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).

However, in this affair Valentinian overstepped the usage established of old, in that he named his brother and his son, not Caesar, but Augustus, generously enough. For before that no one had appointed a colleague of equal power with himself except the emperor Marcus,[*](Marcus Aurelius. Titus is not an exception; see Trans. Amer. Phil. Assoc. xlv. (1914), pp. 43 f.) who made his adopted brother Verus his partner, but without any impairment of his own imperial majesty.

Scarcely had a few days passed since these affairs were settled according to the desire of the emperor and the soldiers,[*](At Amiens, Aug. 24, 367.) when Mamertinus, the praetorian prefect,[*](In Illyricum, Africa, and Italy; cf. xxvi. 5, 5.) on his return from Rome, to which he had gone to correct certain abuses, was charged with peculation[*](In 365.) by Avitianus, a former deputy governor.[*](In Africa.)

Therefore he was displaced by Vulcatius Rufinus, a man excellent in all respects, who seemed to be displaying the crown of an honoured old age,[*](Cf. Cic., DeSen. 17, 61, apexest autemsenectutis auctoritas. ) except that he never let slip a favourable opportunity for gain, if there was hope of concealment.

As soon as he gained the imperial ear, he brought it about that Orfitus, a former prefect of Rome, was freed from banishment,[*](Cf. 3, 2.) and, after restoration of his lost patrimony, was restored to his home.

Valentinian was known to be a cruel man, and although in the early part of his reign, in order to

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lessen his reputation for harshness, he sometimes strove to keep his savage impulses under his mind’s control, yet the fault, as yet lurking and postponed, little by little broke forth without restraint and caused the destruction of many men; and was increased by fierce outbreaks of hot anger. For the philosophers define anger as a long-continued, sometimes permanent, ulcer of the mind, usually caused by weakness of the intellect; and they give for their opinion the plausible ground that the sickly are more inclined to anger than the sound, women than men, the old than the young, and the wretched than the fortunate.[*](Cf. Sen., De Ira, i. 13, 5; ii. 19, 4.)

Most conspicuous, however, at that time was the death (among the executions of other persons of low rank[*](Diocles was not a person of low rank; for this use of alius, which is fairly frequent in Ammianus, see xxiii. 3, 9, crit. note 5. The same is perhaps true of Diodorus.) ) of Diodes, former head of the state treasury in Illyricum, whom the emperor ordered to be burned to death because of some small offences; and also that of Diodorus, former state agent, and of three attendants of the deputy-governor of Italy; all these suffered cruel execution because the commanding general complained to the emperor that Diodorus had implored the aid of the law against him, as was his right,[*](I.e., as was the right of a citizen; cf. Apul., Metam. x. 6. civiliter, if it is the correct reading, gives the opinion of Ammianus, not of the accuser; see crit. note.) and that the officials,[*](The attendants of the deputy-governor.) by order of the judge, had ventured to summon him as he was going on a journey, to answer to the action according to law. The memory of these victims is still honoured by the Christians in Milan,[*](The seat of the deputy-governor of Italy.) who call the place where they are buried The Place of the Innocents.

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