ventured to attack them united. So when they fell into factional
disputes he easily subdued them.

[Sidenote:--5--] Now it was in Marcus's war against the Germans (if
mention ought to be made of these matters), that a captive lad on being
asked some questions by him rejoined: "I can not answer you because of the
cold. So if you want to find out anything, command that a coat be given
me, if you have one."--And a soldier one night, who was doing guard duty
on the Ister, hearing a shout of his fellow-soldiers in captivity on the
other side, at once swam the stream just as he was, released them, and
brought them back.

One prefect of Marcus's was Bassaeus Rufus, a good man on the whole, but
uneducated and boorish, having been brought up in poverty in his early
youth. [Wherefore he had been disinclined to go on the campaign, and what
Marcus said was incomprehensible to him.] Once some one had interrupted
him in the midst of trimming a vine that wound about a tree, and when he
did not come down at the first bidding, the person rebuked him, and said:
"Come down there, prefect." This he said thinking to humiliate him for his
previous haughtiness; yet later Fortune gave him this title to wear.

[Sidenote:--6--] The emperor, as often as he had leisure from war, held
court and used to order that a most liberal supply of water be measured
out for the speakers. [Footnote: This refers to the contrivance known as
the clepsydra or water-clock, which measured time by the slow dropping of
water from an upper into a lower vessel, somewhat on the plan of the
hour-glass.] He made inquiries and answers of greater length, so that
exact justice was ensured by every possible expedient. When thus engaged
he would often hold court to try the same case for eleven or even twelve
days and sometimes [Sidenote: A.D. 172 (a.u. 926)] at night. He was
industrious and applied himself diligently to all the duties of his
office; and there was nothing which he said or wrote or did that he
regarded a minor matter, but sometimes he would consume whole days on the
finest point, putting into practice his belief that the emperor should do
nothing hurriedly. For he thought that if he should slight even the
smallest detail, it would bring him reproach that would overshadow all his
other achievements. Yet he was so frail in body that at first he could not
endure the cold, but when the soldiers had already come together in
obedience to orders he would retire before