to the Capitoline Venus; and next
night, he dreamt that Fortune appeared to him, complaining that she had
been defrauded of the present intended her, and threatening to resume
what she had given him. Terrified at this denunciation, at break of day
he sent forward some persons to Tusculum, to make preparations for a
sacrifice which might avert the displeasure of the goddess; and when he
himself arrived at the place, he found nothing but some hot embers upon
the altar, and an old man in black standing by, holding a little incense
in a glass, and some wine in an earthern pot. It was remarked, too, that
whilst he was sacrificing upon the calends of January, the chaplet fell
from his head, and upon his consulting the pullets for omens, they flew
away. Farther, upon the day of his adopting Piso, when he was to
harangue the soldiers, the seat which he used upon those occasions,
through the neglect of his attendants, was not placed, according to
custom, upon his tribunal; and in the senate-house, his curule chair was
set with the back forward.

XIX. The day before he was slain, as he was sacrificing in the morning,
the augur warned him from time to time to be upon his guard, for that he
was in danger from assassins, and that they were near at hand. Soon
after, he was informed, that Otho was in possession of the pretorian
camp. And though most of his friends advised him to repair thither
immediately, (413) in hopes that he might quell the tumult by his
authority and presence, he resolved to do nothing more than keep close
within the palace, and secure himself by guards of the legionary
soldiers, who were quartered in different parts about the city. He put
on a linen coat of mail, however, remarking at the same time, that it
would avail him little against the points of so many swords. But being
tempted out by false reports, which the conspirators had purposely spread
to induce him to venture abroad--some few of those about him too hastily
assuring him that the tumult had ceased, the mutineers were apprehended,
and the rest coming to congratulate him, resolved to continue firm in
their obedience--he went forward to meet them with so much confidence,
that upon a soldier's boasting that he had killed Otho, he asked him, "By
what authority?" and proceeded as far as the Forum. There the knights,
appointed to dispatch him, making their way through the crowd of
citizens, upon seeing him at a distance, halted a while; after whic