Jordanes - Romana

JORDANES DE SUMMA TEMPORUM VEL ORIGINE ACTIBUSQUE GENTIS ROMANORUM And an American English translation by Brian T. Regan, Ph.D. Adjusted to classical-ecclesiastical spelling, with occasional modifications of the early medieval, misconstructed case endings to accord with classical Latin norms and better reveal the underlying meaning. (For the diplomatic text, see Theodorus Mommsen, 1882.) (This may be the first Latin-to-modern-language translation of the Romana since the 1842 French publication of August Savagner’s Jornandes: De la succession des Royaumes et des Temps [Paris: C.L.F. Panckoucke, 1842].), to which this version owes much. As Mommsen points out, Jordanes used (and largely plagiarized from) a number of sources, among which are the following: - The Chronological Tables for Olympiads 111 to 169 (= 336101 B.C.) of Eusebius, as translated into Latin by St. Jerome. In the margins of his edition, Mommsen lists the year numbers (counting from Adam) corresponding to each chapter. - Florus: The Epitome of Roman History (Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo), by the secondcentury A.D. author, Lucius Annæus Florus. Jordanes plagiarized Florus for much of chapters 87-210, 224, 236-237, 241-249, 251 (part)-254 of the Romana. - Rufus Festus’ The Accomplishments of the Roman People (Rufi Festi Breviarum rerum gestarum Populi Romani), addressed in 370 to Emperor Flavius Valens (A.D. 363—378). (Rufus Festus was magister memoriæ under Valens, whose most memorable accomplishment was being burnt to death by Goths in the battle of Adrianople, A.D. 378 August 9.) - Orosius’ Historiae adversum Paganos

- Eutropius’ Abridgement of Roman History - Marcellinus Comes, the Chronicon - Sextus Aurelius Victor, the “Epitome Victoris” The ancient Germanic names found in the Romana are here regularized according to the spellings given in M. Schönfeld, Wörterbuch der altgermanischen Personen- und Völkernamen, nach der Überlieferung des klassischen Altertums bearbeitet, zweite, unveränderte Auflage (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965). In the English translation, the Old Germanic, mostly Visigothic, form is spelled out, often with the name’s meaning. Thus, the name of the warlord who deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last Western emperor, is usually written as “Odoacer,” but is here presented as “Odowacar” in the Latin text, and in the English as “Auða-wakr” {“Blest-awake,” "Fortunate (in) alertness,” “Auspiciously conscious”}. 1 Thank you for your vigilance, most noble Brother Vigilius, for having finally awakened me with your questions from a long sleep. Thanks to God Almighty for having made you concerned so that not only you but others likewise should be vigilant. Congratulations on your merits! 2 For you want to be taught to understand the trials of the present world or when it began or what has been endured up to our time. You further add that from the stories of our predecessors I should pluck some little flowers and briefly relate to you how the Roman state began and endured, subjugated practically the whole world, and should endure up to now in the imagination; or even how the series of kings should have proceeded from Romulus and, in succession, from Augustus Octavian to Augustus Justinian — that this, however simply, I should nevertheless explain to you in my own words. 3

Granted that what you are urging can suit neither my linguistic talent nor my expertise, nonetheless, in order not to disregard the requests of a friend, I have collected widely strewn data in whatever way I could. And starting first from the authority of the divine Scriptures, which it is fitting to uphold, and running through the heads of families all the way to the Deluge of the earth, I have come down to the empire of Ninus who, reigning over the Assyrian people, conquered almost all of Asia, and all the way to Arbaces the Mede who, destroying the Assyrian empire, turned it into a Median one and held it up to Cyrus the Persian, who in like manner overturned the Median empire and changed it into a Parthian one, and thence all the way to Alexander the Great of Macedon who, having conquered the Parthians, transferred the empire into the control of the Greeks. 4 After that, the way in which Octavian Augustus Cæsar, overturning the Greek empire, placed it under the law and control of the Romans. And that before Augustus, through seven centuries the Roman Republic had subjected a number of states through the skill of its citizens, taking its origin from its founder Romulus — this I have, however briefly, nonetheless completed in the twenty-fourth year of Emperor Justinian, in this one tiny book dedicated to you. I have added to it another volume on the origin and deeds of the Getic people, which I published some time ago for our common friend, Castalia, so that, learning of the disaster of various peoples, you might desire to become free of all trouble and turn to God, who is true freedom. 5 So in reading both books, realize that compulsion constantly overhangs him who loves the world. You, on the other hand, listen to the Apostle John who says, “Dearly beloved, love neither the world nor the things in it. Because the world passes away, together with its desires. But he who does the will of God endures forever.” {1 John 2, 15-17} And with your whole heart be someone who loves God and his neighbor, so that you fulfill the law and pray for me, most noble and wonderful brother.

6 As Jamblichus {(Chalcidensis, A.D. 245 — 325, Assyrian Neoplatonist philosopher)} says, the Romans made the world their own through arms and laws: they established this, it is true, by arms, but they kept it by means of laws. Which I too, following that most erudite man, have considered necessary to preëstablish as a kind of extraordinary decoration for my little work as I consider writing a few things about the passage of time. For in response to the inquiries of my most faithful friend, after sampling things from the various volumes of our predecessors, I desire, as far as it is within my ability, to condense a few little flowers into a single one and to collect cursorily and briefly in a kind of historical summary both the sequence of years and also the exploits of those men who with great effort labored for the empire. 7 For however simple I believe these facts may seem to the highly educated, I think it will be welcome to ordinary people if they can read them in abbreviated form and, without boredom or any ornate language, can understand what they may be reading. For from the beginning of the world and the first creation both of man and of the elements until the world Deluge, I have, following the statements of that truthful lawgiver Moses, summarized two thousand four hundred and two years. During these years, while human nature was still primitive and simple, it was not kings but the heads of families that were over their tribes. Their sequence was as follows {cf. Genesis 5}: 8 Adam, the original man and first of mortals lived 230 years and begat Seth. Seth lived 205 years and begat Enoš. Enos autem lived 190 years and begat Kenan. Cainan item lived 170 years and begat Mahalalel.

