quainted, 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.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 184 a.u. 937] [Sidenote:--8--] He had also some wars with
the barbarians beyond Dacia, in which Albinus and Niger, who later fought
the emperor Severus, won fame, but the greatest conflict was the one in
Britain. When the tribes in the island, passing beyond the wall that
separated them from the Roman legions, proceeded to commit many outrages
and cut down a general, together with the soldiers that he had, Commodus
was seized with fear and sent Marcellus Ulpius against them. This man, who
was temperate and frugal and always followed strict military r