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).

I think it was under the influence of this that Cicero made the glorious statement in his defence of Oppius:[*](This speech of Cicero has not survived.) and indeed, to have great power for the salvation of another has brought honour to many; to have had too little power to destroy him has never been a reproach to anyone.

The greed for greater possessions without distinguishing right from wrong, and of seeking advantages of various kinds through the shipwreck of others’ lives, grew ever greater and became excessive in this emperor. This fault some tried to excuse by offering the example of the emperor Aurelian, declaring that as, when the treasury was

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exhausted after Gallienus and the lamentable disasters to the state, he fell upon the rich like a torrent, so Valentinian, after the losses of the Parthian campaign, feeling the need of a vast quantity of expenditure in order to provide reinforcements and pay for his troops, mingled with cruelty the desire to amass excessive wealth, affecting not to know that there are some things which ought not to be done, even if one has the power to do them. In this he was quite unlike the famous Themistocles, for when after the fight with the Persians and the annihilation of their army[*](Probably at Plataea.) the Athenian was aimlessly strolling about, and saw golden bracelets and a neck-chain lying on the ground, he turned to one of his attendants who stood near by and said: Pick up these, since you are not Themistocles, thus showing his scorn of any love of money in a noble leader.