" But, as a critical historian remarks, this was a
shortsighted and self-destroying policy; since in no way is the
subsistence of the soldier made more insecure, than by diminishing the
general security of rights and property to those who are not soldiers,
from whom, after all, the funds must be sought, by which the soldier
himself is to be paid and nourished. The two sons of Severus, whose bitter
enmity is so memorably put on record by their actions, travelled
simultaneously to Rome; but so mistrustful of each other, that at every
stage the two princes took up their quarters at different houses. Geta has
obtained the sympathy of historians, because he happened to be the victim;
but there is reason to think, that each of the brothers was conspiring
against the other. The weak credulity, rather than the conscious
innocence, of Geta, led to the catastrophe; he presented himself at a
meeting with his brother in the presence of their common mother, and was
murdered by Caracalla in his mother's arms. He was, however, avenged; the
horrors of that tragedy, and remorse for the twenty thousand murders which
had followed, never forsook the guilty Caracalla.
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