Res Gestae

Nevertheless, he drenched the altars with the blood of an excessive number of victims, sometimes offering up a hundred oxen at once, with countless flocks of various other animals, and with white birds[*](A colour of good omen; cf. Juv. xiii. 141, gallinae filius albae; Suet., Galba, 1; Hor., Sat. i. 7, 8, equis albis; etc.) hunted out by land and sea; to such a degree that almost every day his soldiers, who gorged themselves on the abundance of meat, living boorishly and corrupted by their eagerness for drink, were carried through the squares to their lodgings on the shoulders of passers-by from the public temples, where they indulged in banquets[*](I.e. sacrificial feasts.) that deserved punishment rather than indulgence; especially the Petulantes[*](Cf. xx. 4, 2, note.) and the Celts, whose wilfulness at that time had passed all bounds.

Moreover, the ceremonial rites were excessively increased, with an expenditure of money hitherto unusual and burdensome. And, as it was now allowed without hindrance, everyone who professed a knowledge of divination, alike the learned and the ignorant, without limit or prescribed rules, were permitted to question the oracles and the entrails, which sometimes disclose the future; and from the notes of birds, from their flight, and from omens, the truth was sought with studied variety, if anywhere it

While these things were thus going on, as if in time of peace, Julian devoted to many interests, entered upon a new way of consultation, and thought of opening the prophetic springs of the Castalian fount;[*](Not the one at Delphi, but a spring at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch.) this, it is said, Caesar Hadrian had blocked up with a huge mass of stones, for fear that (as he himself had learned from the prophetic waters[*](According to Sozomenus, Church History, v. 19, he threw a laurel leaf into the spring, and, when he took it out, found on it a note, which confirmed his hopes.) that he was destined to become emperor), others also might get similar information. And Julian, after invoking the god, decided that the bodies which had been buried around the spring,[*](Caesar Gallus, in order to purify the place from pagan superstition, had caused the remains of martyrs to be brought there.) should be moved to another place, under the same ceremonial with which the Athenians had purified the island of Delos.[*](First under Peisistratus (Hdt. i. 64) and again in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war (Thuc. iii. 104, 1))

At that same time, on the twenty-second of October, the splendid temple of the Daphnaean Apollo, which that hot-tempered and cruel king Antiochus Epiphanes had built,[*](According to others, the builder was Seleucus Nicator. Antiochus may have enlarged or embellished it.) and with it the statue of the god, a copy of that of the Olympian Zeus[*](At Olympia, the work of Phidias; of. Pausanias, v. 11, 9.) and of equal size, was reduced to ashes by a

The unexpected destruction of this shrine by so terrible an accident inflamed the emperor with such anger, that he ordered stricter investigations than usual to be made, and the greater church at Antioch to be closed. For he suspected that the Christians had done the deed, aroused by jealousy and unwillingness to see the temple enclosed by a magnificent colonnade.

It was said, however, though on very slight evidence, that the cause of the burning of the temple was this: the philosopher Asclepiades, whom I have mentioned in the history of Magnentius,[*](In a lost book.) when he had come to that suburb[*](Daphne.) from abroad to visit Julian, placed before the lofty feet of the statue a little silver image of the Dea Caelestis,[*](Venus Urania, as worshipped in Syria and Phoenicia) which he always carried with him wherever he went, and after lighting some wax tapers as usual, went away. From these tapers after midnight, when no one could be present to render aid, some flying sparks alighted on the woodwork, which was very old, and the fire, fed by the dry fuel, mounted and burned whatever it could reach, at however great a height it was.

In that year also, just as the winter season was at hand, there was such a fearful scarcity of water that some brooks dried up, as well as springs which had before over- flowed with plentiful jets of water; but later these were restored to their former condition.

Then, on the second of December, just before evening, the rest of Nicomedia[*](Cf. xvii. 7, 1-8.) was wholly destroyed by an earthquake, as well as a good part of Nicaea.

Although these disasters filled the prince with sorrow and anxiety, yet he did not neglect the urgent duties that remained to be done before the longed- for time of battle arrived. All the same, amid such weighty and serious affairs, it did seem superfluous, that with no satisfactory reason for such a measure, but merely from a desire for popularity, he wished to lower the price of commodities;[*](Diocletian had done the same in his edict, De Pretiis Venaliunz Rerum. ) although sometimes, when this matter is not properly regulated, it is wont to cause scarcity and famine.

And, although the senate at Antioch clearly pointed out that this could not be done at the time when he ordered it, he in no wise gave up his plan, since he resembled his brother Gallus, though without his cruelty. Therefore raging against them one by one as recalcitrant and stubborn, he composed an invective, which he entitled The Antiochian or Misopogon,[*](This work has survived. It means The Beard Hater; see Julian, L.C.L., ii. 420 ff. It is a satire on Julian himself, in which he also scolded the people of Antioch. They made fun of his beard because they them- selves were clean-shaven. Hadrian and his successors wore beards, but Constantine and his successors did not.) in which he enumerated in a hostile spirit the faults of the city, including more than were justified. After this, finding that he was the object of many jests, he was forced at the time to disregard them, but was filled with suppressed wrath.

