Whenever Tiberius consulted an astrologer he placed him in the highest part of his palace, and employed for his purpose an ignorant and powerful freedman, who brought by difficult paths, bounded by precipices, the astrologer whose science his Majesty wished to prove. On the return journey, if the astrologer was suspected of indiscretion or treachery, the freedman threw him into the sea, to bury the secret. Thrasyllus having been brought by the same route across these precipices, struck Tiberius with awe while he questioned him, by showing him his sovereign power, and easily disclosing the things of the future. Caesar asked him if he had taken his own horoscope, and with what signs were marked that day and hour for himself. Thrasyllus then examined the position and the distance of the stars; he hesitated at first, then he grew pale; then he looked again, and finally, trembling with astonishment and fear, he cried out that the moment was perilous, and he was very near his last hour. Tiberius then embraced him and congratulated him on having escaped a danger by foreseeing it; and accepting henceforth all his predictions as oracles, he admitted him to the number of his intimate friends. Tiberius had a great number of people put to death who were accused of having taken their horoscope to know what honours were in store for them, although in secret he took the horoscopes of great people, that he might ascertain that he had no rivalry to fear from them. Septimus Severus was very nearly paying with his head for one of those superstitious curiosities that brought the ambitious of the time to the astrologer. In prosperous times he had gained faith in their predictions, and consulted them about important acts. Having lost his wife, and wishing to contract a second marriage, he took the horoscopes of the well-connected ladies who were at the time open to marriage. None of their fortunes, taken by the rules of astrology, were encouraging. He learnt at last that there was living in Syria a young woman to whom the Chaldaeans had predicted that she should be the wife of a king. Severus was as yet but a legate. He hastened to demand her in marriage, and he obtained her; Julia was the name of the woman who was born under so happy a star; but was he the crowned husband which the stars had promised to the young Syrian? This reflection soon began to perplex Severus, and to get out of his perplexity he went to Sicily to consult an astrologer of renown. The matter came to the ears of the Emperor Commodus; and judge of his anger! The anger of Commodus was rage and frenzy; but the event soon gave the response that Severus was seeking in Sicily,--Commodus was strangled. Divination which had the emperor for its object at last came to be a crime of high treason. The rigorous measures resorted to against the indiscreet curiosity of ambition took more terrible proportions under the Christian emperors.