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).

And while we were hard pressed on every side by weight of armed men, siege-works, and monsters, round stones hurled at intervals from the battlements by the iron arms of our scorpions shattered

v1.p.507
the joints of the towers, and threw down the ballistae and those who worked them in such headlong fashion, that some perished[*](That is, by the fall from the high towers.) without injury from wounds, others were crushed to death by the great weight of debris. The elephants, too, were driven back with great violence, for they were surrounded by firebrands thrown at them from every side, and as soon as these touched their bodies, they turned tail and their drivers were unable to control them. But though after that the siege-works were burned up, there was no cessation from strife.

For even the king of the Persians himself, who is never compelled to take part in battles, aroused by these storms of ill-fortune, rushed into the thick of the fight like a common soldier (a new thing, never before heard of) and because he was more conspicuous even to those who looked on from a distance because of the throng of his body-guard, he was the mark of many a missile; and when many of his attendants had been slain he withdrew, interchanging the tasks of his tractable forces, and at the end of the day, though terrified by the grim spectacle neither of the dead nor of the wounded he at last allowed a brief time to be given to rest.

But night put an end to the conflict; and having taken a nap during the brief period of rest,

v1.p.509
the king, as soon as dawn appeared, boiling with wrath and resentment and closing his eyes to all right, aroused the barbarians against us, to win what he hoped for; and when the siege-works had been burned (as I have shown) they attempted battle over high mounds close to the walls, whereupon our men erected heaps of earth on the inside as well as they could with all their efforts, and under difficulties resisted with equal vigour.