Res Gestae

All this almost in plain speech showed that this kind of death[*](I.e., death by fire.) threatened him. Furthermore, the ghostly form of the king of Armenia and the piteous shades of those who shortly before had been executed in connection with the fall of Theodorus,[*](See xxix. 1, 8 ff.) shrieking horrible songs at night, in the form of dirges, tormented many with dire terrors.

A heifer was found lying lifeless with its windpipe cut, and its death was an indication of great and widespread sorrow from funerals of the people. Finally, when the old walls of Chalcedon were torn down,[*](Because of the conduct of the inhabitants at the time of the uprising of Procopius; cf. Socr., Eccl. Hist. iv. 8, and xxvi. 8, 2.) in order that a bath[*](Constantinianae thermae, Socrates, iv. 8.) might be built at Constantinople, and the rows of stones were taken apart, there was found on a squared block hidden in the midst of the structure of the wall an inscription containing the following Greek verses, clearly revealing what was to happen:

1. When gaily through the city’s festal streets
2. Shall whirl soft maidens in a happy dance,
3. When mournfully a wall shall guard a bath,
4. Then countless hordes of men spread far and wide
5. With warlike arms shall cross clear Istrus’ stream
6. To ravage Scythia’s fields and Mysia’s land.
7. But mad with hope when they Pannonia raid,
8. There battle and life’s end their course shall check.

However, the seed and origin of all the ruin and various disasters that the wrath of Mars aroused, putting in turmoil all places with unwonted fires, we have found to be this. The people of the Huns,[*](Cf. Zos. iv. 20; Sozom. vi. 37; Agathias, 5, 11 ff.) but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean, exceed every degree of savagery.

Since there the cheeks of the children are deeply furrowed with the steel[*](Cf. Sidonius, Paneg. ad Avitum, 243 ff.) from their very birth, in order that the growth of hair, when it appears at the proper time, may be checked by the wrinkled scars, they grow old without beards and without any beauty, like eunuchs. They all have compact, strong limbs and thick necks, and are so monstrously ugly and misshapen, that one might take them for two-legged beasts or for the stumps, rough-hewn into images, that are used in putting sides to bridges.[*](Used for adorning the parapets of bridges. Cf. Jordanes, 24.)