Malelehel lived 165 years and begat Jared. Jareth vero lived 162 years and begat Enoch. Enoch vero lived 165 years and begat Mathuselah. Mathusala lived 167 years and begat Lamech. Lamech quoque lived 188 years and begat Noah. 9 Noah, however, was six hundred years old when the Deluge expiated the world’s horrible crimes. From his reign, or from the Deluge itself, until the confusion of tongues which was likewise caused by the sins of those who were building the Tower {[of Babel]} on the plain of Šinar, and up to Eber, in whom the Hebrew nation and original language continued because he was not part of that conspiracy, there are 525 years through the families in the following way {cf. Genesis 11, 1026}: 10 Arpachšad, the son of Šem, grandson of Noah, who was born the second year after the Deluge, lived 135 years and begat Kenan. Kenan, however, lived 130 years and begat Šelah. Šelah in turn lived 130 years and begat Eber. Eber also lived 130 years and begat Peleg. So from the confusion of tongues and the primacy of Eber (whence the Hebrews) and up to the birth of Abraham, when also Ninus, the first king in the world, ruled over the nation of the Assyrians, in the year 42 of his reign, if we run through the above-said sequence of families, the years amount to 541 thus: Peleg lived 130 years and begat Reu. Reu lived 132 years and begat Serug.

Serug on the other hand lived 130 years and begat Nahor. Nahor in turn lived 79 years and begat Terah. Terah also lived 70 years and begat Abram. 11 In all, thus, from Adam and up to the birth of Abram — that is, from the beginning of the world until the forty-second year of Ninus, the first king of the Assyrians, as we said above — through the families and their heads, it amounted to twenty generations, but 3,308 years; at this point now dropping families, let us pursue the sequence of kings and, like Eusebius or Jerome, running first through the monarchy of the Assyrians, then the of Medes and Persians and the Greeks, continue at greater length as to how power devolved upon the Roman empire, or under what sort of times, if the Lord allows. 12 We must begin with the ancient Assyria of kings and kingdoms, in which the first was Ninus, the son of {the god} Bel, who founded the city of Niniveh named after himself and reigned for 42 years, whereby starting from the first year of Ninus himself and until the final year of Tonos Concoleros (whom the Greeks call Sardanapal), whom Arbaces, satrap of the Medes, killed {888 B.C.}, transferring his kingdom to the Medes, the reign of thirty-six kings lasted for a thousand two hundred and forty years, thus: 13 Following the birth of Abram, Ninus, king of the Assyrians, reigned for 10 years. 14 Semiramis, Ninus’s wife, for 42 years: They say she is a kind of founder of Babylonia, even though it may not be recorded that

she founded it, but repaired it. manhood in Chaldea.

Under her Abram grew to

15 Zameis, also called Ninias, the son of Ninus and Semiramis, for 38 years: in his thirty-third year the Promise was made to Abram when he was 75 years old. 16 Arius, for 30 years: in his tenth year the centenarian Abraham begat his son Isaac. 17 Aralius for 40 years: in the last year of this man’s reign Isaac’s twins were born, that is, Jacob and Esau. 18 Xerxes, also called Balæus, for 30 years: in the reign of this man, in the time of Jacob, Esau, fleeing from his brother, went down alone to Egypt and came back up enriched with a throng. 19 Armamitres for 38 years: Jacob, leaving his service to his father-in-law Laban, returns to his father 20 Belochus, for 35 years: during this man’s reign Joseph as a young man tells his father and brothers about his dreams. 21 Balæus, for 52 years: in this man’s thirtieth year Jacob, impoverished by hunger, goes down to Egypt and there finds his son placed over the land of all Egypt. 22

Altadas for 32 years: during his reign Jacob died in Egypt; Joseph transported his body to the land of Canaan in great honor. 23 Maminthus for 30 years: Under the time of this man’s reign Joseph dies and the Egyptians oppress the Hebrews with harshest servitude. 24 Macchaleus for 30 years: during his reign too the servitude of the Hebrews continues in Egypt. 25 Sphærus for 30 years: in the final times of this man’s reign Amram of the tribe of Levi begat Moses. 26 Mamylus for 30 years: during his reign the maturing Moses learned all the wisdom of the Egyptians. 27 Sparæthus for 40 years: at which time Moses, having killed an Egyptian, flees to the land of Midian. 28 Ascatades for 40 years: in the eighth year of this man’s reign, Moses, in the 430th year of the Promise leads the Hebrew people with signs and wonders from Egypt and during forty years in the desert explains the Law to them. 29 Amyntes for 45 years: in this man’s ninth year Moses dies and presents Joshua {Vg. Josue: Book of Jošue} the son of Naun {Vg. Nun: Jos 2} to the people for their leadership.

30 Belochus for 25 years: under whom Gothoniel {Vg. Othoniel: Jdg 3} is a judge of the Hebrews and Phinehas {Vg. Phinees: Nbr 25} holds the priesthood. 31 Bellepares for 30 years: in which time Ehud {Vg. Aod: Jdg 3} and the aliens were extremely hostile. 32 Lamprides for 37 years: and in this man’s reign too, Ehud continues as a judge to the Hebrews. 33 Sosarmos for 20 years: and in this man’s times Ehud, even though old, nonetheless still stood firm and fought with the aliens and conquered, aided by God. 34 Lamperes for 30 years: during his reign Deborah headed the Jews, and Barak {Vg. Debbora, Barac: Jdg 4; 5}. 35 Panyas for 45 years: in whose time the Jews were led by Gideon {Vg. Gedeon: Jdg 6; 7; 8}, also called Jerubbaal. 36 Sosarmus for 19 years: in whose time Tola and Abimelech {Vg. Thola, Abimelech: Jdg 9; 10} were the judges of the Hebrews. 37 Mithræus for 29 years: under whom Jair headed the Jews.

38 Teutamus for 22 years: under whose reign Ibzan and Abdon {Vg. Abesan, Abdon: Jdg 12} were the judges of the Hebrews. Indeed at that very same time the Greeks devastated Troy; fleeing thence, Æneas came to Italy, joining with Latinus, the son of Faunus, grandson of Picus and great-grandson of Saturn, through relationship by marriage, having taken his daughter Lavinia as wife. The united Trojans and Italics they called Latins. 39 And thus now from that time and continuing on after Latinus, even though in a very poor kingdom and narrow territory (which was called the field of Laurentum), the rulers were Æneas and his successors, who were called Silvii and Albani after the city Albanum and after the posthumous son of Æneas, likewise named Æneas, who was surnamed “Silvius” because after the death of Æneas, Lavinia, fearing the hatred of Ascanius, secretely gave birth to him in a forest {“silva”} and called him “Æneas Silvius.” Before him, as we said above, Italy was ruled by Janus, Saturn, Picus, Faunus and Latinus for about 180 years. 40 Teutæus for 40 years: under whom the famous, superstrong Samson {Vg. Samson: Jdg 13; 15} was the strongest judge of the Hebrews. 41 Thinæus for 30 years: during the eighteenth year of his reign, the priest Eli {Vg. Heli: 1 Sam (Vg. 1 Kgs) 1-4}, hearing the news of his sons, the Ark of the Covenant snatched away, fell and died. 42 Dercylus for 40 years: under whom for a certain while Saul {Vg. Saul: 1 Sam (Vg. 1 Kgs) 9-31} was king of the Hebrews, for another while, however, David {Vg. Saul: 2 Sam (Vg. 2

