did ascertain it later from the barbarians themselves:  and the matter of the poisons we learned from Macrinus.] It seemed that he partly sent for and partly bought quantities of all kinds of poisons from the inhabitants of Upper Asia, spending altogether seven hundred and fifty myriads upon them, in order that he might secretly kill in different ways great numbers of men,—­in fine, whomsoever he would.  They were subsequently discovered in the royal apartments and were all consumed by fire. [At this time the soldiers, both for this reason and, beyond other considerations, because they were vexed at having the barbarians preferred to themselves, were not altogether so enthusiastic over their leader as of yore and did not aid him when he became the victim of a plot.] Such was the end that he met after a life of twenty-nine years [and four days (for he had been born on the fourth of April)], and after a reign of six years, two months, and two days.

[Sidenote:—­7—­] There are many things at this point, too, in the story that occur to excite my surprise.  When he was about to start from Antioch on his last journey, his father confronted him in a vision, girt with a sword and saying:  “As you killed your brother, so will I smite you unto death;” and the soothsayers told him to beware of that day, using so direct a form of speech as this:  “The gates of the victim’s liver are shut.”  After this he went out through some door, paying no heed to the fact that the lion, which he was wont to call “Rapier,” and had for a table companion and bedfellow, knocked him down as he went out, and, moreover, tore some of his clothing.  He kept many other lions besides and always had some of them around him, but this one he would often caress even publicly.  It was thus that these events occurred.

And a little before his death, as I have heard, a great fire suddenly fastened upon the entire interior of the temple of Serapis in Alexandria, and did no other harm whatever save only to destroy that sword with which he had slain his brother. [Later, when it stopped, many stars shone out.] In Rome, too, [a spirit wearing the likeness of a man led an ass up the Capitol and later up the Palatine, seeking, as he said, its master and stating that Antoninus was dead and Jupiter reigned.  Arrested for his behavior, he was sent by Maternianus to Antoninus, and he declared:  “I depart, as you bid, but I shall face not this emperor but another.”  Afterwards on coming to Capua he vanished.

[Sidenote:—­8—­] This took place while the prince was still alive.] At the horse-race [held in memory of Severus’s reign] the statue of Mars, while being carried in procession, fell down.  This perhaps would not arouse such great wonder, but listen to the greatest marvel of all.  The Green faction had been defeated, whereupon, catching sight of a jackdaw, which was screeching very loud on the tip of a javelin, they all gazed at him and all of a sudden, as if by previous arrangement, cried out: