Res Gestae

Alarmed by this danger, since now all hope of life depended upon speed, through thickets and woods we made for the higher mountains, and came from there to the town of Melitina in lesser Armenia, where we

But the Persians, since the rapidly approaching end of autumn and the rising of the unfavourable constellation of the Kids[*](Three stars in the constellation Auriga; they rise at the beginning of October and bring stormy weather; cf. Horace, Odes, iii. 1, 28.) prevented them from marching farther inland, were thinking of returning to their own country with their prisoners and their booty.

But in the midst of the slaughter and pillage of the destroyed city Count Aelianus and the tribunes, by whose efficient service the walls had been so long defended and the losses of the Persians increased, were shamefully gibbeted; Jacobus and Caesius, paymasters of the commander of the cavalry, and other officers of the bodyguard, were led off with their hands bound behind their backs; and those who had come from across the Tigris[*](I.e. Persian deserters.) were hunted down with extreme care and butchered to a man, highest and lowest without distinction.