Res Gestae

For, as my mind presages, and as Justice promises, who will aid right purposes, I give you my word that, when we come hand to hand, they will be so benumbed with terror as to be able to endure neither the flashing light of your eyes nor the first sound of your battle-cry.

After these words all were led to his opinion, and brandishing their spears in anger they first replied with many expressions of good will, and then asked to be led at once against the rebel. This mark of favour turned the emperor’s fear into joy; he at once dissolved the assembly and ordered Arbitio, whom he already knew from former experiences to be successful before all others in quelling civil wars, to go before him on his march with the lancers, the mattiarii,[*](They seem to have got their name from the mattium, a kind of weapon which they used, of which nothing is known. They are mentioned in connection with the lancers also in xxxi. 13, 8.) and the companies of light armed troops; also Gomoarius with the Laeti,[*](Cf. xvi. 11, 4; xx. 8, 13.) to oppose the coming advance of the enemy in the pass of Succi, a man chosen before others because he was a bitter enemy of Julian, who had treated him with contempt in Gaul.

In this welter of adverse events Constantius’ fortune, already wavering and at a standstill, showed clearly by signs almost as plain as words, that a crisis in his life was at hand. For at night he was alarmed by apparitions, and when he was not yet wholly sunk in sleep, the ghost of his father seemed to hold out to him a fair child; and when he took it and set it in his lap, it shook from him the ball[*](This emblem of power is found in the statues and on the coins of the later emperors. See Frontispiece Vol. III.) which he held in his right hand and threw it to a great distance. And this foretold a change in the state, although the seers gave reassuring answers.

After that he admitted to his more intimate attendants that, as though forsaken, he ceased to see a kind of secret something[*](aliquid suggests quidam eximia magnitudine et forma in Suet., Jul. 22, but is much more vague—hardly more than a feeling of the presence of some supernatural power.) which he used to think occasionally appeared to him, though somewhat dimly; and it was supposed that a sort of guardian spirit, assigned to protect his life, had deserted him, since he was destined quickly to leave this world.

For the theologians maintain that there are associated with all men at their birth, but without interference with the established course of destiny, certain divinities of that sort, as directors of their conduct; but they have been seen by only a very few, whom their manifold merits have raised to eminence.

And this oracles and writers of distinction have shown; among the latter is also the comic poet Menander, in whom we read these two senarii:

1. A daemon is assigned to every man
2. At birth, to be the leader[*](μυσταγωγός is the name applied to the priest who gave the initiated instruction in the mysteries. Later it was used of the guide who showed strangers the noteworthy objects in a place. The quotation is frag. 550 in Kock’s Comicorum Att. Frag. III.) of his life.

Likewise from the immortal poems of Homer[*](Perhaps Iliad, i. 503 ff.) we are given to understand that it was not the gods of heaven that spoke with brave men, and stood by them or aided them as they fought, but that guardian spirits attended them; and through reliance upon their special support, it is said, that Pythagoras, Socrates, and Numa Pompilius[*](Referring to the nymph Egeria; cf. Livy, i. 19, 5.) became famous; also the earlier Scipio,[*](Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal.) and (as some believe) Marius and Octavianus, who first had the title of Augustus conferred upon him, and Hermes Trismegistus,[*](A surname of the Egyptian Hermes. Here the refer- ence is apparently to a writer of the second century, who under that name tried to revive the old Egyptian, Pythagorean, and Platonic ideas.) Apollonius of Tyana,[*](The famous magician of the first century B.C., whose biography was written by Philostratus.) and Plotinus,[*](An eclectic philosopher of the third century, whose views entitled τερὶ τοῦ εἰληχότος ἡμᾶς δαίμονος have come down to us (Plot. En., iii, 4).) who ventured to discourse on this mystic theme, and to present a profound discussion of the question by what elements these spirits are linked with men’s souls, and taking them to their bosoms, as it were, protect them (as long as possible) and give them higher instruction, if they perceive that they are pure and kept from the pollution of sin through association with an immaculate body.

Constantius, therefore, having reached Antiochia by forced marches, intending (as was his custom)

When autumn was already waning he began his march, and on coming to a suburban estate called Hippocephalus, distant three miles from the city, he saw in broad daylight on the right side of the road the corpse of a man with head torn off, lying stretched out towards the west.[*](The omen seems to consist, in part at least, in the position of the body, stretched out towards the setting) Terrified by the omen, although the fates were preparing his end, he kept on with the greater determination and arrived at Tarsus. There he was taken with a slight fever, but in the expectation of being able to throw off the danger of his illness by the motion of the journey he kept on over difficult roads to Mobsucrenae, the last station of Cilicia as you go from here, situated at the foot of Mount Taurus; but when he tried to start again on the following day, he was detained by the increasing severity of the disease. Gradually the extreme heat of the fever so inflamed his veins that his body could not even be touched, since it burned like a furnace; and when the application of remedies proved useless, as he breathed his last he lamented his end. However, while his mind was still unimpaired he is said to have designated Julian as the successor to the throne.

Then the death-rattle began and he was silent, and after a long struggle with life now about to leave him, he died on the fifth of October, in the

After this followed the last mournful call to the deceased,[*](The conclamatio was a regular custom, for the purpose of seeing whether any life was left; cf. xxx. 10, 1.) and grief and wailing broke out; then those who held the first rank in the royal court considered what they should do, or what they ought to attempt. And after a few had been sounded secretly as to the choice of an emperor, at the suggestion of Eusebius (as was reported), whom the consciousness of his guilt pricked, since Julian’s nearness made an attempt at revolution inadvisable, Theolaifus and Aligildus,[*](Cf. xxii. 2, 1.) at that time counts, were sent to him, to report the death of his kinsman, and beg him to lay aside all delay and come to take over the Orient, which was ready to obey him.

However, rumour and an uncertain report had it that Constantius had made a last will, in which (as I have said) he wrote down Julian as his heir and gave commissions and legacies to those who were dear to him.

Now he left his wife with child, and the posthumous daughter to whom she afterwards gave birth was called by his name, and when she grew up was united in marriage with Gratianus.[*](Cf. xxix. 6, 7. Her name was Flavia Maxima Faustina.)