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).

On hearing this the emperor, smitten with

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implacable anger and resentment, rested all his hopes of securing his safety on destroying Gallus; and sending Serenianus, who, as I have before shown, had been charged with high treason and acquitted by some jugglery or other, and with him Pentadius the secretary and Apodemius of the secret service, he condemned him to capital punishment. Accordingly his hands were bound, after the fashion of some guilty robber, and he was beheaded. Then his face and head were mutilated, and the man who a little while before had been a terror to cities and provinces was left a disfigured corpse.

But the justice of the heavenly power was everywhere watchful; for not only did his cruel deeds prove the ruin of Gallus, but not long afterwards a painful death overtook both of those whose false blandishments and perjuries led him, guilty though he was, into the snares of destruction. Of these Scudilo, because of an abscess of the liver,[*](Augustus was cured of this disease by Antonius Musa (Suet., Aug. 81, 1).) vomited up his lungs and so died; Barbatio, who for a long time had invented false accusations against Gallus, charged by the whispers of certain men of aiming higher than the mastership of the infantry, was found guilty and by an unwept end made atonement to the shades of the Caesar, whom he had treacherously done to death.

These and innumerable other instances of the kind are sometimes (and would that it were always so!) the work of Adrastia,[*](See Index.) the chastiser of evil deeds and the rewarder of good actions, whom we also call by the second name of Nemesis. She is, as it were, the sublime jurisdiction of an efficient divine power,

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dwelling, as men think, above the orbit of the moon; or as others define her, an actual guardian presiding with universal sway over the destinies of individual men. The ancient theologians, regarding her as the daughter of Justice, say that from an unknown eternity she looks down upon all the creatures of earth.

She, as queen of causes and arbiter and judge[*](Cf. Cic., Acad. ii. 28, 91, veri etfalsi quasi disceptatricem et iudicem.) of events, controls the urn with its lots and causes the changes of fortune,[*](Cf. Ovid, Metam. xv. 409, alternare vices. ) and sometimes she gives our plans a different result than that at which we aimed, changing and confounding many actions. She too, binding the vainly swelling pride of mortals with the indissoluble bond of fate, and tilting changeably, as she knows how to do, the balance of gain and loss, now bends and weakens the uplifted necks of the proud, and now, raising the good from the lowest estate, lifts them to a happy life. Moreover, the storied past has given her wings in order that she might be thought to come to all with swift speed; and it has given her a helm to hold and has put a wheel beneath her feet, in order that none may fail to know that she runs through all the elements and rules the universe.[*](With this description cf. that of Fortune in Pacuvius, inc. xiv., Ribbeck (p. 144), and Horace, Odes, i. 34.)