Kgs), 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 1-2} of the tribe of Juda ruled, established as king. 43 Eupalis for 38 years: in the thirty-second year of his reign, Solomon {Vg. Salomon: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 2-11} started the temple of the Lord and completed it uniquely in the world in seven years. 44 Laosthenes for 45 years: and during his reign over the Assyrians, Solomon was king over the Hebrews, but Zadok {Vg. Sadoc: 2 Sam (Vg. 2 Kgs); 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs); 1 Chr (Vg. 1 Par) 24} and Ahijah of Shiloh {Vg. Ahias Silonites: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 11; 2 Chr (Vg. 2 Par) 9-10} were prophesying. 45 Pertiades for 30 years: under whom, with the death of Solomon, the kingdom of the Hebrews was divided between Rehoboam {Vg. Roboam: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 12, 14; 2 Chr (Vg. 2 Par) 1113; Eccl’cus 46} and Jeroboam {Vg. Jeroboam: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 11-16; 2 Kgs (Vg. 4 Kgs) 23; 2 Chr (Vg. 2 Par) 9-13; Eccl’cus 47}, and the ones were called Jews, the others Israelites. 46 Ophratæus for 20 years: under that man, on the side of the Jews, Jehoshaphat {Vg. Josaphat: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 22} reigned, but on that of the Israelites, following the swift deaths of Nadab and Basha, with Elah and Omri dying, Ahab {Vg. Achab: 1 & 2 Kgs (Vg. 3 & 4 Kgs), passim; 2 Chr (Vg. 2 Par) 18-22; Mic 6} held power with Jezebel{Vg. Jezabel: 1 Kgs (Vg. 3 Kgs) 16, 18, 19, 21; 2 Kgs (Vg. 4 Kgs) 9}. 47 Ophratanes for 50 years: under whom Jehoram, Ahaziah and Athaliah and Joash held the kingship on the side of Judah; but

on the Iraelite side, Ahaziah, Jehoram and Jehu succeeded to the principate one after the other. 48 Acraganes for 42 years: under whom Amaziah, called to the kingship in Judah, held the principate; But Jehoahaz and Joash reigned over Israel, one after the other. 49 Tonos Concoleros (whom the Greeks call Sardanapal) for 20 years: under whom, of the Jews were Azariah, also called Hoshaiah, and for the Israelites, Jeroboam. Thus after a thousand two hundred and forty years the empire of the Assyrians came to the end of that great length, and was transferred to the Medes. For Arbaces, the satrap of the Medes, after Sardanapal had been killed, invaded his empire and turned it over to the Medes. 50 Arbaces, king of the Medes, for 28 years: under whom reigned Azariah, also called Hoshaiah, on the side of Judah. In Israel, however, after Jeroboam, there was Zechariah for a few days, and in his turn Shallum, both of whom Menahem succeeded. 51 Sosarmus for 30 years: in the region of Judah Jotham reigned; for the Israelites, Pekiah, when in his fifteenth year {736 B.C.} the first Olympiad also began to be called {(actually the first one was in 776 B.C.)}. Then after what I might call innumerable Silvian and Albanan kings of the Laurentum area and in Latium, who for three hundred years reigned, however impoverishedly, in a section of Italy, King Amulius had made Rea, the daughter of his own brother Numitor (she was also called Ilia), a Vestal virgin. Being then discovered pregnant, when she strove to excuse her sin, she lied that she had been raped by Mars. When two twins were born of her, the king ordered them exposed. After some prostitute named Lupa {“She-wolf”} heard them crying, she immediately picked them up and took them to

Faustulus, a shepherd. His wife, Acca, nourishing them, taught them how to live among other shepherds. 52 Mamythos {(/ Mamythus / Manithus / Mamicus / Madichus / Medidus / Medydus)} for 40 years: during his reign over the Medes, Ahaz reigned over the Jews, over the Israelites a second Pekah. In the ninth year of Mamythos, the seventh Olympiad, Romulus and his brother (whom we said had been raised among shepherds), gathering a multitude of shepherds, began the building of the Roman city; and the younger one, who had killed his brother, ordered the city to be called Rome after his own name. Passing over this man’s actions and the line of his successors in a kind of leap I will, as I began, hurry through the foreign empires, and when the opportunity offers itself, return to that sequence. Only you who are reading this, note that from the beginning of the world and up to the birth of this great city there were 4,650 years. 53 Cardyceas for 13 years: under whom Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, succeeded to the throne of the Jews. For in the fifteenth year of the above-mentioned Mamythos, the Israelite people were led captive in the mountains by Shalmaneser, king of the Medes, after they had reigned in Samaria for 250 years. 54 Deioces for 54 years: early in this man’s time, Manasseh is reported to have been led captive from the Judah of the Hebrews and, bound in iron chains, done penance. His canticle of repentance is also read. Afterwards, however, having returned to his kingdom, he left his son Amon as his successor. 55 Phraortes for 22 years: under whom Josiah was the Jews’ king, who cut down the groves and cast the idols of the pagans out of his kingdom and uprightly worshipped the God of heaven.

