Note 423 — WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

As a further not uninteresting record of the habits of these times, as contrasted with our own, let me add (though the topic is not altogether medical), that after Severus died at York, worn out, according to Herodian, more by grief than by disease (moerore magis quam morbo consumptus), his body was burned, and the ashes left by the corpse inclosed in an urn of alabaster with perfumes (odoribus).—Herodian, p. 413. His sons, with their own hands, lighted the funeral pile. Dion states that, shortly before his death, Severus sent for the urn that was destined to contain his ashes, and addressed it in terms too truly significant of the vanity and emptiness of the highest earthly ambition and the greatest earthly success: “Tu virum capies quem totus orbis terrarum non cepit.”—Dion, p. 307.