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 as he sat in the carriage that bore the remains, samples of the soldiers’ rations (probae, as they themselves call them) were presented to him, as they commonly are to emperors,[*](The emperors took pains to see that the soldiers were well fed. Cf. Spartianus, Hadr. 11, 1; Lampridius, Alex. Sev. xv. 5.) and the public courier-horses were shown to him, and the people thronged about him in the customary manner. These and similar things foretold imperial power for the said Jovianus, but of an empty and shadowy kind, since he was merely the director of a funeral procession.