Res Gestae

There, being still uncertain as to the outcome of his main enterprise, as soon as the army had come together he summoned all the centuries, maniples, and cohorts to an assembly; and when the trumpets sounded and the plain was filled with the multitude, in order to make them the more inclined to carry out his orders, he took his place upon a high tribunal with a larger retinue than common, and assuming an expression of calm confidence, addressed them as follows:

Being always careful by no act or word, however slight, to allow myself to do anything inconsistent with faultless honour, and like a cautious steersman putting my helm up or down according to the movements of the waves, I am now constrained, dearly beloved soldiers, to confess to you my mistake, or rather (if I may be allowed to use the right word) my kindheartedness, which I believed would be profitable to the interests of all. Therefore, that you may the more readily know the ground for convoking this assembly, hear me, I pray you, with unprejudiced and favourable ears.

At the time when Magnentius, whom your valorous deeds overthrew, was obstinately bent upon making general confusion in the state, I raised my cousin Gallus to the high rank of Caesar and sent him to defend the Orient. When he by many deeds abominable to witness and to rehearse had forsaken the path of justice, he was punished by the laws’ decree.

And would to Heaven that Envy, that busiest inciter of trouble, had been content with that, in order that only this one recollection of grief now past, but unaccompanied by dangers, might disquiet me. But now another blow has fallen, more to be lamented, I might venture to say, than those that went before, which the aid of Heaven through your native valour will make harmless.

Julian, to whom we entrusted the defence of Gaul while you were fighting the foreign nations that raged around Illyricum, presuming upon some trivial battles which he fought with the half-armed Germans, exulting like a madman, has involved in his ambitious cabal a few auxiliaries, whom their savagery and hopeless condition made ready for a destructive act of recklessness; and he has conspired for the hurt of the state, treading under foot Justice, the mother and nurse of the Roman world, who, as I readily believe from experience and from the lessons of the past, will in the end, as the punisher of evil deeds, take vengeance on them, and will blow away their proud spirits like ashes.

What, then, remains but to meet the storms that have been raised, with the purpose of crushing by the remedies of speed the madness of the growing war before it attains greater strength? For there is

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.