n tragedies; there
was still daylight, and she began to sweep the house. Dion, quite
alarmed, sent to beg his friends to come and see him, and stay with
him all night; but this woman appeared no more. A short time
afterwards, his son threw himself down from the top of the house, and
he himself was assassinated by conspirators.

Marcus Brutus, one of the murderers of Julius Caesar, being in his tent
during a night which was not very dark, towards the third hour of the
night, beheld a monstrous and terrific figure enter. "Who art thou? a
man or a God? and why comest thou here?" The spectre answered, "I am
thine evil genius. Thou shalt see me at Philippi!" Brutus replied
undauntedly, "I will meet thee there." And on going out, he went and
related the circumstance to Cassius, who being of the sect of
Epicurus, and a disbeliever in that kind of apparition, told him that
it was mere imagination; that there were no genii or other kind of
spirits which could appear unto men, and that even did they appear,
they would have neither the human form nor the human voice, and could
do nothing to harm us. Although Brutus was a little reassured by this
reasoning, still it did not remove all his uneasiness.

But the same Cassius, in the campaign of Philippi, and in the midst of
the combat, saw Julius Caesar, whom he had assassinated, who came up to
him at full gallop: which frightened him so much that at last he threw
himself upon his own sword. Cassius of Parma, a different person from
him of whom we have spoken above, saw an evil genius, who came into
his tent, and declared to him his approaching death.

Drusus, when making war on the Germans (Allemani) during the time of
Augustus, desiring to cross the Elbe, in order to penetrate farther
into the country, was prevented from so doing by a woman of taller
stature than common, who appeared to him and said, "Drusus, whither
wilt thou go? wilt thou never be satisfied? Thy end is near--go back
from hence." He retraced his steps, and died before he reached the
Rhine, which he desired to recross.

St. Gregory of Nicea, in the Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, says
that, during a great plague which ravaged the city of Neocesarea,
spectres were seen in open day, who entered houses, into which they
carried certain death.

After the famous sedition which happened at Antioch, in the time of
the Emperor Theodosius, they beheld a kind of fury running about the
town, with a whip, which she lashe