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).
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,