DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 69 to govern in Dalmatia, and from there into Upper Pannonia. After that I came back to Rome and on reaching Campania at once set out for home." Then, after narrating the murder of Ulpian, the famous jurist, by the Praetorian Guards of whom he was prefect, and the Persian conquest of the Parthian Kingdom and subsequent war upon Rome, Dio continues: "The troops are so distinguished by wantonness and arrogance and freedom from reproof that those in Mesopotamia dared to kill their commander. . . . And the praetorians found fault with me before Ulpian because I ruled the soldiers in Pannonia with a strong hand ; and they demanded my surrender for fear that some one might compel them to submit to a regime similar to that of the Pannonian troops. Alexander, however, paid no attention to them, but promoted me in various ways, appointing me to be consul for the second time as his colleague, and taking upon himself personally the responsibility of meeting the expenditures of my office. As the malcontents evinced displeasure at this, he became afraid that they might kill me, if they saw me in the insignia of my office, and he bade me spend the period of my consulship in Italy somewhere outside of Rome. Later, however, I came both to Rome and to Campania to visit him. After spending a few days in his company, during which the soldiers saw me without offering to do me 'any harm, I started for home, being released on account of the trouble with my feet. So I expect to spend all the rest of my life in my own country, as the Divine Presence revealed to me most clearly at the time I was in Bithynia. Once in a dream there I thought I saw myself commanded by It to write at the close of my work the following verses: — I ' Hector was led of Zeus far out of the range of the missiles, Out of the dust and the slaying of men, out of blood and of uproar.' " We meet the same attitude a century later in another work by a man of senatorial rank, but this time by Julius Firmicus Maternus, a pleader in the law courts rather than a commander of the legions. But as Dio Cassius wrote a history to divert his mind from its other cares, so Firmicus aternus composed an astrological work for his friend Ma
