invade Italy and march upon Rome, assuring them that it was very easy to
capture. And to prevent any inkling of his talk spreading to our ears he
would immediately put to death the interpreters. For all that, we did
ascertain it later from the barbarians themselves: and the matter of the
poisons we learned from Macrinus.] It seemed that he partly sent for and
partly bought quantities of all kinds of poisons from the inhabitants of
Upper Asia, spending altogether seven hundred and fifty myriads upon
them, in order that he might secretly kill in different ways great
numbers of men,--in fine, whomsoever he would. They were subsequently
discovered in the royal apartments and were all consumed by fire. [At
this time the soldiers, both for this reason and, beyond other
considerations, because they were vexed at having the barbarians
preferred to themselves, were not altogether so enthusiastic over their
leader as of yore and did not aid him when he became the victim of a
plot.] Such was the end that he met after a life of twenty-nine years
[and four days (for he had been born on the fourth of April)], and after
a reign of six years, two months, and two days.

[Sidenote:--7--] There are many things at this point, too, in the story
that occur to excite my surprise. When he was about to start from
Antioch on his last journey, his father confronted him in a vision, girt
with a sword and saying: "As you killed your brother, so will I smite
you unto death;" and the soothsayers told him to beware of that day,
using so direct a form of speech as this: "The gates of the victim's
liver are shut." After this he went out through some door, paying no
heed to the fact that the lion, which he was wont to call "Rapier," and
had for a table companion and bedfellow, knocked him down as he went
out, and, moreover, tore some of his clothing. He kept many other lions
besides and always had some of them around him, but this one he would
often caress even publicly. It was thus that these events occurred.