Res Gestae

And when all were commanded to leave their homes at once, with tears and outstretched hands they begged that they might not be compelled to depart, declaring that they alone, without aid from the empire in provisions and men, were able to defend their hearths, trusting that Justice herself would, as they had often found, aid them in fighting for their ancestral dwelling-place. But suppliantly as the council and people entreated, all was spoken vainly to the winds, since the emperor (as he pretended, while moved by other fears) did not wish to incur the guilt of perjury.

Thereupon Sabinus, distinguished among his fellow-citizens for his wealth and high birth, declared in impassioned language that Constantius once, when the flames of a cruel war were raging, had been defeated by the Persians and finally had been driven in flight with a few followers to the unprotected post of Hibita, where he was obliged to live on a bit of bread which he begged from an old peasant woman; yet up to his last day he had lost nothing, whereas Jovian at the beginning of his principate, had abandoned the defences of provinces whose bulwarks had remained unshaken from the earliest times.

But when nothing came of this, since the emperor the more stoutly maintained the sanctity of his oath; and when for a time he had refused the crown[*](See note on coronarium, 4, 15, above.) that was offered him but was finally forced to accept it, one Silvanus, a pleader

Accordingly, men were appointed to drive them out, and threatened with death all who hesitated to leave. Lamentation and grief filled the city, and in all its parts no sound save universal wailing was to be heard; the matrons tore their hair, since they were to be sent into exile from the homes in which they were born and reared; mothers who had lost their children, and widows bereft of their husbands, mourned that they were driven far from the ashes of their loved ones; and the weeping throng embraced the doors or the thresholds of their homes.

Then the various roads were filled with people going wherever each could find refuge. In their haste many secretly carried off such of their own property as they thought they could take with them, disregarding the rest of their possessions, which, though many and valuable, they were obliged to leave behind for lack of pack-animals.[*](Cf. Virg., Aen. ii. 490; Val. Flacc. iv. 373. The whole passage suggests Livy’s account of the destruction of Alba Longa (i. 29).)

You are here justly censured, O Fortune of the Roman world! that, when storms shattered our country, you did snatch the helm from the hands of an experienced steersman and entrust it to an untried[*](consummando = inconsummato unfinished. ) youth, who, since he was known during his previous life for no brilliant deeds in that field, cannot be justly either blamed or praised.

But what grieved the very heart of every patriotic citizen was this, that fearful of a rival to his power and