Res Gestae

And so the barbarians, their eyes blazing with frenzy, were pursuing our men, in whose veins the blood was chilled with numb horror: some fell without knowing who struck them down, others

Besides all this, the roads were blocked by many who lay mortally wounded, lamenting the torment of their wounds; and with them also mounds of fallen horses filled the plains with corpses. To these ever irreparable losses, so costly to the Roman state, a night without the bright light of the moon put an end.

At the first coming of darkness the emperor, amid the common soldiers as was supposed (for no one asserted that he had seen him or been with him), fell mortally wounded by an arrow, and presently breathed his last breath; and he was never afterwards found anywhere.[*](Libanius Orat. xxiv. II, p. 515 (Foerster), agrees with this account, but adds that the emperor might have saved himself on horseback, but did not wish to survive the defeat of his army, and died fighting. The other authorities agree with the following account of Ammianus.) For since a few of the foe were active for long in the neighbourhood for the purpose of robbing the dead, no one of the fugitives or of the natives ventured to approach the spot.

The Caesar Decius, we are told, met a similar fate;[*](Cf. Zosimus, iv. 24.) for when he was fiercely fighting with the barbarians and his horse, whose excitement he could not restrain, stumbled and threw him, he fell into a marsh, from which he could not get out, nor could his body be found.