proved quite the reverse to be true, and anybody could see that some catastrophe would result from their relations.  This fact was recognized even prior to their reaching Rome.  When it had been voted by the senate to sacrifice in behalf of their harmony both to the other gods and to Harmony herself, the assistants made ready a victim to be sacrificed to Harmony and the consul arrived to do the slaughtering; yet he could not find them, nor could the assistants find the consul.  They spent nearly the whole night looking for each other, so that the sacrifice could not be performed on that occasion.  The next day two wolves climbed the Capitol, but were chased away from that region:  one of them was next encountered somewhere in the Forum, and the other was later slain outside the pomerium.  This is the story about those two animals.

[Sidenote:—­2—–­] It was Antoninus’s wish to murder his brother at the Saturnalia, but he was not able to carry out his intention.  The danger had already grown too evident to be concealed.  As a consequence, there were many violent meetings between the two,—­both feeling that they were being plotted against,—­and many precautionary measures were taken on both sides.  As many soldiers and athletes, abroad and at home, day and night, were guarding Geta, Antoninus persuaded his mother to send for him and his brother and have them come along to her house with a view to being reconciled.  Geta without distrust went in with him.  When they were well inside, some centurions suborned by Antoninus rushed in a body.  Geta on seeing them had run to his mother, and as he hung upon her neck and clung to her bosom and breasts he was cut down, bewailing his fate and crying out:  “Mother that bore me, mother that bore me, help!  I am slain!!”

[Sidenote:  A.D. 212 (a.u. 965)] Tricked in this way, she beheld her son perishing by most unholy violence in her very lap, and, as it were, received his death into her womb whence she had borne him.  She was all covered with blood, so that she made no account of the wound she had received in her hand.  She might neither mourn nor weep for her son, although, untimely he had met so miserable an end (he was only twenty-two years and nine months old):  on the contrary, she was compelled to rejoice and laugh as though enjoying some great piece of luck.  All her words, gestures, and changes of color were watched with the utmost narrowness.  She alone, Augusta, wife of the emperor, mother of emperors, was not permitted to shed tears even in private over so great a calamity.

[Sidenote:—­3—­] Antoninus, although it was evening, took possession of the legions after bawling all the way along the road that he had been the object of a plot and was in danger.  On entering the fortifications, he exclaimed:  “Rejoice, fellow-soldiers, for now I have a chance to benefit you!” Before they heard the whole story he had stopped their mouths with so many and so great promises