Each was well authenticated and surpassed its predecessor in significance.
Here one of Iras's maids interrupted him to tell the story of the swallows on the "Antonius," Cleopatra's admiral galley.

He could scarcely report from Pelusium an omen of darker presage.
But Beryllus gazed at her with a pitying smile, which so roused the expectations of the others that the overseer of the litter and baggage porters, who were talking loudly together, hoarsely shouted, "Silence!" Soon no sound was heard in the open space save the shrill whistling of the wind, a word of command to the harbour-guards, and the freedman's voice, which he lowered to increase the charm of the mysterious events he was describing.
He began with the most fulsome praise of Cleopatra and Antony, reminding his hearers that the Imperator was a descendant of Herakles.

The Alexandrians especially were aware that their Queen and Antony claimed and desired to be called "The new Isis" and "The new Dionysus." But every one who beheld the Roman must admit that in face and figure he resembled a god far more than a man.
The Imperator had appeared as Dionysus, especially to the Athenians.

In the proscenium of the theatre in that city was a huge bas-relief of the Battle of the Giants, the famous work of an ancient sculptor--he, Beryllus, had seen it--and from amid the numerous figures in this piece of sculpture the tempest had torn but a single one--which?
Dionysus, the god as whose mortal image Antony had once caroused in a vine-clad arbour in the presence of the Athenians.

The storm to-night was at the utmost like the breath of a child, compared with the hurricane which could wrest from the hard marble the form of Dionysus.