56 Cyaxares for 32 years: under whom Jehoahaz reigned, succeeded by Eliakim, also named Jehoiakim, then another Jehoiachin acceded to the throne while the first Cyaxares was still living, under whom the end of the kingdom occurred {587 B.C.}. 57 Astyages for 38 years: in this man’s eighth year the Jews are captured from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians. Thus the empire of the Medes, which ruled for 248 years, was destroyed and delivered to the Persians, because Cyrus, the king of the Persians, and Darius of the Medes, the son of the above-said Astyages, connected by relationship, were nephew and maternal uncle. And falling upon Belshazzar, the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylonia (that is, of the Chaldeans), they overran his empire. And after the death of Darius, Cyrus also achieved his own empire — i.e., of the Persians — as well as of his relative through marriage, Darius — that is, of the Medes —, together with the third empire that he had captured. That people reigned through about 230 years from the aforesaid Cyrus and until Darius {III}, the son of Arsames, and thus from the Persian people fell into the hands of the Greeks after ten kings {331 B.C.}. {From Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 10, 11, 4 (Whiston’s translation):} And falling upon Belshazzar (irruentesque super Baltasar): Now after a little while, both he himself [i.e., Baltasar (Belshazzar)] and the city were taken by Cyrus, the king of Persia, who fought against him; for it was Balthasar under whom Babylon was taken, when he had reigned seventeen years. And this is the end of the posterity of king Nebuchadnezzar, as history informs us; but when Babylon was taken by Darius, and when he, with his kinsman Cyrus, had put an end to the dominion of the Babylonians, he was sixty-two years old. He was the son of Astyages, and had another name among the Greeks. 58

Cyrus the Persian for 32 years: ending their captivity, this man had almost fifty thousand Jews return to Judea. Having built an altar, they laid the foundations of a temple. And since they were hindered by neighboring peoples, the work remained incomplete until Darius. 59 Cambyses for 8 years: and under that man the work, blocked by neighboring peoples, came to a halt and ceased being built. 60 Two brothers, Persian priests, reign for 8 months. 61 Darius {I} for 36 years: in whose second year {519 B.C.} the temple was rebuilt by Zerubbabel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak in the five hundred twelfth year after the first construction under Solomon, from Adam, however, more or less 4,930. 62 Next Xerxes, the son of Darius, for 20 years: he reigned over the Persians, Medes and Chaldeans. 63 Artabanus for 7 months. 64 Artaxerxes, who was called “Longhand,” for 40 years. 65 Xerxes {II} for two months. 66 Sogdianus for 7 months.

67 Darius {II} surnamed “the Bastard,” for 19 years. 68 Artaxerxes {II}, also called Mnemon, the son of Darius {II} and Parysatis, for 40 years: he is the very same one called Ahasuerus by the Hebrews, under whom the book of Esther was made. 69 Artaxerxes {III}, also called Ochus, for 26 years: this man, namely, destroyed Sidon and subjected Egypt to his own rule and invaded the whole of Syria. 70 Arses, the son of Ochus, for 4 years: under whom was Jaddua, the greatest and magnificent high priest of the Jews. 71 Darius, the son of Asarmus {[a Persian satrap in Egypt]}, for 6 years: the Macedonian, Alexander the Great, who founded Alexandria in his own name, killed him and changed his empire into his own domain, which was ruled by Greek kings for 296 years. 72 Alexander the Great, after the death of Darius, for 5 years. 73 Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, for 40 years: this man again led the Hebrew people captive into Egypt. 74

Ptolemy Philadelphus for 28 years: this man having ended the captivity of the Jews and placated the Jewish high priest Eleazar with gifts, through seventy translators translated the divine Scriptures from the Hebrew language into Greek. 75 Ptolemy {III} Euergetes {I} for 26 years: in the times of this man, Jesus son of Sira wrote a book of wisdom {now often known as the “Wisdom of Sirach” or “Ecclesiasticus.” Actually it was written during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, Physcon}. 76 Ptolemy {IV} Philopator for 17 years: under this man the Jews were again conquered and sixty thousand of them killed by Antiochus {III}, the king of Syria, when Onias was also the great high priest. 77 Ptolemy {V} Epiphanes for 24 years: this man, through his legate Scopas, head of the military, captures Judea; after Scopas is in turn overcome by Antiochus, Antiochus allies Judea to himself in friendship. 78 Ptolemy {VI} Philometor for 35 years: under this king the Jew Aristobulus, a Peripatetic philosopher, wrote commentaries on the books of Moses and offered them to King Ptolemy. Antiochus, however, working against the law of the Jews, killed many of them. Against him Judas, also called « Maccabee » {(“Hammer”)}, revolted. 79 Ptolemy {VIII} Euergetes {II, Physcon (“Sausage-belly”)} for 28 years: during his reign there is Jonathan, an eminent leader of the Jews, who enters into alliance with the Romans and the Spartans.

80 Ptolemy {VIII Euergetes II} Physcon, also called “Soter” {II (“Savior”)}, for 17 years: under him, Aristobulus, Jonathan’s son, is made both king and high priest of the Jews. 81 Ptolemy {X}, also called Alexander, for 10 years: during his reign the Jewish people endured a great deal from the forces of both Alexander as well as of Antiochus. 82 Ptolemy {IX} Lathyros, who had been thrown out by his mother, for 8 years: Jannæus, also called Alexander, reigned over the Jews at that time. 83 Ptolemy {XII} Dionysus for 30 years: under whose reign Alexandra, also named Salina, the wife of Alexander {Jannæus} king of the Hebrews, rules over Jerusalem, from which time confusion and various disasters plague the Jews. 84 Cleopatra, for 22 years: with her reign the Jews, entering into friendship with the Romans, now live according to their laws, because Pompey, having removed Aristobulus, had placed his brother Hyrcanus in charge. Indeed, the Roman general Antonius, accepting Cleopatra and taking her to his own side, fought with his own citizens. Octavian Augustus, overcoming him on the Actian coast, forced both of the mated pair to kill themselves, and their kingdom became part of the empire of the Romans, where even up to now, and until the end of the world, according to the prophecy of Daniel, the succession of rule must be. And it must be kept in mind that Imperial power arises from that point. 85

Emperor Augustus, also called Octavian, after whom subsequent leaders were called “Augusti,” by both conquering domestic citizens and overcoming foreign peoples, acquired the sole principate, reigning for 55 years; in the forty-second year of his command, our Lord Jesus Christ, born of a holy virgin as true God thus and true man, shone forth in wondrous signs and powers in the year 5,500 from the beginning of the world, but 755 from the creation of the city of Rome. 86 And because you decided to inquire about the sequence and actions of Roman affairs, and we have promised to respond briefly to your inquiries, for the time being we therefore need to hold off on the things which are narrated about the times of Augustus and go back again to the beginnings of the Roman city, and to explain the origin of Romulus its founder, and simultaneously to explain clearly the years and actions of his successors, kings and consuls, which are as follows: 87 From the origin of the city of Rome and up to King Tarquinius, surnamed “the Arrogant” — who was also expelled —, the count of years is 753. For that famous first founder of the city and empire, Romulus, was conceived by Mars (to tell it in their own words) and Rea Silvia. The priestess confessed this about her pregnant self. Nor is the narrative then uncertain that when, thrown into the current with his brother Remus due to the command of King Amulius, he could not be killed, considering that {(the river-god)} Tiberinus even held the river in check and a she-wolf, abandoning her whelps and following the cries, gave her breasts to the infants and performed the function of a mother. 88 So Faustulus, a shepherd of the royal flock, took the infants, found near a tree, into his house and raised them. At that time the head of Latium was Alba {Longa}, the work of Julus {(Ascanius)}, for he had held in contempt the Lavinium of father Æneas. Amulius reigned now in the seventh generation

