was adhered to through the whole of his life,
occasioned in some persons a belief in a notion which generally
prevailed, whether designedly or undesignedly propagated, that he was
a man of divine extraction; and revived a report equally absurd and
fabulous with that formerly spread respecting Alexander the Great,
that he was begotten by a huge serpent, whose monstrous form was
frequently observed in the bedchamber of his mother, but which, on any
one's coming in, suddenly unfolding his coils, glided out of sight.
The belief in these miraculous accounts was never ridiculed by him,
but rather increased by his address; neither positively denying any
such thing nor openly affirming it. There were also many other things,
some real and others counterfeit, which exceeded in the case of this
young man the usual measure of human admiration, in reliance on which
the state intrusted him with an affair of so much difficulty, and with
so important a command, at an age by no means ripe for it. To the
forces in Spain, consisting of the remains of the old army, and those
which had been conveyed over from Puteoli by Claudius Nero, ten
thousand infantry and a thousand horse were added; and Marcus Junius
Silanus, the propraetor, was sent to assist in the management of
affairs. Thus with a fleet of thirty ships, all of which were
quinqueremes, he set sail from the mouth of the Tiber, and coasting
along the shore of the Tuscan Sea, the Alps, and the Gallic Gulf, and
then doubling the promontory of the Pyrenees, landed his troops at
Emporiae, a Greek city, which also derived its origin from Phocaea.
Ordering his ships to attend him, he marched by land to Tarraco; where
he held a congress of deputies from all the allies; for embassies had
poured forth from every province on the news of his arrival. Here he
ordered his ships to be hauled on shore, having sent back the four
triremes of the Massilians which had, in compliment to him, attended
him from their home. After that, he began to give answers to the
embassies of the several states, which had been in suspense on account
of the many vicissitudes of the war; and this with so great dignity,
arising from the great confidence he had in his own talents, that no
presumptuous expression ever escaped him; and in every thing he said
there appeared at once the greatest majesty and sincerity.

20. Setting out from Tarraco, he visited the states of his allies and
the winter quarters of his army; and be