Soon after this, there being a general tranquillity, he ordered a few Germani of his guard to be carried over and concealed on the other side of the Rhine, and word to be brought him after dinner, in a great hurry, that an enemy was advancing. This being accordingly done, he immediately posted away with his friends, and a party of the horse-guards, into the adjoining wood, where lopping the branches of some trees, and dressing them up in the manner of trophies, he returned by torchlight, upbraiding those who did not follow him, with timorousness and cowardice; but presented the companions and sharers of his victory with a new kind of crown, and under a new name, with the representation of the sun, moon, and stars upon them, which he called exploratoriæ. Again, some hostages were by his order taken out of a school, and privately sent off; upon notice of which he immediately rose from table, pursued them with the horse, as if they had run away, and coming up with them, brought them back in chains; proceeding to an extravagant pitch of ostentation likewise in this military comedy. Upon again sitting down to table, when some came to acquaint him that the army was all come in, he ordered them to sit down as they were in their coats of mail, animating them in the words of a well-known verse of Virgil. In the meantime, he reprimanded the senate and people of Rome by a very severe proclamation, “for revelling and frequenting the diversions of the circus and theatre, and enjoying themselves in their country-houses, whilst their emperor was fighting, and exposing his person to the greatest dangers.” At last, as if resolved to make an end of the war at once, drawing up his army upon the shore of the ocean, with his ballistæ and other engines of war, whilst nobody could imagine what he intended to do, on a sudden he commanded them to gather up the sea shells, and fill their helmets, and the laps of their coats with them, calling them, “the spoils of the ocean due to the Capitol and the Palatine.” As a monument of his success, he raised a high tower, upon which he ordered lights to be put in the night-time, for the direction of ships at sea; and then promising the soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii a man, as if he had surpassed the most eminent examples of generosity, “Go your ways,” said he, “and be merry; go and be rich.”