died.

[Sidenote: A.D. 214 (_a.u._ 967)] Next, Antoninus arrived in Thrace,
paying no further heed to Dacia. Having crossed the Hellespont, not
without danger, he did honor to Achilles with sacrifices and races, in
armor, about the tomb, in which he as well as the soldiers participated.
For this he gave them money, assuring them that they had won a great
success and had in very truth captured that famous Ilium of old, and he
set up a bronze statue of Achilles himself.] ¶Antoninus by arriving at
Pergamum, while there was some dispute about it, [Footnote: The sense of
these words is not clear. Boissevain conjectures that there may have
been some who doubted whether an emperor so diseased would ever live to
reach Mysia.] seemed to bring to fulfillment the following verse,
according to some oracle:

"O'er the Telephian land shall prowl the Ausonian beast."

He took a lasting delight and pride in the fact that he was called
"beast," and his victims fell in heaps. The man who had composed the
verse used to laugh and say that he was in very truth himself the
verse-maker (thereby indicating that no one may die contrary to the will
of fate, but that the common saying is true, which declares that liars
and deceivers are never believed, even if they tell the truth).

[Sidenote:--17--] He held court but little or not at all. Most of his
leisure he devoted to meddlesomeness as much as anything. People from
all quarters brought him word of all the most insignificant occurrences.
For this reason he gave orders that the soldiers who kept their eyes and
ears wide open for these details should be liable to punishment by no
one save himself. This enactment, too, produced no good result, but we