after these men, having dethroned his brother Numitor, whose daughter’s son was Romulus. So right from the initial appearance of his youth he expelled his paternal uncle from the citadel and deposed his grandfather. He himself, a lover of the river and the mountains among which he had been raised, developed the walls of the new city. 89 They were twins. It was decided to have the gods choose which of the two should start and reign. Remus took Mount Aventine, the other the Palatine. At first, the former saw six vultures, but the latter subsequently twelve. Thus the victor in the augury initiated the city, full of hope it would be a warlike one. The birds, adapted to blood and spoil, were promising that. It appeared that for the protection of the new city a wall would suffice. Remus, then ridiculing its narrow confines, jumped over it. He was murdered, it being uncertain whether it was at the order of his brother. Certainly he was the first sacrificial victim, and consecratred the defenses of the new city with his own blood. 90 He had made a picture of a city rather than a city: it lacked inhabitants. There was a grove nearby; he made this an asylum, and immediately there was an amazing number of men, Latin and Tuscan shepherds, even, from across the sea, Phrygians who were under Ænæas, Arcadians under the leader Euander, had flowed in. Thus out of various as it were elements he assembled a single body, and himself created the Roman people. The situation was of a single age, a population of men. And hence, because they were not getting them after having sought marriage from the neighboring tribes, it was taken by force of arm. During pretended equestrian games, the young women who had come to the spectacle became the spoils. 91 These events were immediately the cause of war. The Veientines were repulsed and put to flight. The town of the Cænines was captured and pillaged. In addition the king brought back by

hand the rich spoils from King Acron to the Feretrian Jove. The gates were betrayed to the Sabines by a virgin, Tarpeia, not by trickery, but the girl sought as a reward of her deed what they bore on their left arms — it being uncertain whether their shields or their bracelets. The Sabines, in order to keep their word as well as get revenge, buried her under their shields. With the enemy having thus been admitted inside the walls, there was a ferocious battle in the forum itself, to the point that Romulus prayed to Jove to stop the disgraceful flight of his own men. Hence the temple and Jupiter the Stayer. 92 Finally, the kidnapped women, their hair disheveled, intervened in the deadly matter; thus peace was made with Tatius, and a treaty was struck. And the following is sad to relate: that, having left their homes, the enemy emigrated into the new city and shared their ancestral wealth as dowry with their sons-inlaw. 93 With his forces increased in a short time, the highly intelligent king imposed this arrangement on the republic: the youth was divided by tribes in order to stand guard in horses and arms against sudden wars; planning for the republic was to be in the charge of the elders, who were called fathers because of their authority and the “Senate” {literally, “eldership”} because of their age. 94 With these things arranged, suddenly, while he was holding a speech in front of the city at the Goat’s Swamp, he disappeared from sight. Some thought he had been torn to pieces by the Senate because of his harsh personality; but a sudden storm and an eclipse of the sun gave the impression of a consecration. Julius Proculus gave credence to this, asserting that he had seen Romulus in a more awe-inspiring form than he had been, and that besides he had ordered that they should accept him as a god; he was called “Quirinus” in heaven; it had been decreed by the gods that Rome should become master of peoples.

95 Romulus was succeeded by Numa Pompilius whom they spontaneously summoned from his life in the Sabine town of Cures because of the man’s renowned religious abilities; he gave instructions on sacred rites and ceremonies and the entire cult of the immortal gods; he established the pontiffs, the augurs, the Salii and other priesthoods; and he sorted the year into 12 months, the days on which courts are allowed and not allowed. That man presented the heaven-sent shields and image of Pallas, the particular secret pledges of empire, and the twofaced Janus, the god of Faith of peace and war, above all the hearth of Vesta to be cared for by virgins so that following the example of the astronomical bodies, its flame might stand watch as the guardian of empire. All these things were as it were as the instruction of the distinguished goddess so that the primitives would more readily accept it. In the end he brought a fierce people to the point that the empire they had seized by force and injustice, they would govern through religion and justice. 96 Pompilius Numa was followed by Tullus Hostilius, to whom, in honor of his courage, the kingdom was freely given. This man introduced military discipline and the art of war-fighting. And thus, in an unexpected way, with his disciplined youth he dared to provoke the Albanans, a powerful people long holding the leadership. But when, because of equally matched strength and frequent battles, both sides were becoming weaker, by way of allowing the war to be shortened, the futures of both peoples were consigned to the Horatii and the Curiatii, triplets on the one side and brothers on the other. The battle was uncertain and beautiful, and striking in the outcome itself. On the one side, indeed, were three wounded men, on the other two killed; the Horatius who had survived, by adding trickery to his courage in order to break up the enemy, faked flight, and attacked and conquered them singly as they were able to follow him. Thus victory was granted by the hand of a single man (an honor elsewhere rare). Next, he disgraced this by the murder of a family member. For he had seen his sister crying at seeing him with the spoils of her betrothed, although an enemy. He avenged

this so untimely love of the virgin with his sword, so that he transgressed the laws, a crime. But his valor absolved his murder and his crime was less than his glory. 97 The Albanan did not stay in the alliance for long; for the citizens of Fidenæ were sent to war as assistance in accordance with the treaty. They waited between the two sides for the outcome. But the cunning king {Tullus Hostilius}, when he saw his allies trend toward the enemy, lifted his men’s spirits, as though he had ordered it. The result of that was hope for the Romans, fear for the enemy. Thus the deception of the betrayers came to naught. And so, with the enemy conquered, Mettius Fufetius, the breaker of the treaty, was tied between two chariots and torn in half by fast horses, and Alba {Longa} itself, even though the parent, was nonetheless wiped out as a competitor, when he had first transferred the entire wealth of the city and the populace itself to Rome — in short, so that a blood-related citizenry might not be seen to have perished but to have come back to its own body. 98 Next was Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Pompilius through his daughter, with an intelligence equal to his. Thus he both surrounded the walls with a[nother] wall and spanned the Tiber river, flowing into the city, with a bridge, and set up the colony of Ostia at the joint boundary of the sea and the river, presciently, that is, seeing in his mind even then the future — that the wealth and commerce of the entire world would be brought into that, as it were, maritime hotel of the city. 99 Later, Tarquinius Priscus, even though of overseas origin, on his own sought and achieved the kingship due to his hard work and elegance, since as a native of Corinth he blended Greek intelligence with Italian skills. He both amplified the majesty of the Senate in quantity and increased it by three centuries, to which level Attus Navius, a man highly skilled in augury, forbade increasing the number. As a test the king asked him

