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).

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

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through which he had come and showing a rough path very narrow indeed for a loaded pack-animal— left the soldiers[*](Those who were lying in wait for him.) behind him, and made his escape. They, after capturing his messengers, who had been sent merely to confuse the minds of those who were lying in wait for the king, were almost expecting him to rush into their open arms, like a wild beast at a hunt.[*](I.e., being driven into a net.) But while they were waiting for his coming, he was restored safe and sound to his kingdom, where he was received with the greatest joy by his subjects; but thereafter he remained unmoved in true allegiance, bearing in silence all the wrongs that he had suffered.

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,

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if he survived this trickery, he would cause sad troubles.

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.