Res Gestae

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.