Res Gestae

For the theologians maintain that there are associated with all men at their birth, but without interference with the established course of destiny, certain divinities of that sort, as directors of their conduct; but they have been seen by only a very few, whom their manifold merits have raised to eminence.

And this oracles and writers of distinction have shown; among the latter is also the comic poet Menander, in whom we read these two senarii:

1. A daemon is assigned to every man
2. At birth, to be the leader[*](μυσταγωγός is the name applied to the priest who gave the initiated instruction in the mysteries. Later it was used of the guide who showed strangers the noteworthy objects in a place. The quotation is frag. 550 in Kock’s Comicorum Att. Frag. III.) of his life.

Likewise from the immortal poems of Homer[*](Perhaps Iliad, i. 503 ff.) we are given to understand that it was not the gods of heaven that spoke with brave men, and stood by them or aided them as they fought, but that guardian spirits attended them; and through reliance upon their special support, it is said, that Pythagoras, Socrates, and Numa Pompilius[*](Referring to the nymph Egeria; cf. Livy, i. 19, 5.) became famous; also the earlier Scipio,[*](Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal.) and (as some believe) Marius and Octavianus, who first had the title of Augustus conferred upon him, and Hermes Trismegistus,[*](A surname of the Egyptian Hermes. Here the refer- ence is apparently to a writer of the second century, who under that name tried to revive the old Egyptian, Pythagorean, and Platonic ideas.) Apollonius of Tyana,[*](The famous magician of the first century B.C., whose biography was written by Philostratus.) and Plotinus,[*](An eclectic philosopher of the third century, whose views entitled τερὶ τοῦ εἰληχότος ἡμᾶς δαίμονος have come down to us (Plot. En., iii, 4).) who ventured to discourse on this mystic theme, and to present a profound discussion of the question by what elements these spirits are linked with men’s souls, and taking them to their bosoms, as it were, protect them (as long as possible) and give them higher instruction, if they perceive that they are pure and kept from the pollution of sin through association with an immaculate body.

Constantius, therefore, having reached Antiochia by forced marches, intending (as was his custom)

When autumn was already waning he began his march, and on coming to a suburban estate called Hippocephalus, distant three miles from the city, he saw in broad daylight on the right side of the road the corpse of a man with head torn off, lying stretched out towards the west.[*](The omen seems to consist, in part at least, in the position of the body, stretched out towards the setting) Terrified by the omen, although the fates were preparing his end, he kept on with the greater determination and arrived at Tarsus. There he was taken with a slight fever, but in the expectation of being able to throw off the danger of his illness by the motion of the journey he kept on over difficult roads to Mobsucrenae, the last station of Cilicia as you go from here, situated at the foot of Mount Taurus; but when he tried to start again on the following day, he was detained by the increasing severity of the disease. Gradually the extreme heat of the fever so inflamed his veins that his body could not even be touched, since it burned like a furnace; and when the application of remedies proved useless, as he breathed his last he lamented his end. However, while his mind was still unimpaired he is said to have designated Julian as the successor to the throne.