"It is a valiant, obedient body. It has killed three of its Imperators. As for its courage and fearlessness, it is peerless in those qualities, for it retreated from the banks of the Tigris without having seen an enemy. When I tell you that I myself was the greatest hero among them, you can judge of the rest."
"And your news of victories?"
"Were two-thirds inventions. Although we sometimes gained one, we owed it to our superior numbers; but the army must now be greatly reduced by desertion and disease."
This sycophantic nation liked nothing better than to hear the soldiers slandered, and therefore Manlius even slandered himself.
When Diocletian's army approached so close, however, that there could no longer be any doubt as to the danger, the imperial generals urgently pressed the Imperator to prepare for war, and Carinus gathered his troops from the European provinces.
Suddenly the rumour spread that Carinus would command his army in person. He could be seen at two military exercises, the reviews of the troops. Manlius was always at his side, constantly stimulating his vanity or his jealousy by entreating him not to leave the victories to his leaders or commit the course of the campaign to their knowledge and prudence.
"The victorious general is a new foe," Manlius was in the habit of saying, and the Imperator assumed the chief command of the assembled forces, and produced no bad effect mounted on his grey charger and clad in a suit of gold armour, with a purple striped violet mantle floating around his shoulders.
On the day before the departure of the army, the leaders went to all the temples in turn, offering sacrifices everywhere, even on the altars of the Egyptian gods. Manlius assisted in bringing the animals selected for victims to the haruspex.
The populace listened in solemn devotion to the augur's words.
Quaterquartus extended his arms and, with closed eyes, said, in deep tones: