THE SCENE: The “omens” that predicted Severus’ eventual rise to emperor could be easily confused with basic dinner table anecdotes.
THE TEXT: On his arrival at Rome he chanced upon an innkeeper who was reading the Life of the emperor Hadrian at that time. This he seized upon as an omen of future good fortune. He also had another omen that he was to be emperor. When invited to an imperial banquet he had come wearing a Greek mantle instead of the toga he should have worn, and he was given the emperor’s own official toga to put on. The same night he dreamed he was sucking the teats of a she-wolf, like Remus or Romulus. Further, he sat in the imperial chair, which had been put in the wrong place by an attendant, being unaware that it was not permitted. Another time, when he was sleeping in a tavern, a snake wound itself round his head, and when his friends were alarmed and shouted out, the creature went away without harming him.
– The Augustan History, Aurelius Spartianus, 4th Century AD
