his servants he dismissed to the interior apartments, and for himself applied his soul, eyes, and hand to composition, that his mind might not, from want of occupation, picture to itself the phantoms of which he had heard, or any empty terrors.  At the commencement there was the universal silence of night.  Soon the shaking of irons and the clanking of chains was heard, yet he never raised his eyes nor slackened his pen, but hardened his soul and deadened his ears by its help.  The noise grew and approached:  now it seemed to be heard at the door, and next inside the door.  He looked round, beheld and recognized the figure he had been told of.  It was standing and signaling to him with its finger, as though inviting him.  He, in reply, made a sign with his hand that it should wait a moment, and applied himself afresh to his tablets and pen.  Upon this the figure kept rattling its chains over his head as he wrote.  On looking round again, he saw it making the same signal as before, and without delay took up a light and followed it.  It moved with a slow step, as though oppressed by its chains, and, after turning into the courtyard of the house, vanished suddenly and left his company.  On being thus left to himself, he marked the spot with some grass and leaves which he plucked.  Next day he applied to the magistrates, and urged them to have the spot in question dug up.  There were found there some bones attached to and intermingled with fetters; the body to which they had belonged, rotted away by time and the soil, had abandoned them thus naked and corroded to the chains.  They were collected and interred at the public expense, and the house was ever afterwards free from the spirit, which had obtained due sepulture.

The above story I believe on the strength of those who affirm it.  What follows I am myself in a position to affirm to others.  I have a freedman, who is not without some knowledge of letters.  A younger brother of his was sleeping with him in the same bed.  The latter dreamed he saw some one sitting on the couch, who approached a pair of scissors to his head, and even cut the hair from the crown of it.  When day dawned he was found to be cropped round the crown, and his locks were discovered lying about.  A very short time afterwards a fresh occurrence of the same kind confirmed the truth of the former one.  A lad of mine was sleeping, in company with several others, in the pages’ apartment.  There came through the windows (so he tells the story) two figures in white tunics, who cut his hair as he lay, and departed the way they came.  In his case, too, daylight exhibited him shorn, and his locks scattered around.  Nothing remarkable followed, except, perhaps, this, that I was not brought under accusation, as I should have been, if Domitian (in whose reign these events happened) had lived longer.  For in his desk was found an information against me which had been presented by Carus; from which circumstance it may be conjectured—­inasmuch as it is the custom of accused persons to let their hair grow—­that the cutting off of my slaves’ hair was a sign of the danger which threatened me being averted.