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).

In this expectation various officials were sent with vehicles to transport the savage horde, and diligent care was taken that no future destroyer of the Roman state should be left behind, even if he were smitten with a fatal disease. Accordingly, having by the emperor’s permission obtained the privilege of crossing the Danube and settling in parts of Thrace, they were ferried over for some nights and days embarked by companies in boats, on rafts, and in hollowed tree-trunks[*](Cf. xvi. 11, 9, note; xiv. 2, 10.) ; and because the river is by far the most dangerous of all and was then swollen by frequent rains, some who, because of the great crowd, struggled against the force of the waves and tried to swim were drowned; and they were a good many.

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With such stormy eagerness on the part of insistent men was the ruin of the Roman world brought in. This at any rate is neither obscure nor uncertain, that the ill-omened officials who ferried the barbarian hordes often tried to reckon their number, but gave up their vain attempt; as the most distinguished of poets says:

  1. Who wishes to know this would wish to know
  2. How many grains of sand on Libyan plain
  3. By Zephyrus are swept.[*](Virg., Georg. ii. 106 ff.; see crit. note 2.)

Well then, let the old tales revive of bringing the Medic hordes to Greece; for while they describe the bridging of the Hellespont, the quest of a sea at the foot of Mount Athos by a kind of mechanical severing,[*](I.e., cutting a canal through the isthmus of the peninsula on which the mountain stands.) and the numbering of the armies by squadrons at Doriscus,[*](Because they were too numerous to be counted as individuals, an enclosure which would hold 10,000 closely packed men was built; see Hdt. vii. 60.) later times have unanimously regarded all this as fabulous reading.

For after the countless swarms of nations were poured through the provinces, spreading over a great extent of plain and filling all regions and every mountain height, by this new evidence the trustworthiness also of old stories was confirmed. First Fritigern and Alavivus were received, and the emperor gave orders that they should be given food for their present needs and fields to cultivate.

During this time, when the barriers of our[*](376 f. A.D.) frontier were unlocked and the realm of savagery

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was spreading far and wide columns of armed[*](Ammianus seems to forget that the Goths were required first to hand over their weapons; but this order was frequently evaded through the negligence of the imperial officials.) men like glowing ashes from Aetna, when our difficulties and imminent dangers called for military reformers who were most distinguished for the fame of their exploits: then it was, as if at the choice of some adverse deity, that men were gathered together and given command of armies who bore stained reputations. At their head were two rivals in recklessness: one was Lupicinus, commanding general in Thrace, the other Maximus, a pernicious leader.

Their treacherous greed was the source of all our evils. I say nothing of other crimes which these two men, or at least others with their permission, with the worst of motives committed against the foreign new-comers, who were as yet blameless; but one melancholy and unheard-of act shall be mentioned, of which, even if they were their own judges[*](Cic., Deiot. 2, 4, nemo enimfere est, qui sui periculi iudex, non sibi se aequiorem quam reo praebeat.) of their own case, they could not be acquitted by any excuse.