[Footnote 95:  67. 16.]

[Footnote 96:  N.H., 7. 52. 174.]

[Footnote 97:  Vagina.]

[Footnote 98:  Human Personality, ii. 383.]

[Footnote 99:  Phlegon of Tralles, De Rebus Mirabilibus, ad fin.]

[Footnote 100:  Rhein.  Mus., vol. xxxii., p. 329.]

[Footnote 101:  Mai, Script.  Vet.  Nov.  Coll., ii. 671.]

[Footnote 102:  London, 1616.]

[Footnote 103:  [Greek:  errho]]

VII

WARNING APPARITIONS

As we should expect, there are a number of instances of warning apparitions in antiquity; and it is interesting to note that the majority of these are gigantic women endowed with a gift of prophecy.

Thus the younger Pliny[104] tells us how Quintus Curtius Rufus, who was on the staff of the Governor of Africa, was walking one day in a colonnade after sunset, when a gigantic woman appeared before him.  She announced that she was Africa, and was able to predict the future, and told him that he would go to Rome, hold office there, return to the province with the highest authority, and there die.  Her prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, and as he landed in Africa for the last time the same figure is reported to have met him.

So, again, at the time of the conspiracy of Callippus, Dion was meditating one evening before the porch of his house, when he turned round and saw a gigantic female figure, in the form of a Fury, at the end of the corridor, sweeping the floor with a broom.  The vision terrified him, and soon afterwards his only son committed suicide and he himself was murdered by the conspirators.[105]

A similar dramatic story is related of Drusus during his German campaigns.[106] While engaged in operations against the Alemanni, he was preparing to cross the Elbe, when a gigantic woman barred the way, exclaiming, “Insatiate Drusus, whither wilt thou go?  Thou art not fated to see all things.  Depart hence, for the end of thy life and of thy deeds is at hand.”  Drusus was much troubled by this warning, and instantly obeyed the words of the apparition; but he died before reaching the Rhine.

We meet with the same phenomenon again in Dio Cassius, among the prodigies preceding the death of Macrinus, when “a dreadful gigantic woman, seen of several, declared that all that had happened was as nothing compared with what they were soon to endure”—­a prophecy which was amply fulfilled by the reign of Heliogabalus.

But the most gigantic of all these gigantic women was, as we should only expect from his marvellous power of seeing ghosts, the one who appeared to Eucrates in the Philopseudus.[107] Eucrates has seen over a thousand ghosts in his time, and is now quite used to them, though at first he found them rather upsetting; but he had been given a ring and a charm by an Arab, which enabled him to deal with anything