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).

Accordingly the king, with a haste due to his greed for seizing others’ property, attacked the fortresses

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with fiery confidence, whereupon the defenders, overcome with sudden panic and dazzled by the variety of arms, surrendered themselves and all those who had taken refuge with the garrison; and when ordered to depart, they at once handed over the keys of the gates. When entrance was given, whatever was stored there was brought out, and the women, paralysed with fear, were dragged forth with the children clinging to their mothers and experiencing grievous woes at the beginning of their tender years.

And when the king by inquiring whose wife the lady was had found that her husband was Craugasius, he allowed her, fearing as she did that violence would be offered her, to approach nearer without apprehension; and when she had been reassured and covered as far as her very lips with a black veil, he courteously encouraged her with sure hope of regaining her husband and of keeping her honour unsullied. For hearing that her husband ardently loved her, he thought that at this price he might purchase the betrayal of Nisibis.

Yet finding that there were others also who were maidens and consecrated to divine service according to the Christian custom, he ordered that they be kept uninjured and allowed to practise their religion in their wonted manner without any opposition; to be sure he made a pretence of mildness for the time, to the end that all whom he had heretofore terrified by his harshness and cruelty might lay aside their fear and come to him of their own volition, when they learned from recent instances that he now tempered the greatness of his fortune with kindliness and gracious deportment.

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The king, rejoicing in the wretched imprisonment of our men that had come to pass, and anticipating like successes, set forth from there, and slowly advancing, came to Amida on the third day.

And when the first gleam of dawn appeared, everything so far as the eye could reach shone with glittering arms, and mail-clad cavalry filled hill and dale.

The king himself, mounted upon a charger and overtopping the others, rode before the whole army, wearing in place of a diadem a golden image of a ram’s head set with precious stones, distinguished too by a great retinue of men of the highest rank and of various nations. But it was clear that he would merely try the effect of a conference on the defenders of the walls, since by the advice of Antoninus he was in haste to go elsewhere.

However, the power of heaven, in order to compress the miseries of the whole Roman empire within the confines of a single region, had driven the king to an enormous degree of self-confidence, and to the belief that all the besieged would be paralysed with fear at the mere sight of him, and would resort to suppliant prayers.

So he rode up to the gates attended by his royal escort, and while with too great assurance he came so near that even his features could clearly be recognised, because of his

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conspicuous adornment he became the target of arrows and other missiles, and would have fallen, had not the dust hidden him from the sight of his assailants, so that after a part of his garment was torn by the stroke of a lance he escaped, to cause the death of thousands at a later time.