ABSTRACT
The credulous were assured that the choice of Trajan was foretold by omens. According to Dio, certain (unspecified) portents had appeared when Trajan assumed the consulship in 91 which predicted his assumption of the imperial office and the death of his colleague Glabrio at the hands of Domitian. Another prognostication took the form of a dream, in which Trajan
thought that an old man in a purple-bordered toga and vestments, and with a fillet on his head, as the senate is usually symbolically represented, took a finger-ring and impressed a seal on his neck, first on the left side, then on the right.
