“Hail Martialius, Martialius hail, long it is since we beheld thee!” It was not that the jackdaw was ever so called, but through him they were greeting, apparently under some divine inspiration, Martialius, the assassin of Antoninus.  To some, indeed, Antoninus seemed to have foretold his own end, inasmuch as in the last letter that he sent to the senate he had said:  “Cease praying that I may reign a hundred years.”  The petition mentioned had always been uttered from the beginning of his sovereignty and this was the first and only time that he found fault with it.  Thus, while his words were simply meant to chide them for offering a prayer impossible of accomplishment, he was really indicating that he should no longer rule for any length of time.  And when certain persons had once called attention to this fact, it also came to my mind that when he was giving us a banquet in Nicomedea at the Saturnalia and had talked a good deal, as was usual at a symposium, then on our rising to go he had addressed me and said:  “With great acumen and truth, Dio, has Euripides remarked that

  “’Neath divers forms the spirit world is lurking,
  Much passing hope the gods are ever working. 
  Oft disappointment strikes down sure ambition: 
  The unthought chance God brings to full fruition. 
  This story leaves things in just that condition.’”

[Footnote:  Lines that occur at the end of several of Euripides’s dramas.]

At the time this quotation seemed to have been mere nonsense, but when not long after he perished the fact that this was the last speech he uttered to me was thought to infuse into it a certain truly oracular significance with regard to what was to befall him.  Similar importance was attached to the utterance of Jupiter called Belus, [Footnote:  The same as Baal.] a god revered in Apamea [Footnote:  This is the Apamea on the Orontes, built by Seleucus Nicator.] of Syria.  He, years before, when Severus was still a private citizen, had spoken to him these verses: 

   “Touching eyes and head, like Zeus, whose delight is in thunder,
  Like unto Ares in waist, and in chest resembling Poseidon.”
  [Footnote:  From Homer’s Iliad, II, verses 478-9.]

And later, after his accession as emperor, the god had made this response to an enquiry:  “Thy house shall perish utterly in blood.” [Footnote:  Adapted from Euripides, Phoenician Maidens, verse 20.]

[Sidenote:—­9—­] [Accordingly the body of Antoninus was then burned, and his bones, brought secretly by night into Rome, were deposited in the mausoleum of the Antonines.  All the senators and private individuals, men and women, without exception entertained so violent a hatred of him that all their words and actions relating to him were such as would befit the downfall of a most implacable foe.  He was not officially disgraced, because the soldiers did not get from Macrinus the state of peace which they had hoped to secure by a change.  Deprived of the profits which they were wont to receive from Antoninus, they began to long for him again.  Indeed, their wishes subsequently prevailed to the extent of having him enrolled among the heroes:  of course this was voted by the senate.]