Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
[Sidenote:--3--] The signs which led him to expect the sovereignty were
these. When he had been registered in the senate-house, it seemed to him
in a vision that a she-wolf suckled him, as was the case with Romulus. On
the occasion of his marrying Julia, Faustina, the wife of Marcus, prepared
their bedchamber in the temple of Venus opposite the palace; and once,
when he was asleep, water gushed from his hand as from a spring; and when
he was governor of Lugdunum, the whole Roman domain approached and greeted
him,--all this in dreams, I mean. At another time he was taken by some one
to a point affording a wide view; and as he gazed from it over all the
earth and all the sea he laid his fingers on them as one might on some
instrument [Footnote: Compare Plato, Republic, 399 C.] capable of all
harmonies, and they answered to his touch. Again, he thought that in the
Roman Forum a horse threw Pertinax, who was already mounted, but readily
took him on its back. These things he had already learned from dreams, but
in his waking hours he had, while a youth, ignorantly seated himself upon
the imperial chair. This accident, taken with the rest, indicated
rulership to him in advance.
[Sidenote:--4--] Upon attaining that condition he erected a heroum to
Pertinax and commanded that his name should be repeated in the course of
all prayers and of all oaths. A gold image of him was ordered brought into
the hippodrome on a car drawn by elephants and three gilded thrones for
him conveyed into the remaining theatres. His funeral, in spite of the
time elapsed since his death, took place as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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