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).

At the time Valens added this also to the rest of his glories, that while in other instances he was so savagely cruel as to grieve that the great pain of his punishments could not continue after death,[*](ferret . . . dolores, hexameter rhythm.) yet he spared the tribune Numerius, a man of surpassing wickedness! This man was convicted at that same time on his own confession of having dared to cut open the womb of a living woman and take out her unripe offspring, in order to evoke the ghosts of the dead and consult them about a change of rulers; yet Valens, who looked on him with the eye of an intimate friend, in spite of the murmurs of the whole Senate gave orders that he should escape unpunished, and retain his life, his enviable wealth, and his military rank unimpaired.

O noble system of wisdom, by heaven’s gift bestowed upon the fortunate, thou who hast often ennobled even sinful natures! How much wouldst thou have corrected in those dark days, if it had been permitted Valens to learn through you that royal power—as the philosophers declare—is nothing else than the care for others’ welfare;[*](Cf. xxv. 3, 18; Cic., De Off. i. 25, 85.) that

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it is the duty of a good ruler to restrain his power, to resist unbounded desire and implacable anger, and to know—as the dictator Caesar used to say—that the recollection of cruelty is a wretched support[*](instrumentum here = ἐφόδιον (viaticum). Valesius quotes Stobaeus, De Senec. (Florilegium, 117, 8, p. 595), τί ἂν εἲη γήρως ἐφόδιον ἄριστον; Ammianus uses instrumentum in the general sense of cost, expense, e.g. in xxviii. 6, 6; cf. also xix. 11, 4; xxi. 6, 6, and xxvi. 7, 12, where this meaning is perhaps implied. No such saying of Caesar’s is elsewhere known.) for old age. And therefore, if he is going to pass judgment affecting the life and breath of a human being, who forms a part of the world and completes the number of living things, he ought to hesitate long and greatly and not be carried away by headlong passion to a point where what is done cannot be undone;[*](Cf. Cassiod., Varia, vii. 1, cunctator ease debet qui iudicat de salute; alia sententia potest corrigi, de vita transactum non patitur immutari; Juv. vi. 221, nulla umquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est. ) of which we have a very well-known instance in olden times.

A woman of Smyrna confessed before Dolabella,[*](Cf. Val. Max. viii. 1, Amb. 2; Gell. xii. 7, 4. Dolabella is probably the man who was consul with Antony, and after Caesar’s death governed the province of Asia.) the proconsul of Asia, that she had poisoned her husband and her own son by him, because (as she said) she had discovered that they had killed her son by a former marriage; but she was ordered to appear again two days later.[*](I.e., the case was adjourned for that time, as provided by the law of Ser. Sulpicius Galba; cf. Cic., Verr. ii. 1, 7, 20.) Since the council, to which according to custom the matter was referred, uncertain what distinction ought to be made between revenge and crime, hesitated to decide, she was sent before the Areopagites, those strict judges at Athens, whose justice is said to have decided disputes even among the gods.[*](There was a myth that Ares or Mars, to avenge an injury to his daughter, slew Halirrhothius, son of Posidon or Neptune, and that the case came before the Areopagus; of. Aug., De Civ. Dei, xviii. 10.) They, after

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having considered the case, ordered the woman to appear before them with her accuser a hundred years later, since they did not wish either to acquit a poisoner or punish an avenger of her kindred; for that is never thought late which is the last of all things.

After these various deeds of injustice which have already been mentioned, and the marks of torture shamefully branded upon the bodies of such free men as bad survived, the never-closing eye of Justice, the eternal witness and avenger of all things, was watchfully attentive. For the last curses of the murdered, moving the eternal godhead through the just ground of their complaints, had kindled the firebrands of Bellona; so that the truth of the oracle was confirmed, which had predicted that no crimes would go unpunished.