[Sidenote:  A.D. 213 (a.u. 966)] [Sidenote:—­13—­] Though holding such views and behaving in such a way with regard to the latter’s murder he took delight in the dissension of the barbarian brothers, on the ground that the Parthians would suffer some great injury as a result of it.

[The Celtic nations, however, afforded him neither pleasure nor any pretence of cleverness or courage but proved him to be nothing more nor less than a cheat, a simpleton, and an arrant coward.  Antoninus made a campaign among the Alamanni and wherever he saw a spot suitable for habitation he would order:  “There let a fort be erected:  there let a city be built.”  To those spots he applied names relating to himself, yet the local designations did not get changed; for some of the people were unaware of the new appellations and others thought he was joking.  Consequently he came to entertain a contempt for them and would not keep his hands off this tribe even; but, whereas he had been saying that he had come as an ally, he accorded them treatment to be expected of a most implacable foe.  He called a meeting of their men of military age under promise that they were to receive pay, and then at a given signal,—­his raising aloft his own shield,—­he had them surrounded and cut down; he also sent cavalry around and arrested all others not present.

¶Antoninus commended in the senate by means of a letter Pandion, a fellow who had previously been an understudy of charioteers but in the war against the Alamanni drove his chariot for him and in this capacity was his comrade and fellow soldier.  And he asserted that he had been saved by this man from a portentous danger and was not ashamed to evince greater gratitude to him than to the soldiers, whom in their turn he regarded as our superiors.[Footnote:  There is a gap of a word or two here (Dindorf text), filled by reading [Greek:  helen hechon] (with Boissevain).]

¶Some of the most distinguished men whom Antoninus slew he ordered to be cast out unburied.

¶He made a search for the tomb of Sulla and repaired it, and reared a cenotaph to Mesomedes, who had written a compilation of citharoedic modes.  He honored the latter because he was himself learning to sing to the zither and the former because he was emulating his cruelty.]

Still, in cases of necessity and urgent campaigns, he was simple and frugal, toiling with painstaking care in menial offices as much as the rest.  He trudged beside the soldiers and ran beside them, not taking a bath nor changing his clothing, but helping them in every labor and choosing absolutely the same food as they had.  Often he would send to distinguished champions on the enemy’s side and challenge them to single combat.  The details of generalship in which he certainly ought to have been most versed he managed least well, as if he thought that victory lay in the performance of those services mentioned and not in this science of commanding.