regardless of the fact that he was most inexperienced in military matters.  Of such surpassing importance is good fortune in comparison with other qualifications, that it actually bestows understanding upon the ignorant.] But his army made a very weak fight and the men would not have stood their ground, had not Maesa and Soaemias [for they were already in the boy’s retinue] leaped down from their vehicles and, rushing among the fugitives, by their lamentations restrained them from flight, and had not the lad himself been seen by them (by some divine disposition of affairs) with drawn sword on horseback charging the enemy.  Even so they would have turned their backs again, had not Macrinus fled at sight of their resistance.

[Sidenote:—­39—­] The latter, having been thus defeated on the eighth of June, sent his son in charge of Epagathus and some other attendants, to Artabanus, king of the Parthians.  He himself went to Antioch, giving out that victory was his, to the end that he might be offered shelter there.  Then, when the news of his defeat became noised abroad, in the midst of many consequent slaughters both along the roads and in the city, springing from somebody’s favoring the one side or the other, he made his escape.  From Antioch he proceeded by night, on horseback, with his head and whole chin shaved, and attired in a dark garment worn over his purple robe in order that he might, so far as possible, resemble an ordinary citizen.  In this way, with a few companions, he reached AEgae in Cilicia, and there, by pretending to be one of the soldiers that carried messages, he got a wagon, on which he drove through Cappadocia and Galatia and Bithynia as far as the shipyard of Eribolus, which is opposite the city of Nicomedea.  It was his intention to make his way back to Rome, expecting that there he could gain some assistance from the senate and from the people.  And, if he had escaped thither, he would certainly have accomplished something.  For their disposition was decidedly more favorable to him, in view of the hardihood of the Syrians, the age of the False Antoninus, and the uncontrolledness of Gannys and Comazon, so that even the soldiers would either voluntarily [Footnote:  Reading [Greek:  ‘hechhontast’] instead of [Greek:  thnheschontast].] have changed their attitude or, refusing to do so, would have been overpowered.  As it turned out, however, if any one recognized him in the course of his journey so far described, at least no one ventured to lay hands on him:  but he came to grief on his voyage from Eribolus to Chalcedon.  He did not dare to enter Nicomedea [through fear of the governor of Bithynia, Caecilius Aristo], and so he sent to one of the procurators asking for money, and in this way he became known.  He was overtaken [while still] in Chalcedon and, on the arrival of those sent by the False Antoninus in order that [lacuna] now if ever [lacuna] he was arrested [by Aurelius Celsus, a centurion,] and taken to Cappadocia [like