When he still continued, even under guard, to make the sovereigns the objects of his jests, Severus sent for him and swore that he would cut off his head.  But the man replied:  “Yes, you can cut it off, but as long as I have it, neither you nor I can restrain it,” and so Severus laughed and released him.

He granted to Julius Paulinus twenty-five myriads because the man, who was a jester, had been led, though involuntarily, to make a joke upon him.  Paulinus had said that he actually resembled a man getting angry, for somehow he was always assuming a fierce expression. [Footnote:  None of the editors, any more than the casual reader, has been able to find anything of a sidesplitting nature in this joke.  The trouble is, of course, that the utterance sounds like a plain statement of fact.  Caracalla’s natural disposition was harsh and irritable.  Some have changed the word “man” to “Pan (in anger)”, but without gaining very much.  I offer for what it is worth the suggestion that a well-known truth, especially in the case of personal characteristics, may sound very amusing when pronounced in a quizzical or semi-ironical fashion by a person possessing sufficient vis comica.  Thus we may conceive Paulinus, a professional jester, on meeting Antoninus to have blurted out in a tone of mock surprise:  “Why, anybody would really think you are angry.  You look so cross all the time!” There would then be a point in the jest, but the point would lie not in the words but in the voice and features of the speaker.  Apart from this explanation of the possible humor of the remark an excerpt of Peter Patricius (Exc.  Vat. 143) gives us to understand that it would be taken as a compliment by Antoninus from the mouth of a person to whom he was accustomed to accord some liberties, since Antoninus made a point of maintaining at all times this character of harshness and abruptness.]—­Antoninus made no account of anything excellent:  he never learned anything of the kind, as he himself admitted.  So it was that he showed a contempt for us, who possessed