whether it were possible to do what he himself had undertaken in his mind to do. The man experienced in augury answered that it was possible. “But in fact,” he said, “I had been thinking that this whetstone could be cut with a razor.” And the augur responded, “You can.” And he did cut it. Hence the augurship is holy to the Romans. 100 Nor was Tarquinius more ready for peace than for war: for he subjugated twelve peoples of Etruria in frequent conflicts. Hence the fasces, the white, purple-striped curule shawls, the rings, the medals for men and horses, the generals’ cloaks, the purple-bordered togas; hence the fact that triumphs are done in a golden chariot with four horses, the painted togas and palmembroidered tunics; everything, finally, decorative and distinguished with which the dignity of command stands out, was introduced. 101 Servius Tullius next took over the reins of government, and his obscure origins did not stop him, even though born of a slave mother. For Tarquinius’s wife Tanaquil had raised the extraordinarily talented boy in a freeborn way, and a flame seen around his head had promised that he would be famous. Thus at the death of Tarquinius, Servius, through the efforts of the queen, was substituted in the place of the king as though for the time being, she engineered it so diligently that the kingship was conferred so through fraud, that it looked like it had been acquired legally. 102 By him the Roman people were listed in a census, sorted into classes, distributed to groups and colleagueships, and with the king’s utmost care the Republic was ordered in such a way that all the differences of inheritance, dignity, age, skills and functions were entered into tables, and thus an enormous citizenry was organized with the economy of a very small household.

103 Last of all the kings was Tarquinius {II, son of Tarquinius Priscus}, to whom the surname “the Arrogant” was given on account of his behavior. He preferred to seize his paternal throne, which was being held by Servius, rather than wait for it and, having sent assassins against him, exercized the power conferred by the crime no better than he had acquired it. Neither did Tullia {Servius’s daughter and wife of Tarquinius II} shrink from such behavior; riding in a wagon to salute her husband as king, she drove her startled horses over her bleeding father. 104 But he himself went on the prowl against the Senate with killings, among the people with beatings, against everyone with arrogance (which to good men is worse than cruelty); when he had tired of brutality at home, he finally turned against the enemies. Thus powerful towns in Latium were captured: Ardea, Ocriculum, Gabii, Suessa Pometia. Then he was also bloodthirsty against his own relatives. For he did not even hesitate to beat his son so that as a result there would be trust among the enemy towards him when he pretended to be a deserter. 105 After, as he had wanted, the son had been welcomed by the Gabii and was asking through messengers what he wanted done, by striking off the fortuitously tall heads of poppies with a stick, when he wanted it understood by this that the leaders were to be killed, he answered in such a way (with what arrogance!) that they had nonetheless sensed it. 106 With the spoils of the captured cities he erected a temple. When he was consecrating it, while the other gods yielded, an amazing thing is said to have come up: the gods Youth and Terminus stood fast. The soothsayers were pleased by obstinacy of the supernaturals, since they promised everything would be firm and eternal. But the thing that was more alarming was that a human

head was found by the men building the temple. No one doubted that that awe-inspiring prodigy was promising the headquarters of empire and the capital of the earth. 107 The Roman people endured the arrogance of the king as long as there was no lust; it could not tolerate this outrage from his children. When one of them committed the rape of Lucretia, a woman of the highest dignity, the matron expunged her disgrace by suicide with a knife, the rule of kings was terminated. 108 This is the first stage of the Roman people and, as it were, the infancy which it had under seven kings over, as we said, 243 years — through certain workings of the fates as well as the talent of various people, according as the condition and need of the Republic demanded it. 109 For what could have been more fiery than Romulus? It took such a man to usurp the kingship. What could have been more pious than Numa? The times demanded it so that a barbarous people might be tamed by fear of the gods. What about that creator of the military, Tullus, so necessary to sharpen the valor of fighting men with discipline? What about that builder, Ancus, to extend the city with a colony, unite it with a bridge, protect it with a wall? 110 Then indeed, how much dignity did the ornaments and insignia of Tarquinius add to a royal people in its very dress? What did the census carried out by Servio accomplish other than that the very Roman Republic came to know itself? Finally, the intolerable tyranny of the notorious Arrogant helped somewhat — or rather, a great deal. For what was thereby achieved was that the people, harried by injustices, were fired with a desire for freedom.

111 Having changed from the royal tyranny, the people resorted to the headbands of consuls. There were two consuls each year governing the Republic, succeeded in the following year by others coming up. And knowing that they would be ruling over the people only for a single year, they acted toward others in the same way that they wanted those to act later toward themselves. 112 This arrangement maintained its validity until Cæsar Augustus, through 916 men over 458 years. For nine years, that is, it was without consuls but only under the tribunes, four without judges. 113 For after the expulsion of the kings, for one year individual senators governed the Republic for five days each; and then, having created two consuls, Brutus and Collatinus, they afterwards kept the arrangement up until Pansa and Sergius {actually Hirtius}, over the aforementioned years. 114 And because I have been on my guard about the fact that writing the names and actions of all the consuls would be wearisome for me and distasteful for you, reader, in sampling a few things from it all, I have passed over a great deal, because I realize that it is material now used and condensed by only a few. 115 So the first of the consuls < were > Brutus and Collatinus, to whom the dying matron had entrusted her avengement. The Roman people, to claim their liberty and the dignity of chastity, driven by a kind of divine impulse, suddenly deposed the king, pillaged his possessions, consecrated the field to their own god Mars, and transferred power to those same champions of their liberty, changing, nonetheless, as we said, both the law and the title.

