to make terms, but their real purpose was that he should be removed from
their path. He too reflected on this possibility and becoming alarmed
would not venture to expose himself in the camp of Antony. As a result
none of the other envoys set out either.

[-33-] While this was being done portents of no small moment again
occurred, significant for the City, and for the consul Vibius himself.
In the last assembly before they set out for the war a man with the
so-called sacred disease[20] fell down while Vibius was speaking. Also a
bronze statue of him which stood at the porch of his house turned around
of itself on the day and at the hour that he started on the campaign, and
the sacrifices customary before war could not be interpreted by the seers
by reason of the quantity of blood. Likewise a man who was just then
bringing him a palm slipped in the blood which had been shed, fell, and
defiled the palm. These were the portents in his case. Now if they had
befallen him when a private citizen, they would have pertained to him
alone, but since he was consul they had a bearing on all alike. They
included the following incidents: the figure of the Mother of the Gods on
the Palatine formerly facing the east turned around of its own accord
to the west; that of Minerva held in honor near Mutina, where the most
fighting was going on, sent forth after this a quantity of blood and
milk; furthermore the consuls took their departure just before the Feriae
Latinae; and there is no case where this happened that the forces fared
well. So at this time, too, both the consuls and a vast multitude of the
people perished, some immediately and some later, and also many of the
knights and senators, including the most prominent. For in the first
place the battles, and in the second place the assassinations at home
which occurred again as in the Sullan régime, destroyed all the flower of
them except those actually concerned in the murders.