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).

But it turned out far otherwise; for the crops were not yet even ripe, and the soldiers, after using up what they carried, could find no food anywhere; and resorting to outrageous threats, they assailed Julian with foul names and opprobrious language, calling him an Asiatic,[*](Cf. Quint. xii. 10, 17, Asiana gens tumidior alioqui atque iactantior, vaniore etiam dicendi gloria inflata est.) a Greekling[*](Cf. Juvenal, iii. 78 ff.) and a deceiver, and a fool with a show of wisdom. And as some are usually to be found among the soldiers who are noteworthy for their volubility, they kept bawling out such words as these and many others to the same purport:

Where are we being dragged, robbed of the

v1.p.357

hope of a better lot? We have long endured hardships of the bitterest kind to bear, in the midst of snows and the pinch of cruel frosts; but now (Oh shameful indignity!), when we are pressing on to the final destruction of the enemy it is by hunger, the most despicable form of death, that we are wasting away.

And let no man imagine us incitors to mutiny; we protest that we are speaking for our lives alone, asking for neither gold nor silver, which we have not been able to handle or even look upon for a long time, and which are denied us just as if it were against our country that we had been convicted of having undertaken so much toil and danger.

And they had good reason for their complaints. For through all their career of laudable achievements, and the critical moments of hazard, the soldiers, though worn out by their labours in Gaul, had received neither donative nor pay from the very day that Julian was sent there, for the reason that he himself had no funds available anywhere from which to give, nor did Constantius allow any to be expended in the usual manner.

And it was evident that this was done through malice rather than through niggardliness, from the fact that when this same Julian was asked by a common soldier, as they often do, for money for a shave, and had given him some small coin, he was assailed for it with slanderous speeches by Gaudentius,[*](He appears as agens in rebus, xv. 3, 8, and as set as a spy over Julian in xxi. 7, 2. He was finally executed by Julian’s order.) who was then a secretary. He had remained in Gaul for a long time to watch Julian’s actions, and Caesar afterwards ordered that he be put to death, as will be shown in the proper place.[*](xxii. 11, 1.)

v1.p.359