e to be taken to pieces, that the
soldiers might have no hope of safety by quitting their ranks and
returning.

6. Here also a bad omen was seen; the corpse of an officer who had been
put to death by the executioner, whom Sallust, the prefect, while in
this country had condemned to death, because, after having promised to
deliver an additional supply of provisions by an appointed day, he
disappointed him through some hindrance. But after the unhappy man had
been executed, the very next day there arrived, as he had promised,
another fleet heavily laden with corn.

7. Leaving Circesium, we came to Zaitha, the name of the place meaning
an olive-tree. Here we saw the tomb of the emperor Gordian, which is
visible a long way off, whose actions from his earliest youth, and whose
most fortunate campaigns and treacherous murder we related at the proper
time,[138] and when, in accordance with his innate piety he had offered
due honours to this deified emperor and was on his way to Dura, a town
now deserted, he stood without moving on beholding a large body of
soldiers.

8. And as he was doubting what their object was, they brought him an
enormous lion which had attacked their ranks and had been slain by their
javelins. He, elated at this circumstance, which he looked on as an omen
of success in his enterprise, advanced with increased exultation; but so
uncertain is fortune, the event was quite contrary to his expectation.
The death of a king was certainly foreshown, but who was the king was
uncertain.

9. For we often read of ambiguous oracles, never understood till the
results interpreted them; as, for instance, the Delphic prophecy, which
foretold that after crossing the Halys, Croesus would overthrow a
mighty kingdom; and another, which by hints pointed out the sea to the
Athenians as the field of combat against the Medes; and another; later
than these, but not less ambiguous:--

"O son of AEacus,
I say that you the Romans can subdue."

10. The Etrurian soothsayers who accompanied him, being men skilful in
portents, had often warned him against this campaign, but got no credit;
so now they produced their books of such signs, and showed that this was
an omen of a forbidding character, and unfavourable to a prince who
should invade the country of another sovereign however justly.

11. But he spurned the opposition of philosophers, whose authority he
ought to have reverenced, though at times they we