in honour of
Apollo, when the rest of the matrons retired home, fell asleep on her
couch in the temple, and that a serpent immediately crept to her, and
soon after withdrew. She awaking upon it, purified herself, as usual
after the embraces of her husband; and instantly there appeared upon her
body a mark in the form of a serpent, which she never after could efface,
and which obliged her, during the subsequent part of her life, to decline
the use of the public baths. Augustus, it was added, was born in the
tenth month after, and for that reason was thought to be the son of
Apollo. The (139) same Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her
bowels stretched to the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of
heaven and earth. His father Octavius, likewise, dreamt that a sun-beam
issued from his wife's womb.

Upon the day he was born, the senate being engaged in a debate on
Catiline's conspiracy, and Octavius, in consequence of his wife's being
in childbirth, coming late into the house, it is a well-known fact, that
Publius Nigidius, upon hearing the occasion of his coming so late, and
the hour of his wife's delivery, declared that the world had got a
master. Afterwards, when Octavius, upon marching with his army through
the deserts of Thrace, consulted the oracle in the grove of father
Bacchus, with barbarous rites, concerning his son, he received from the
priests an answer to the same purpose; because, when they poured wine
upon the altar, there burst out so prodigious a flame, that it ascended
above the roof of the temple, and reached up to the heavens; a
circumstance which had never happened to any one but Alexander the Great,
upon his sacrificing at the same altars. And next night he dreamt that
he saw his son under a more than human appearance, with thunder and a
sceptre, and the other insignia of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, having on
his head a radiant crown, mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel, and
drawn by six pair of milk-white horses.

Whilst he was yet an infant, as Caius Drusus relates, being laid in his
cradle by his nurse, and in a low place, the next day he was not to be
found, and after he had been sought for a long time, he was at last
discovered upon a lofty tower, lying with his face towards the rising sun
[249]. When he first began to speak, he ordered the frogs that happened
to make a troublesome noise, upon an estate belonging to the family near
the town, to be silent; and there goe