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).

While among the Persians (as I have already related)[*](xxvii. 12, 11 ff.) the perfidy of the king was arousing unexpected disturbances, and in the eastern regions

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wars were rising with renewed strength, somewhat more than sixteen years after the death of[*](366 A.D.) Nepotianus,[*](He fell in 350. He was the son of Eutropia, and assumed the purple in rivalry with Magnentius. See Vol. I, Introd., pp. xxv-xxvi.) Bellona, raging throughout the Eternal City, set all ablaze, being aroused from insignificant beginnings to lamentable massacres; and I could wish that everlasting silence had consigned these to oblivion, lest haply at some time similar crimes should be attempted, which might do more harm from their general example and precedent than through the offences themselves.

And although, after long consideration of various circumstances, well-grounded dread restrained me from giving a minute account of this series of bloody deeds, yet I shall, relying on the better morals of the present day, set forth briefly such of them as are worthy of notice and I shall not be sorry to tell concisely what I have feared from events of antiquity.

When in the first Medic war the Persians had plundered Asia, they besieged Miletus with mighty forces, threatened the defenders with death by torture, and drove the besieged to the necessity, overwhelmed as they all were by a weight of evils, of killing their own dear ones, consigning their movable possessions to the flames, and each one striving to be first to throw himself into the fire, to burn on the common funeral pyre of their country.

Soon after this, Phrynichus composed a play with this disaster as its plot, which he put upon the stage at Athens in the lofty language of tragedy. At first he was heard with pleasure, but as the sad story went on in too tragic style, the people became angry and punished[*](With a fine of 1000 drachmas. The play was the Capture of Miletus, produced soon after 494 B.C.; cf. Herodotus, vi. 21.) him, thinking that

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consolation was not his object but blame and reproach, when he had the bad taste to include among stage-plays a portrayal even of those sufferings which a well-beloved city had undergone, without receiving any support from its founders.[*](For auctores in this sense, cf. Suet., Claud. 25, 3.) For Miletus was a colony of the Athenians founded by Nileus, the son of Codrus (who is said to have sacrificed himself for his country in the Dorian war) and by other Ionians.[*](Ammianus’ purpose in telling this story is to show that he might dread to give a description of the degeneracy of the Romans, for fear of what befel Phrynichus.)

But let us come to our subject. Maximinus, who formerly held the office of vice-[*](368 A.D.) prefect at Rome, was born at Sopianae, a town of Valeria,[*](Formerly a part of Pannonia (cf. xix. 11, 4).) of very humble parents, his father being an accountant in the governor’s office[*](Cf. praesidialis apparitor, xvii. 3, 6.) and sprung from ancestors who were Carpi, a people whom Diocletian drove from its ancient abode[*](I.e., from Dacia, 294–6.) and transferred to Pannonia.

Maximinus, after some slight study of the liberal arts, and after acting as a pleader without acquiring distinction, became governor of Corsica, also of Sardinia, and finally of Tuscia.[*](Etruria (in 366).) then, because his successor lingered too long on the[*](369–70 A.D.) way, although transferred to the charge of the city’s grain supply, he retained also the rule of Tuscia, and at the beginning acted with moderation, for a three-fold reason.

First, because the prophecies of his father were still warm[*](Cf. xxii. 12, 2; xxii. 16, 17.) in his ears, a man exceedingly skilful in interpreting omens from the flight or the notes of birds, who declared he would attain to high power, but would die by the sword of the executioner; secondly, because he had got hold of a man from Sardinia who was highly skilled in

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calling up baneful spirits and eliciting predictions from the ghosts of the dead. This man he himself afterwards put to death, so the rumour went, in a treacherous fashion,—so long as he survived, Maximinus was more yielding and mild, for fear that he might be betrayed—finally, because while creeping through low places like a serpent under ground[*](I.e., while holding offices of minor importance.) he could not yet stir up causes for death on a larger scale.

The first opportunity to widen the sphere of his operations arose from the following affair. Chilo, a former deputy-governor, and his wife Maxima made complaint before Olybrius, at that time prefect of the city,[*](Rome in 368.) declaring that their life had been attempted by poison; and they managed that those whom they suspected should at once be seized and put in prison. The accused were an organ-builder[*](Cf. Suet., Nero, 41, 2; 44, 1; xiv, 6, 18.) Sericus, a wrestler[*](Or wrestling-teacher.) Asbolius, and a soothsayer Campensis.

But as the affair languished because of a severe illness with which Olybrius was long affected, those who had brought the charge, impatient of delay, presented a petition, asking that the examination of the dispute should be turned over to the prefect of the grain supply; and from a desire for a speedy decision this was granted.

Thus Maximinus gained the power of doing harm and poured out the natural cruelty implanted in his hard heart, as often happens with wild beasts in the amphitheatre, when they break in pieces the back-gates and are at last set free. And while the business was being looked into in many ways, as if in a kind of preliminary practice, and some persons, whose sides had been torn into furrows, had named certain nobles as having, through their

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clients and other common people who were notorious as malefactors and informers, made use of men skilled in harmful practices, the hellish judge,going beyond his last[*](On supra plantain see Val. Max. viii. 12, ext. 3, artifex (Apelles) qui in opere suo moneri se a sutore de crepida et ansulis passus, de crure etiam disputare incipientem, supra plantam ascendere vetuit. In the form supra crepidam, it became proverbial (Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 85). Here it means beyond the powers which had been given him.) (as the saying is), in a malicious report to the emperor informed him that the offences which many men had committed at Rome could not be investigated or punished except by severer measures.[*](Suppliciis refers both to tortures in order to exact information and executions accompanied by torture.)