Some other person, after the death of Commodus, dared to assert that _he_ was Sextus and to undertake the recovery of his wealth and dignities. And he played the part well while many persons asked him numbers of questions: when, however, Pertinax enquired of him something about Grecian affairs, with which the real Sextus had been well acquainted, he suffered the greatest embarrassment, not being able even to understand what was said. [So it was that nature had made him like Condianus in form and practice like him in other ways, but he did not share in his education.] [Sidenote:--7--] This matter came to my own ears, and another thing that I saw I shall now describe. There is in the city of Mallus, in Cilicia, an oracle of Amphilochus, that gives responses by means of dreams. It had given warning also to Sextus, in a way that he indicated by a drawing. The picture that he put on a board represented a boy strangling two serpents and a lion pursuing a fawn. I was with my father, then governor of Cilicia, and could not comprehend what they meant until I learned that Sextus's brothers had been, as it were, strangled by Commodus (who later emulated Hercules), just as Hercules, when an infant, is related to have strangled the serpents sent against him by Juno: similarly, the Quintilii were hanged; I learned also that Sextus was a fugitive and was being pursued by a more powerful adversary. I should render my narrative unduly irksome, were I to set down carefully every single man put to death by this ruler,--all that he despatched because of false information, because of unjustified suspicions, because of notable wealth, because of distinguished family, because of unusual education, or for any other excellence. [Commodus displayed in Rome itself many marks of wealth and very many more, even, of love for the beautiful. Indeed, he performed one or two acts of public benefit. Manilius, a kinsman of Cassius, who had been secretary of his Latin letters and had possessed the greatest influence with him, was caught after a flight, but the emperor would not listen to a word of his, though he promised to lay a great deal of information, and burned all the conspirator's documents without reading them.]