Res Gestae

In this welter of adverse events Constantius’ fortune, already wavering and at a standstill, showed clearly by signs almost as plain as words, that a crisis in his life was at hand. For at night he was alarmed by apparitions, and when he was not yet wholly sunk in sleep, the ghost of his father seemed to hold out to him a fair child; and when he took it and set it in his lap, it shook from him the ball[*](This emblem of power is found in the statues and on the coins of the later emperors. See Frontispiece Vol. III.) which he held in his right hand and threw it to a great distance. And this foretold a change in the state, although the seers gave reassuring answers.