Res Gestae

Meanwhile Orfitus was governing the eternal city with the rank of Prefect, and with an arrogance beyond the limits of the power that had been conferred upon him. He was a man of wisdom, it is true, and highly skilled in legal practice, but less equipped with the adornment of the liberal arts than became a man of noble rank. During his term of office serious riots broke out because of the scarcity of wine; for the people, eager for an unrestrained use of this commodity, are roused to frequent and violent disturbances.

Now I think that some foreigners[*](Here Ammianus, writing his History at Rome, classes himself as a Roman; see note on 6, 12, below, and Introd., p. xiv.) who will perhaps read this work (if I shall be so fortunate) may wonder why it is that when the narrative turns to the description of what goes on at Rome, I tell of nothing save dissensions, taverns, and other similar vulgarities. Accordingly, I shall briefly touch upon the reasons, intending nowhere to depart intentionally from the truth.

At the time when Rome first began to rise into a position of world-wide splendour, destined to live so long as men shall exist, in order that she might grow to a towering stature, Virtue and Fortune, ordinarily at variance, formed a pact of eternal peace; for if either one of them had failed her, Rome had not come to complete supremacy.

Her people, from the very cradle to the end of their childhood,[*](The same figure is used by Florus, Introd. 4 ff. (L.C.L., pp. 6 ff.).) a period of about three hundred years, carried on wars about her walls. Then, entering upon adult life, after many toilsome wars, they crossed the Alps and the sea. Grown to youth and manhood, from every region which the vast globe includes, they brought back laurels and triumphs. And now, declining into old age, and often owing victory to its name alone, it has come to a quieter period of life.

Thus the venerable city, after humbling the proud necks of savage nations, and making laws, the everlasting foundations and moorings of liberty, like a thrifty parent, wise and wealthy, has entrusted the management of her inheritance to the Caesars, as to her children.

And

But this magnificence and splendour of the assemblies is marred by the rude worthlessness of a few, who do not consider where they were born, but, as if licence were granted to vice, descend to sin and wantonness. For as the lyric poet Simonides tells us,[*](The passage does not occur in the surviving fragments. Plutarch, Demosthenes, 1, attributes the same saying to Euripides, or whoever it was. ) one who is going to live happy and in accord with perfect reason ought above all else to have a glorious fatherland.

Some of these men eagerly strive for statues, thinking that by them they can be made immortal, as if they would gain a greater reward from senseless brazen images than from the consciousness of honourable and virtuous conduct. And they take pains to have them overlaid with gold, a fashion first introduced by Acilius Glabrio,[*](See Livy, xl. 34, 5.) after his skill and his arms had overcome King Antiochus.[*](At Thermopylae in 191 B.C.) But how noble it is, scorning these slight and trivial honours, to aim to tread the long and steep ascent to true glory, as the bard of Ascra expresses it,[*](Hesiod, Works and Days, 289 ff. τῆς δ᾽ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν | Ἀθάνατοι· μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἶμος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν, | καὶ τρηχὺς τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπὴν δ᾽ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, | Ῥηιδίη δὴ ἔπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ᾽ ἐοῦσα. ) is made clear by Cato the Censor. For when he was asked why he alone among many did not have a

Other men, taking great pride in coaches higher than common and in ostentatious finery of apparel, sweat under heavy cloaks, which they fasten about their necks and bind around their very throats, while the air blows through them because of the excessive lightness of the material; and they lift them up with both hands and wave them with many gestures, especially with their left hands,[*](Probably to display their rings; cf. Pliny, N.H. xxxiii. 9, manus et prorsus sinistrae maximam auctoritatem conciliavere auro. ) in order that the over-long fringes and the tunics embroidered with party-coloured threads in multiform figures of animals may be conspicuous.