at the danger, but later he had seen a vision in his sleep which caused
him to take courage and made him eager to go on the expedition. For it
seemed in the dream that he was in the house of Belisarius, and one of
the servants entering announced that some men had come bearing gifts;
and Belisarius bade him investigate what sort of gifts they were, and he
went out into the court and saw men who carried on their shoulders earth
with the flowers and all. And he bade him bring these men into the house
and deposit the earth they were carrying in the portico; and Belisarius
together with his guardsmen came there, and he himself reclined on that
earth and ate of the flowers, and urged the others to do likewise; and
as they reclined and ate, as if upon a couch, the food seemed to them
exceedingly sweet. Such, then, was the vision of the dream.

And the whole fleet followed the general's ship, and they put in at
Perinthus, which is now called Heracleia,[40] where five days' time was
spent by the army, since at that place the general received as a present
from the emperor an exceedingly great number of horses from the royal
pastures, which are kept for him in the territory of Thrace. And setting
sail from there, they anchored off Abydus, and it came about as they
were delaying there four days on account of the lack of wind that the
following event took place. Two Massagetae killed one of their comrades
who was ridiculing them, in the midst of their intemperate drinking; for
they were intoxicated. For of all men the Massagetae are the most
intemperate drinkers. Belisarius, accordingly, straightway impaled these
two men on the hill which is near Abydus. And since all, and especially
the relatives of these two men, were angry and declared that it was not
in order to be punished nor to be subject to the laws of the Romans that
they had entered into an alliance (for their own laws did not make the
punishment for murder such _as_ this, they said); and since they were
joined in voicing the accusation against the general even by Roman