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).

  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.