n he perished, he casually encountered on this verse, said of
Patroclus in the Sixteenth of the Iliads--

Alla me moir oloe, kai Letous ektanen uios.

Fate, and Latona's son have shot me dead.

And accordingly Apollo was the field-word in the dreadful day of that
fight. Divers notable things of old have likewise been foretold and known
by casting of Virgilian lots; yea, in matters of no less importance than
the obtaining of the Roman empire, as it happened to Alexander Severus,
who, trying his fortune at the said kind of lottery, did hit upon this
verse written in the Sixth of the Aeneids--

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.

Know, Roman, that thy business is to reign.

He, within very few years thereafter, was effectually and in good earnest
created and installed Roman emperor. A semblable story thereto is related
of Adrian, who, being hugely perplexed within himself out of a longing
humour to know in what account he was with the Emperor Trajan, and how
large the measure of that affection was which he did bear unto him, had
recourse, after the manner above specified, to the Maronian lottery, which
by haphazard tendered him these lines out of the Sixth of the Aeneids--

Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae
Sacra ferens? Nosco crines incanaque menta
Regis Romani.

But who is he, conspicuous from afar,
With olive boughs, that doth his offerings bear?
By the white hair and beard I know him plain,
The Roman king.

Shortly thereafter was he adopted by Trajan, and succeeded to him in the
empire. Moreover, to the lot of the praiseworthy Emperor Claudius befell
this line of Virgil, written in the Sixth of his Aeneids--

Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas.

Whilst the third summer saw him reign, a king
In Latium.

And in effect he did not reign above two years. To the said Claudian also,
inquiring concerning his brother Quintilius, whom he proposed as a
colleague with himself in the empire, happened the response following in
the Sixth of the Aeneids--

Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.

Whom Fate let us see,
And would no longer suffer him to be.

And it so fell out; for he was killed on the seventeenth day after he had
attained unto the management of the imperial charge. The very same lot,
also, with the like misluck, did betide the Emperor Gordian the younger.
To Claudius Albinus, being very solicitous to understand somewhat of his
future