Parallela minora

Upon a time when the Thracians were engaged in a war against the Athenians, the oracle promised them victory if they would but save the life of Codrus. Codrus upon this puts himself in a coarse disguise, and away he goes into the enemies’ camp with a scythe in his hand, where he killed one, and another killed him, so that the Athenians got the better on’t.—Socrates, in his Second Book of his Thracian History.

Publius Decius, a Roman, at a time when they were in war with the Albans, had a dream that his death would bring a great advantage to the Romans; upon which consideration he charged into the middle of his enemies, where he killed many, and was slain himself: his son Decius did the like in the Gallic war, for the conservation of the Roman State.—Aristides Milesius is my author.

There was one Cyanippus a Syracusan, that sacrificed to all the Gods but Bacchus; who took the contempt so heinously that he made him drunk, in which fit he got his daughter Cyane into a corner and lay with her. She in the mean time slipped his ring off his finger, and gave it to her nurse to keep, as a circumstance that some time or other might come to be brought in evidence. There brake out a pestilence, and the Pythian oracle advised the sacrificing of an incestuous person to the Gods that are the averters of such calamities, as the only remedy. Cyane, that understood the meaning of the oracle better than other people, took her father by the hair of the head and dragged him forth, first stabbing him and then herself.—

In the time of celebrating the Bacchanalia at Rome, Aruntius, that had never drunk any wine since he was born, did not show such reverence for the power of the God as he ought to have done, so that Bacchus intoxicated him; and in that freak, Aruntius ravished his daughter Medullina. She came to know the ravisher by his ring, and an exploit came into her head, above what from her age could have been expected. She made her father drunk and set a garland upon his head, carrying him to the altar of Thunder, where with tears she killed him for robbing her so treacherously of her virginity.—Aristides, in the Third Book of his Italian History.