immediately took a bath with him, and, finding his guest when stripped to correspond to the report of him, burned with even greater lust, reposed upon his breast, and took dinner, like some loved mistress, in his bosom.  Hierocles began to fear that Zoticus would bring the emperor into a greater state of subjection than he himself was able to effect, and that he might suffer some terrible fate at his hands, as often happens in the case of rival lovers.  Therefore he had the wine-bearers, who were well-disposed to him, administer some drug that abated the visitor’s ferocity.  And so Zoticus after a whole night of embarrassment, being unable to secure an erection, was deprived of all that he had obtained, and was driven out of the palace, out of Rome, and later out of the remainder of Italy; and this saved his life. [However, the emperor drove himself to such a frenzy of lewdness that he asked the physicians to contrive a woman’s vagina in his person by means of an incision, and held out to them the hope of great pay for this achievement.]

[Sidenote:—­17—­] Sardanapalus himself was destined not much later to receive his well-deserved pay for his own defilement.  For his acting in this way and for making himself the object of these actions he became hated by the populace and by the soldiers to whom he was most attached, and at last he was slain by them in the very camp.

¶The False Antoninus was despised and put out of the way by the soldiers.  When any persons, particularly if armed, have accustomed themselves to feel contempt for their rulers, they set no limits on their right to do what they please but keep their arms ready to use even against the very man who gave them whatever rights they possess.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 221 (a.u. 974)] This is how it happened.  He introduced his cousin Bassianus before the senate, and, having stationed Maesa and Soaemias on either hand, adopted him as his child.  Then did he congratulate himself on being suddenly the father of so large a child (as if he surpassed him in age) and declared that he needed no other offspring to keep his house free from despondency.

Elagabalus, he said, had ordered him to do this and further to call his son’s name Alexander.  And I for my part am persuaded that it came about in very truth by some divine intention, and I base my inference not upon what he said but upon what was said to him by some one, viz., that an Alexander would come from Emesa to succeed him, and again on what took place in upper Moesia and in Thrace. [Sidenote:—­18—­] A little before this a spirit, declaring that he was the famous Alexander of Macedon, wearing his appearance and all his apparatus, started from the regions near the Ister, appearing there in I know not what way.  It traversed Thrace and Asia, reveling in company with four hundred male attendants, who were equipped with thyrsi and fawn-skins and did no harm.  The fact was admitted by all those who lived in Thrace