Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

In riding, in hurling the javelin, and especially in the skilful use of the bow, and in all the exercises of the foot-soldiers, he was an adept. That no one ever saw him wipe his mouth or nose in public, or spit, or turn his face in either direction,[*](Cf. xvi. 10, 10.) or that so long as he lived he never tasted fruit, I leave unmentioned, since it has often been related.

Having given a succinct account of his merits, so far as I could know them, let us now come to an enumeration of his defects. While in administrative affairs he was comparable to other emperors of

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medium quality, if he found any indication, however slight or groundless, of an aspiration to the supreme power, by endless investigations, in which he made no distinction between right and wrong, he easily surpassed the savagery of Caligula, Domitian, and Commodus. For it was in rivalry of the cruelty of those emperors that at the beginning of his reign he destroyed root and branch all who were related to him by blood and race.

To add to the sufferings of the wretches who were reported to him for impairment of, or insult to, his majesty, his bitterness and angry suspicions were stretched to the uttermost in all such cases. If anything of the kind was bruited abroad, he gave himself up to inquisitions with more eagerness than humanity, and appointed for such trials merciless judges; and in the punishment of some he tried to make their death lingering, if nature allowed, in some particulars being even more ruthless than Gallienus in such inquisitions.