For he was ridiculed as a Cercops,[*](One of a people living in an island near Sicily, changed by Jupiter into apes; Ov., Metam. xiv. 91, and Suidas, s.v. κέρκωπες. ) as a dwarf, spreading his narrow shoulders and displaying a billy-goat’s beard,[*](Cf. xxv. 4, 22.) taking mighty strides as if he were the

Finally, on a previously appointed festal day, he ascended Mount Casius,[*](In Seleucia, near Antioch.) a wooded hill rising on high with a rounded contour, from which at the second cock-crow[*](One of the divisions of the night; the latter part of the fourth watch; cf. Pliny, N.H. v. 80; Mart. Cap. vi., p. 235.) the sun is first seen to rise And as he was offering sacrifice to Jove, he suddenly caught sight of a man lying flat upon the ground, and in suppliant words begging for life and pardon. And when Julian asked who he was, the man answered that he was the ex-governor Theodotus of Hierapolis; that when in company with other dignitaries he was escorting Constantius as he set out from his city, he shamefully flattered him, in the belief that he would unquestionably be victorious, begging him with feigned tears and wailing to send them the head of Julian, that ungrateful rebel, just as he remembered that the head of Magnentius had been paraded about.

Upon hearing this, the emperor answered: I heard of this speech of yours long ago from the mouths of many; but go to your home carefree, relieved of all fear by the

When he left there after completing the sacred rites, a letter was presented to him from the governor of Egypt, reporting that after laborious search for a new Apis bull, they had finally, after a time, been able to find one, which (in the belief of the people of that region) is an indication of prosperity, fruitful crops, and various blessings.

About this matter it will be in place to give a brief explanation. Among the animals consecrated by ancient religious observance, the better known are Mnevis and Apis.[*](Cf. Diod. Sic. i. 21, 10; Hdt. iii. 27, 28; Strabo, xvii. 1, 31; Pliny, N.H. viii. 184 ff.) Mnevis[*](Older than Apis, but later neglected; his shrine was in Heliopolis.) is consecrated to the Sun, but about him there is nothing noteworthy to be said; Apis to the moon.[*](Later also to the Sun; Macrob. i. 21, 20.) Apis, then, is a bull distinguished by natural marks of various forms,[*](There were twenty-nine in all.) and most of all conspicuous for the image of a crescent moon on his right side. When this bull, after its destined span of life,[*](Twenty-five years.) is plunged in the sacred fount[*](Its location was a secret known only to the priests. ) and dies (for it is not lawful for him to prolong his life beyond the time prescribed by the secret authority of the mystic books), there is slain with the same ceremony a cow, which has been found with special marks and presented to him. After his death another Apis is sought amid public mourning;

And when he has been led into the city by a hundred priests and conducted to his chamber, he begins to be an object of worship; and it is said that by manifest signs he gives indications of coming events; and some of those who approach him he evidently rejects by unfavourable signs, as once (so we read)[*](In A.D. 49 in Egypt. Soon after, Plancina, Piso’s wife, was suspected of poisoning him. Cf. Pliny, N.H. viii. 185.) he turned away from Caesar Germanicus when he offered him food, and thus prophesied what soon after came to pass.

Accordingly, since the occasion seems to demand it, let us touch briefly on matters Egyptian, of which I discoursed at length in connection with the history of the emperors Hadrian and Severus,[*](In lost books.) telling for the most part what I myself had seen.

The Egyptian nation is the most ancient of all, except that in antiquity it vies with the Scythians.[*](Cf. Justinus, ii. 1, 5.) It is bounded on the south[*](The account of Ammianus is very confused and inexact.) by the Greater Syrtes, the promontories Phycus and Borion, by the Garamantes[*](A nomadic people of Libya.) and various other nations. Where it looks directly east it extends to Elephantine and Meroë, cities of the Aethiopians, to the Catadupi[*](At the cataracts of the Nile.) and the Red Sea, and to the Scenitic Arabs, whom we now call the

Now it will be in place to touch briefly on the most helpful of all rivers, the Nile, which Homer calls the Aegyptus,[*](Cf. Odyss. iv. 477. On the Nile and its floods, see Hdt. ii. 19, 20; Diod. Sic. i. 36; Strabo, xvii. 1, 5; Pliny, N.H. v. 51 ff.) and then to describe other remarkable things to be found in those lands.

The origin of the sources of the Nile (so at least I am wont to think) will be unknown also to future ages, as it has been up to the present. But, since the poets’ tales and dissenting geographers give varying accounts of this unknown subject, I shall succinctly set forth such of their views as in my opinion approach the truth.