Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/19

their instigation that this sorry specimen of an emperor, who had already compelled the senate to admit his mother as one of its members and to give her a seat at its councils, instituted a new senate composed of women, whose duty it was to issue decrees on the subject of dress, precedence, right to kiss hands, carriages, pearls on shoes, &c., but who would hardly limit their deliberations to such trifling matters, although these only are recorded by the historians of the period, probably not without intention. When it became quite clear to Maesa that the earlier popularity of Elagabalus was rapidly on the wane, she at once made him adopt, though much against his will, his cousin Alexander Severus, the son of her own daughter Julia Mamaea, the last of this extraordinary family. Soemis and Elagabalus died at the same time (A.D. 222); Maesa died soon after, and Julia Mamaea reigned until the year A.D. 235, under the auspices of Alexander Severus, who, according to the unanimous consent of all historians, yielded the blindest submission to his mother's will. To the very last she guided her