Res Gestae

They, trusting to their knowledge of the region, since the king, though in haste, yet being a foreigner and unacquainted with the neighbourhood, kept making meanders and circles,[*](I.e., went in circles and made slow progress.) got ahead of him by short cuts through the valleys. Then, dividing their forces, they beset the two nearest roads, which were separated by a distance of three miles, in order that, through whichever of the two he should pass, he might be caught off his guard; but the plan came to nothing through this chance event:

A wayfarer who was hastening towards the nearer[*](I.e., from the Roman point of view; the western bank.) bank of the river, seeing the ascent filled with armed soldiers, in order to avoid them took to a bypath between the two roads, rough with thickets and brambles; falling in with the wearied Armenians, and being led before the king, he told him in a private interview what he had seen; he was then detained, but not harmed.

Presently the king, pretending that there was nothing to fear, secretly sent a horseman on the road to the right with orders to secure lodging and food; but after he had gone a little way, another was ordered to go with all speed towards the left on a similar errand, but without knowing that the other horseman had been sent in a different direction.

After these helpful precautions, the king himself, with his followers—the wayfarer tracing his way back amongst the thickets

After this, as soon as Danielus and Barzimeres, baffled, had returned, they were assailed with shameful reproaches as blunderers and slothful, and like venomous serpents whose bite had been blunted by the first attack, they sharpened their deadly fangs, intending as soon as they could and to the extent of their powers to injure him who had given them the slip.

And to palliate their fault or the deception which they had suffered from greater cleverness, they bombarded the ears of the emperor (most retentive of all gossip) with false charges against Papa, alleging that he was wonderfully skilled through the incantations of Circe[*](Cf. Odyss. x. 233 ff.) in changing and weakening men’s bodies; and they added that, having by arts of that kind spread darkness round himself,[*](Offusa sibi caligine refers to Papa, meaning that he had wrapped himself in a cloud.) and by changing his own form and that of his followers, having passed through their lines,

In this way the irreconcilable hatred of the emperor for Papa was increased, and plots were devised every day for taking his life either by violence or secretly; and to Trajanus,[*](Cf. xxix. 1, 2.) who was then in Armenia in command of the military forces, this work was entrusted through secret letters.

That general sought to win the king by treacherous flattery, now showing him letters of Valens as tokens of his calm state of mind, and now forcing himself upon his banquets; finally, when his plot was matured, he invited him with great respect to a luncheon. The king came, fearing no hostility, and took his place in the seat of honour granted him.

And when choice dainties were set before him, and the great building rang with the music of strings, songs, and wind-instruments,[*](For this combination, cf. xiv. 6, 18; Cic., Pro Rosc. Amer. 46, 134.) the host himself, already heated with wine, went out, under pretence of a call of nature. Then a rude barbarian, fiercely glaring with savage eyes and brandishing a drawn sword, one of the class called scurrae,[*](Guards; cf. xxix. 4, 4, note.) was sent in to kill the young man, who had already been cut off from any possibility of escape.

At this sight the young king, who, as it happened, was leaning forward beyond his couch, drew his dagger and was rising to defend his life by every possible means, but fell disfigured, pierced through the breast like some victim at the altar, foully slain by repeated strokes.

By such treachery was credulity basely deceived, and at a banquet, which ought to be respected even on the Euxine Sea,[*](Cf. xxii. 8, 33 f.)

True, some sought to excuse this recent extraordinary and shameful deed by the example of the assassination of Sertorius,[*](Slain by his lieutenant-general Perperna at a banquet; Plut., Sert. 26; Flor. ii. 10, 9; Vell. ii. 30, 1.) but those flatterers perhaps did not know that no act which is proved to be contrary to law is justified because another crime was similar or went unpunished, as Demosthenes, eternal glory of Greece, declares.[*](In Androt. 7, quoted by Quint. v. 14, 4; cf. Gell. x. 19.)