[Sidenote:—­3—­] The signs which led him to expect the sovereignty were these.  When he had been registered in the senate-house, it seemed to him in a vision that a she-wolf suckled him, as was the case with Romulus.  On the occasion of his marrying Julia, Faustina, the wife of Marcus, prepared their bedchamber in the temple of Venus opposite the palace; and once, when he was asleep, water gushed from his hand as from a spring; and when he was governor of Lugdunum, the whole Roman domain approached and greeted him,—­all this in dreams, I mean.  At another time he was taken by some one to a point affording a wide view; and as he gazed from it over all the earth and all the sea he laid his fingers on them as one might on some instrument [Footnote:  Compare Plato, Republic, 399 C.] capable of all harmonies, and they answered to his touch.  Again, he thought that in the Roman Forum a horse threw Pertinax, who was already mounted, but readily took him on its back.  These things he had already learned from dreams, but in his waking hours he had, while a youth, ignorantly seated himself upon the imperial chair.  This accident, taken with the rest, indicated rulership to him in advance.

[Sidenote:—­4—­] Upon attaining that condition he erected a heroum to Pertinax and commanded that his name should be repeated in the course of all prayers and of all oaths.  A gold image of him was ordered brought into the hippodrome on a car drawn by elephants and three gilded thrones for him conveyed into the remaining theatres.  His funeral, in spite of the time elapsed since his death, took place as follows: 

In the Forum Romanum a wooden platform was constructed hard by the stone one, upon which was set a building without walls but encompassed by columns, with elaborate ivory and gold decoration.  In it a couch of similar material was placed, surrounded by heads of land and sea creatures, and adorned with purple coverlets interwoven with gold.  Upon it had been laid a kind of wax image of Pertinax, arrayed in triumphal attire.  A well-formed boy was scaring the flies away from it with peacock feathers, as though it were really a person sleeping.  While it was lying there in state, Severus, we senators, and our wives approached, clad in mourning garb. [Footnote:  Reading [Greek:  penthikos] (Sylburgius, Boissevain et al)..] The ladies sat in the porticos, and we under the open sky.  After this there came forward, first, statues of all the famous ancient Romans, then choruses of boys and men, intoning a kind of mournful hymn to Pertinax.  Next were all the subject nations, represented by bronze images, attired in native garb.  And the guilds in the City itself,—­those of the lictors and the scribes and the heralds, and all others of the sort,—­followed on.  Then came images of other men who were famous for some deed or invention or brilliant trait.  Behind them were the cavalry and infantry in armor, the race-horses, and all the funeral offerings that the emperor and we and our