Res Gestae

So, having entered Cologne, he did not stir from there until he had overawed the Frankish kings and lessened their pugnacity, had made a peace with them which would benefit the state meanwhile, and had recovered that very strongly fortified city.

Pleased with these first-fruits of victory, he passed through the land of the Treveri, and went to winter at Sens, a town which was then convenient. There, bearing on his shoulders, as the saying is, the burden of a flood of wars,[*](See p. 82, n. 5.) he was distracted by manifold cares—how the soldiers who had abandoned their usual posts might be taken back to danger-points, how he might scatter the tribes that had conspired to the hurt of the Roman cause, and how to see to it that food should not fail his army as it was about to range in different directions.

As he was anxiously weighing these problems, a host of the enemy attacked, fired with increased hope of taking the town, and full of confidence because they had learned from the statements of deserters that neither the targeteers nor the gentiles[*](See note 3, p. 56.) were at hand; for they had been distributed in the towns, so as to be more easily provisioned than before.

So, having shut the city gates and strengthened a weak section of the walls, Julian could be seen day and night with his soldiers among the bulwarks and battlements, boiling over with rage and fretting because however often he tried to sally forth, he was hampered by the scanty numbers of the troops at hand. Finally, after a month the savages withdrew crestfallen, muttering that they had been silly and foolish to have contemplated the blockade of the city.

But—a thing to be regarded as a shameful situation[*](I.e. the ill-treatment of Julian.) —while Caesar was in jeopardy, Marcellus, master of the horse, although he was stationed in neighbouring posts, postponed sending him reinforcements; whereas even if the city alone was endangered, to say nothing of the prince’s presence there, it ought to have been saved from the hardships of blockade by the intervention of a large force.

Once relieved of this fear, Caesar provided with the greatest efficiency and with unfailing solicitude that some rest should follow the long continued toil of the soldiers, a short one perhaps, but enough, at least, to restore their strength; and yet that region, a wilderness in its

But when this too had been provided for by his ever-watchful care, a happier hope of success was shed upon him, and with spirits revived he rose to the achievement of numerous enterprises.

First, then (and a hard thing to accomplish) he imposed moderation on himself, and kept to it, as if he were living bound by the sumptuary laws which were brought to Rome from the Edicts,[*](The rhetrae (ῥῆτραι) were oracular utterances which Lycurgus professed to have received directly from Apollo at Delphi; later the word was used generally for the laws of Lycurgus.) that is, the wooden tablets,[*](The laws of Solon were called ἄξονες because they could be revolved on pivots. Many ancient writers state that the tablets were originally of wood, and they retained this name after they were republished on marble slabs. R. Scholl was probably right in assuming a lacuna after Lycurgi, and Ammianus may have included a reference to Solon’s ἄξονες for ῥῆτραι and ἄξονες were used through. out antiquity of the two lawgivers’ works distinctively. For their history see J. H. Oliver, Hesperia, iv. (1935), pp. 9 ff.) of Lycurgus; and when they had long been observed, but were going out of use, the dictator Sulla gradually renewed them,[*](See Gellius, ii. 24, 11; i. 204 f. L.C.L., for details of this and other sumptuary laws.) taking account of one of the sayings of Democritus, that a pretentious table is set by Fortune, a frugal one by Virtue.

Furthermore, Cato of Tusculum, whose austere manner of living conferred upon him the surname Censorius, wisely defined that point, saying: Great care about food implies great neglect of virtue.[*](P. 110, 22, Jordan.)

Lastly, though he constantly read the booklet which Constantius, as it sending a stepson to the university, had written with his own hand, making lavish provision for what should be spent on Caesar’s table, he forbade the

So it came about that he divided his nights according to a threefold schedule—rest, affairs of state, and the Muses, a course which Alexander the Great, as we read, used to practise; but Julian was far more self-reliant. For Alexander used to set a bronze basin beside his couch and with outstretched arm hold a silver ball over it, so that when the coming of sleep relaxed the tension of his muscles, the clanging of the ball as it fell might break off his nap.

But Julian could wake up as often as he wished, without any artificial means. And when the night was half over, he always got up, not from a downy couch or silken coverlets glittering with varied hues, but from a rough blanket and rug, which the simple common folk call susurna.[*](A coarse blanket made from the fur or hide of an animal.) Then he secretly prayed to Mercury, whom the teaching of the theologians stated to be the swift intelligence of the universe, arousing the activity of men’s minds; and in spite of such great lack of material things he paid diligent heed to all his public duties.

And after bringing these (as his lofty and serious tasks) to an end, he turned to the exercise of his intellect, and it is unbelievable with what great eagerness he sought out the sublime knowledge of all chiefest things, and as if in search of some sort of sustenance for a soul soaring to loftier levels, ran through all the departments of philosophy in his learned discussions.

But yet,

If, then, it is true (as divers writers report) that King Cyrus and the lyric poet Simonides, and Hippias of Elis, keenest of the sophists, had such powerful memories because they had acquired that gift by drinking certain potions, we must believe that Julian, when only just arrived at manhood, had drained the entire cask of memory, if such could be found anywhere. These, then, were the nightly evidences of his self-restraint and his virtues.