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).

And although, while this was being done, there was some thought that Gratianus would take it amiss that another emperor was chosen without his permission, this fear later vanished and men lived free from care, since Gratianus, besides being a kindly and righteous man, loved his kinsman with great affection and saw to his education.[*](Cf. Ausonius, Gratiarum actio ad Gratianurn, 7: piissimo: huius vero laudis . . . testimonium est . . . instar filii ad imperium frater adscitus. )

Meanwhile Fortune’s rapid wheel, which is always interchanging adversity and prosperity, armed Bellona in the company of her attendant Furies, and transferred to the Orient melancholy events, the coming of which was foreshadowed by the clear testimony of omens and portents.

For after many true predictions of seers and augurs, dogs leaped back when wolves howled, night birds

v3.p.379

rang out a kind of doleful lament, the sun rose in gloom and dimmed the clear morning light; at Antioch, in quarrels and riots of the common people, it became usual that whoever thought that he was suffering wrong shouted without restraint: Let Valens be burned alive! and the words of public criers were continually heard, directing the people to gather firewood, to set fire to the baths of Valens, in the building of which the emperor himself had taken such interest.