Your loyalty, your good intentions, your sincerity I realize and
rejoice over. But I find it hard to believe that any soldiers in distant
frontier garrisons can be better informed than the Prince himself of what
goes on in Italy, in Rome, in the very Palace. You have lodged the gravest
accusations against one of my most important and most trusted officials. I
shall now state your charges, that the accused man may hear them now for
the first time from my own lips and may here and now make his defence to
you and to me."
He paused. My eyes had been on Commodus and now shifted to Perennis.
Perennis was a handsome man, but in spite of, rather than because of, his
build and features. Even through the splendid trappings of Prefect of the
Praetorium he appeared too tall and too thin, his neck was too long, his
face too long, his ears too big, his long nose overhung his upper lip. He
was impressive and capable looking but appeared too crafty, too foxy. I
felt sure that he had not the least suspicion of what was coming. He
looked all vanity, self-satisfaction and vainglorious self-sufficiency.
"Fellow-soldiers," the Emperor went on, "you charge that my Prefect of the
Praetorium is not loyal, but is most treacherous; that he has been, for
more than two years, plotting my death and the elevation to the
Principiate of his eldest son, now Procurator of Illyricum.
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