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).

Therefore, after everything that the times and the changed circumstances demanded had been arranged with careful deliberation, and the soldiers had by numerous addresses and by adequate pay been roused to greater readiness for carrying out the coming enterprises, exulting in the favour of all men, he hastened to go to Antioch, leaving Constantinople supported by great increase of strength; for it was there that he was born, and he loved and cherished the city as his natal place.

Accordingly, having crossed the strait,[*](The Thracian Bosporus.) and passed by Chalcedon and Libyssa, where

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Hannibal the Carthaginian was buried, he came to Nicomedia, a city famed of old and so enlarged at the great expense of earlier emperors,[*](Especially Diocletian and Constantine the Great, whose favourite resort it was.) that because of the great number of its private and public buildings it was regarded by good judges as one of the regions, so to speak, of the Eternal City.[*](The reference is to the fourteen regions into which Rome was divided by Augustus. Nicomedia, in the opinion of good judges of such matters, was worthy to be considered a fifteenth region of Rome.)

When he saw that its walls[*](That is of the public buildings and monuments erected by former emperors. The city had suffered from an earth- quake and a fire that lasted for five days and nights; cf. xvii. 7, 1-8.) had sunk into a pitiful heap of ashes, showing his distress by silent tears he went with lagging step to the palace: and in particular he wept over the wretched state of the city because the senate and the people, who had formerly been in a most flourishing condition, met him in mourning garb. And certain of them he recognised, since he had been brought up there under the bishop Eusebius,[*](Eusebius of Nicomedia, not the Church historian, Eusebius of Caesaraea.) whose distant relative he was.

Having here also in a similar way generously furnished many things that were necessary for repairing the damage done by the earthquake, he went on past Nicaea to the borders of Gallograecia.[*](Galatia (Gallacia); cf. Suet., Calig. 29, 2.) From there he made a detour to the right and turned to Pessinus, in order to visit the ancient shrine of the Great Mother. It was from that town, in the second Punic war, that at the direction of the Cumaean verses[*](The Sibylline Verses; see Livy, xxix. 10, 11.) her image was brought to Rome by Scipio Nasica.[*](In 204 B.C.; see Livy, l.c. )

Of its arrival in Italy, along with other matters relating to the subject, I have given a brief account by way of digression in telling of the acts of the emperor Commodus.[*](In one of the lost books.) But why the town was called by that

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name writers of history are not in agreement;