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"During the battle," continues Xiphilinus, "the chief of the Pretonians, had set at Marcus Antoninus, who was in great perplexity at the turn events were taking, representing to him that there was nothing the people called Christians could not obtain by their prayers, and that among his forces was a troop composed wholly of followers of that religion.

He gives a better account of Galba and Vitellius than Suetonius; of Vitellius and Nero than the abbreviator of Cassius Dio, Xiphilinus, of Otho than Juvenal; and of Vinius than Plutarch.

But no such savor of scepticism attaches to a narrative which Dion Cassius gives us of an incident in the life of Marcus Aurelius an incident that has become famous as the episode of The Thundering Legion. Xiphilinus has preserved the account of Dion, adding certain picturesque interpretations of his own.

We may well question whether the philosophical emperor himself put any other interpretation than this upon the incident. But, on the other hand, we need not doubt that the major part of his soldiers would very readily accept such an explanation as that given by Dion Cassius, just as most readers of a few centuries later would accept the explanation of Xiphilinus.

We shall perhaps best understand this period, and its seeming retrogressions, if we suppose that the average man of the Middle Ages was no more credulous, no more superstitious, than the average Roman of an earlier period or than the average Greek; though the precise complexion of his credulity had changed under the influence of Oriental ideas, as we have just seen illustrated by the narrative of Xiphilinus.

Here, it will be observed, a supernatural explanation is given of a natural phenomenon. But the narrator does not stop with this. If we are to accept the account of Xiphilinus, Dion brings forward some striking proofs of divine interference.

Xiphilinus gives these proofs in the following remarkable paragraph: "Dion adds that when the rain began to fall every soldier lifted his head towards heaven to receive the water in his mouth; but afterwards others hold out their shields or their helmets to catch the water for themselves and for their horses.

Some barbarians inflicted wounds upon themselves as though their blood had power to extinguish flames, while many rushed over to the side of the Romans, hoping that there water might save them." We cannot better complete these illustrations of pagan credulity than by adding the comment of Xiphilinus himself. That writer was a Christian, living some generations later than Dion.

Xiphilinus paints the wife of Vitellius as wickedly dissolute; Tacitus as a respectable woman of whom the State had no complaint to make in her misfortune.