Seve’rus of his favourite’s treachery.  He at first received the intelligence as an improbable story, and as the artifices of one who envied his favourite’s fortune.  However, he was at last persuaded to permit the tribune to conduct Plau’tian to the emperor’s apartments to be a testimony against himself. 9.  With this intent the tribune went and amused him with a pretended account of his killing the emperor and his son; desiring him, if he thought fit to see them dead, to go with him to the palace. 10.  As Plau’tian ardently desired their death, he readily gave credit to the relation, and, following the tribune, was conducted at midnight into the innermost apartments of the palace.  But what must have been his surprise and disappointment, when, instead of finding the emperor lying dead, as he expected, he beheld the room lighted up with torches, and Seve’rus surrounded by his friends, prepared in array to receive him. 11.  Being asked by the emperor, with a stern countenance, what had brought him there at that unseasonable time, he ingenuously confessed the whole, entreating forgiveness for what he had intended. 12.  The emperor seemed inclined to pardon; but Caracal’la, his son, who from the earliest age showed a disposition to cruelty, ran him through the body with his sword. 13.  After this, Seve’rus spent a considerable time in visiting some cities in Italy, permitting none of his officers to sell places of trust or dignity, and distributing justice with the strictest impartiality.  He then undertook an expedition into Britain, where the Romans were in danger of being destroyed, or compelled to fly the province.  After appointing his two sons, Caracal’la and Ge’ta, joint successors in the empire, and taking them with him, he landed in Britain, A.D. 208, to the great terror of such as had drawn down his resentment. 14.  Upon his progress into the country, he left his son Ge’ta in the southern part of the province, which had continued in obedience, and marched, with his son Caracal’la, against the Caledo’nians. 15.  In this expedition, his army suffered prodigious hardships in pursuing the enemy; they were obliged to hew their way through intricate forests, to drain extensive marshes, and form bridges over rapid rivers; so that he lost fifty thousand men by fatigue and sickness. 16.  However, he surmounted these inconveniences with unremitting bravery, and prosecuted his successes with such vigour, that he compelled the enemy to beg for peace; which they did not obtain without the surrender of a considerable part of their country. 17.  It was then that, for its better security, he built the famous wall, which still goes by his name, extending from Solway Frith on the west, to the German Ocean on the east.  He did not long survive his successes here, but died at York, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, after an active, though cruel reign of about eighteen years.

[Sidenote:  U.C.964 A.D.211]