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).

When this had been approved by unanimous consent, the boy’s uncle

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Cerealis was immediately sent to the place, put him in a litter, and brought him to the camp; and on the sixth day after the passing of his father he was in due form declared emperor, and after the customary manner hailed as Augustus.[*](A distinction seems to be made between declaratio and the ceremonial nuncupatio; the former perhaps took place at Murocincta, the latter in the camp.)

And although, while this was being done, there was some thought that Gratianus would take it amiss that another emperor was chosen without his permission, this fear later vanished and men lived free from care, since Gratianus, besides being a kindly and righteous man, loved his kinsman with great affection and saw to his education.[*](Cf. Ausonius, Gratiarum actio ad Gratianurn, 7: piissimo: huius vero laudis . . . testimonium est . . . instar filii ad imperium frater adscitus. )

Meanwhile Fortune’s rapid wheel, which is always interchanging adversity and prosperity, armed Bellona in the company of her attendant Furies, and transferred to the Orient melancholy events, the coming of which was foreshadowed by the clear testimony of omens and portents.

For after many true predictions of seers and augurs, dogs leaped back when wolves howled, night birds

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rang out a kind of doleful lament, the sun rose in gloom and dimmed the clear morning light; at Antioch, in quarrels and riots of the common people, it became usual that whoever thought that he was suffering wrong shouted without restraint: Let Valens be burned alive! and the words of public criers were continually heard, directing the people to gather firewood, to set fire to the baths of Valens, in the building of which the emperor himself had taken such interest.

All this almost in plain speech showed that this kind of death[*](I.e., death by fire.) threatened him. Furthermore, the ghostly form of the king of Armenia and the piteous shades of those who shortly before had been executed in connection with the fall of Theodorus,[*](See xxix. 1, 8 ff.) shrieking horrible songs at night, in the form of dirges, tormented many with dire terrors.

A heifer was found lying lifeless with its windpipe cut, and its death was an indication of great and widespread sorrow from funerals of the people. Finally, when the old walls of Chalcedon were torn down,[*](Because of the conduct of the inhabitants at the time of the uprising of Procopius; cf. Socr., Eccl. Hist. iv. 8, and xxvi. 8, 2.) in order that a bath[*](Constantinianae thermae, Socrates, iv. 8.) might be built at Constantinople, and the rows of stones were taken apart, there was found on a squared block hidden in the midst of the structure of the wall an inscription containing the following Greek verses, clearly revealing what was to happen:

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  1. When gaily through the city’s festal streets
  2. Shall whirl soft maidens in a happy dance,
  3. When mournfully a wall shall guard a bath,
  4. Then countless hordes of men spread far and wide
  5. With warlike arms shall cross clear Istrus’ stream
  6. To ravage Scythia’s fields and Mysia’s land.
  7. But mad with hope when they Pannonia raid,
  8. There battle and life’s end their course shall check.

However, the seed and origin of all the ruin and various disasters that the wrath of Mars aroused, putting in turmoil all places with unwonted fires, we have found to be this. The people of the Huns,[*](Cf. Zos. iv. 20; Sozom. vi. 37; Agathias, 5, 11 ff.) but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean, exceed every degree of savagery.