Res Gestae

And sometimes it happened that if the head of a household, in the seclusion of his private apartments, with no confidential servant present, had whispered something in the ear of his wife, the emperor learned it on the following day, as if it were reported by Amphiaraus or Marcius, those famous seers of old.[*](Amphiaraüs was a famous seer of the heroic age, who took part in the hunt of the Calydonian boar, the expedition of the Argonauts, and unwillingly, because he saw the outcome, in the war of the Seven against Thebes, in which he lost his life. The prophecies of Marcius, or as some say, of two brothers of that name, were discovered in 213; B.C. According to Livy, xxv. 12, 5, they foretold the defeat at Cannae. Cf. also Pausanias, I. 34. 4 ff. and II. 13. 7. At a later time these prophetic writings were preserved on the Capitol at Rome with the Sibylline books.) And so even the walls, the only sharers of secrets, were feared.

Moreover, his fixed purpose of ferreting out these and many similar things increased, spurred on by the queen, who pushed her husband’s fortunes headlong to sheer ruin, when she ought rather, with womanly gentleness, to have recalled him by helpful counsel to the path of truth and mercy, after the manner of the wife[*](Her name is unknown; she was perhaps the diva Paulina whose name appears on a silver coin of the period.) of that savage emperor Maximinus, as we have related in our account of the acts of the Gordians.