116 Indeed, from a perpetual it was decided it should be an annual office, from a one-man to a two-man one, lest power be corrupted by a single man’s dominance or by length of time; and the people called them consuls instead of kings, so that they would remember they had to consult the interests of their citizens; and such joy over the new freedom took hold that they could hardly believe in the changed status, and they divested one of the consuls — the husband of Lucretia — of the fasces and expelled him from the city just because of his royal name and clan. 117 So Horatius Publicola, replacing him, strove quite zealously to amplify the majesty of this free people. For he lowered the fasces before it in public assembly and gave it the right of challenge against them {i.e., the consuls} themselves. And to avoid causing offense by the sight of his palace, he located his own tall house down in the flatland. 118 Brutus, on the other hand, set his course toward the favor of the citizenry even at the expense of the destruction of his own house and the killing of his own family members. Indeed, when he had discovered that his own sons were intent on calling the kings back into the city, he dragged them out into the forum and, in the midst of the assembly, beat them with rods and beheaded them with an ax, so that as a public parent he would be clearly seen to have adopted the people in the place of his children. 119 From here the now free Roman people took up their first arms against foreigners for the sake of liberty, following that for boundaries, next for their allies, then for glory and power, with neighbors provoking them on all sides. The reason was that, when there was no clod of national soil but only enemy boundary-land immediately adjacent and, situated in the middle between Latium and the Etruscans as though in a kind of

crossroads, they would run into enemies from every gate — until as in a kind of contagion things went on and, seizing whatever was nearby, they reduced the whole of Italy to themselves. 120 For Porsenna, the king of the Etruscans, had arrived with vast forces and was trying to reinstall the Tarquinians by force of arms. But no matter how he laid on pressure with weapons and starvation and, by occupying Janiculum hill, had a grip on the throat of the city, they held him off, pushed him back, and finally even struck him with such admiration that of his own accord the superior leader struck a treaty of friendship with those who were almost conquered. 121 For Mucius Scævola, the bravest of the Romans, in ambush attacked the king in his own camp. But when, after striking instead a courtier in purple by mistake, he was taken captive, he thrust his hand into a burning brazier and doubled the fear by a ruse. “Behold,” he said, “the kind of a man you are fleeing from: three hundred of us have sworn the same thing.” Since during this — incredible to say! — the latter was unflinching, the king trembled, as though the latter’s own hand were burning. 122 Thus, indeed, the men. But neither did the other sex lack praise. Consider the valor of virgins as well: Clœlia, one of the hostages given to the king, escaping custody, rode on horseback through her country’s river. The king, alarmed indeed by so many and such great prodigies of valor, bade them be free and farewell. 123 The Tarquinians, however, fought for a long time until Brutus killed Arruns, the king’s son, with his own hand and died atop him due to a wound from him — clearly as though he were pursuing the rapist all the way to the underworld.

124 In the same way the Latins were overcome, conquered and subjugated: Satricum and Corniculum, Sora and Alsium — their cities captured and a province created. It is embarrassing about Verulæ and Bovillæ, but the Romans celebrated a triumph over them. Tibur, now a suburb, and Præneste, a summer resort, were attacked after making vows on the Capitol. 125 In those days Fæsulæ was viewed the same as Carrhæ recently; the Arician grove as the Hercynian forest {the forested mountain ranges of Europe}; Fregellæ, as Gesoriacum {today Boulogne}; the Tiber as the Euphrates. And the conquest of Corioli too (what a shame!) was taken as so glorious that Gnæus Marcius “Coriolanus” put the captured city onto his name as though it were “Numantia” or “Africa.” 126 There still exist spoils won from Antium which Mænius attached to a platform of the forum after having captured an enemy fleet — if, that is, it really was a “fleet,” for there were six beaked ships. But that number made a naval war in those early days. Yet the most stubborn of the Latins were the Æqui and the Volsci, and they were, if I may say so, Rome’s everyday enemies. 127 But these were subdued mainly by Titus Quintius, the famous dictator from the plow, who saved the besieged and almost already captured camp of Manlius with a spectacular victory. It happened to be in the middle of sowing time when the lictor reached the patrician gentleman laboring with his plow in the midst of his work. 128 Leaving from there to the battle line, in order not to deviate from the pattern of his farm work, he sent the vanquished under the

yoke like farm beasts and, with the end of the campaign and having gained a triumph, the farmer returned to his cattle. Good heavens, with what speed! — Within fifteen days the war had been begun and ended, so that it totally seemed the dictator had rushed to get to the work left undone. 129 In the same way the Vejentes, Falisci and Fidenates were then conquered with great effort. How and if they ever were, is not to be seen. What remains are there? What trace? For mere trust in the annals has a hard time making us believe that the Veji, Falisci and Fidenates ever existed. 130 But the Gallic Senones, a people fierce by nature, undisciplined in their ways, plus given the size of their bodies and correspondingly enormous weapons, were so fearsome in every way that they seemed to be born for the extermination of human beings and the destruction of cities. Having once started out from the farthest shores of earth and the all-encompassying ocean in an enormous train, after they had already devastated the intermediate reaches, they took up residence between the Alps and the Po river; but not content with this either, they raged thoughout Italy. 131 Then they besieged Clusium, a city of Etruria, where the Romans intervened for their allies and federates, as usual sending out ambassadors. But what law is there among barbarians? They reacted all the more savagely, and from that came battle. The Gauls turned from Clusio to Rome. The consul Fabius met them at the river Alliam with his army. It is hard to find a more disgraceful disaster. And so Rome has condemned that day for official business. 132 With our army routed, the Gauls the approached the walls of the city, where there was almost no protection. It was therefore then

that the true Roman valor appeared in a way as never anywhere else. First of all the elders, who had held the highest offices, gathered in the forum and there, with the high priest there reciting the prayers, consecrated themselves to the divine dead, and all immediately returned to their homes just as they were in white robes, and in finest attire sat down in curule chairs, so that when the enemy came, each would die in his own dignity. 133 But the pontiffs and priests took whatever was most sacred in the temples and in part hid it in jars buried in holes dug in the earth, in part putting it on wagons and taking it with them to the town of Veji. At the same time the virgins of the priesthood of Vesta accompanied the fleeing sacred objects barefoot. Still, it is recorded that the refugees were picked up by a man of the people, Albinius, who, making his wife and children get out, took the virgins into his wagon. It was to such an extent that even in extremity public religion was given precedence over private affection. 134 But the youth, which is known with certainty to have been hardly a thousand men, took over the citadel of Capitoline hill under the leadership of Manlius, having invoked Jove himself as though he were present, so that just as they had run to defend his temple, he would see to their valor with his divine guidance. 135 Meanwhile the Gauls were present and they were coming into an open city. There they venerated the elders in their official dress as gods and spirits as they sat in the curule chairs; then, after it was clear that they were human beings, otherwise deigning to respond nothing, they slaughtered them with equal madness and threw torches into the houses and leveled the entire city with fire, sword and by hand. 136

For six months the barbarians (who would have believed it?) hung around that one mountain, not just days but also nights, trying everything, while Manlius, awakened by the cackling of a goose, nonetheless threw down off of the high cliff those climbing up by night; and in order to deprive the enemy of hope, even though starving, he nonetheless, to give the impression of confidence, threw bread down from the citadel. 137 And on a certain appointed day he sent the pontiff Fabius from the citadel through the midst of the enemy’s guards to offer a solemn sacrifice on the Quirinal mountain. And with the help of religion he returned safe through the midst of the enemy’s weapons and announced that the gods were propitious. In the end, after he had made the barbarians tired of their siege, they sold their retreat at the price of a thousand pounds of gold, < doing so with insolence as, to the unfair weights, adding a sword in addition, they barked arrogantly, “Woe to the conquered.” Suddenly attacking from behind, Camillus fell on them so hard > that he erased all of the traces of the conflagration with a flood of Gallic blood. The section in angular brackets, , () is actually a lacuna in Jordanes’ text, and has been supplied from Book 1, chapter 13, sentence 17 of Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo by Lucius Annæus Florus. 138 As a result, a city shone forth from what had once been a shepherd’s hut: after its outward shape had been reclaimed by Manlius and restored by Camillo, it rose again vigorously and even more forcefully against the neighboring peoples. 139 But the Romans were not content with just having driven them from their walls. Since they were dragging their shattered remains all over Italy, under Camillo’s leadership they pursued them so that today no traces of the Senones survive. Once, in

single combat Manlius took, among the spoils, a gold torque off of a barbarian, whence he is also called “Torquatus.” 140 Another time in the Pomptine region, when Valerius, helped by a sacred bird sitting on his helmet, carried off spoils, he himself was also called “Crowman” {(“Corvinus”)}. Nonetheless, in addition to this, a few years later Dolabella wiped out all the rest of them at Lake Vadimonis in Etruria so that no one might be left of that people which might boast of having burnt the Roman city. 141 After Manlius Torquatus turned from the Gauls, the Latins were taken on and conquered. 142 Next the Sabines, who had become their allies in war under the leadership of Tatius, were subjugated by the consul Curius Dentatus, and with fire and sword their territories were laid waste from the source of the Varanius {(confusion of “the Nar, the Anio and the Veline sources” [«Nar, Anio, fontes Velini»] in Florus)} all the way to the Adriatic Sea, and so greatly added wealth to the Roman people that not even he himself who had conquered could estimate it. 143 Moved by the entreaties of Campania, not for itself but for its allies, Rome attacked the Samnites. And because the region of Campania is the most beautiful not only of Italy but of almost the entire world. Nothing is more mild than its climate; indeed, it has spring with flowers twice a year. Nothing is richer than its soil — because of which it is said to be a source of contention between Bacchus and Ceres. Nothing is more hospitable than its sea: here are those noble ports of Cajeta, Misenus, and Bajae with its warm springs, the Lucrinus and Avernus lagoons — so to speak outflows of the sea. Here are the friendly, vine-clad montains Gaurus, Falernus, Massicus and that most beautiful of

all, Vesuvius, imitator of Ætna’s fire. The seaside cities are Formiæ, Cumæ, Puteoli, Herculaneum, Pompey — and Capua, itself chief of the cities, once to be counted with Rome and Carthage as among the three greatest. 144 For this city, these regions, the Roman people invaded the Samnites — a people, if you are looking for opulence, armed with gold and silver, weapons and multicolored vestments to the point of pretentiousness; if deception, usually on the prowl in forest defiles and mountain blinds; if madness and furor, whipped up through religious laws and human victims to destroy our City; if obstinacy, more antagonistic through a treaty broken six times and through their very disasters. Nonetheless, over fifty years, through the Fabian and the Papirian fathers and sons, Rome subjugated and subdued them, obliterated even the ruins of their cities, to the point that today Samnium is missing in Samnium itself, and the material basis of twenty-four triumphs does not readily appear. 145 Yet the most noteworthy and famous defeat by this people was suffered at the Caudine Forks, during the consulship of Veturius and Postumius. With the Roman army, as a result of an ambush, within that canyon where it could not get out, Pontius, the enemy leader, dumbfounded at such an opportunity, consulted his father Herennius. The latter, as the more mature man, wisely advised him either to let them all go or kill them all. The former preferred to send them, divested of their arms, under the yoke, so that they did not become friends through the benefice, and after the humiliation were bitterer enemies. 146 And so the consuls immediately also graciously removed the shame of the treaty with their voluntary surrender. And under their leader Papirius, the soldiery, demanding vengeance — horrible to narrate! —, before the battle raged with drawn swords through the path itself, and the enemy was witness to the fact that in the clash the eyes of them all were burning. Nor was

an end put to the slaughter before the Romans imposed the yoke promised to themselves on the leader of the Samnites and the enemy. 147 Up to this point dealings were with single tribes, thereafter groupwise. Even so, Rome was also a match for them all. The twelve tribes of the Etruscans, the Umbrians unscathed up to that time, the most ancient people of Italy, the remnants of the Samnites — suddenly conspired for the extinction of the Roman name. There was enormous fear of so many and such great peoples all at once. The hostile standards of four armies flew widely throughout Etruria. 148 Meanwhile the Ciminian forest was in the way, formerly completely pathless like the Caledonian or Hercynian one — so terrifying that the Senate warned the consul not to try going into such a danger. But none of that scared the general from sending his brother to explore for access. The latter, in shepherd’s dress reconnoitering everything by night, reported that the way was safe. 149 Thus Fabius Maximus completed a very dangerous way without danger. For he attacked disordered and straggling men and, having captured the mountain heights, thundered down on the men below at his pleasure. For the appearance of that war was as if weapons were being hurled down on earthlings from the sky and clouds. But that victory was still not bloodless. For the other consul, Decius, surprised in the hollow bottom of a valley, patriotically offered his head, devoting it to the gods of the underworld, and turned a consecration traditional in his family into the price of victory. 150 The Etruscan war was not yet out of the way, when next the Tarentine war followed, one in name, but multiple in victories.

For this one involved the Campanians, the Apulians and the Lucanians, and the chief of the war, the Tarentines, that is, almost all of Italy, and with all of these Pyrrhus, the famous king of the Epirians of Greece, together in a single as it were collapse, which at the same time finished off Italy and foretokened overseas triumphs. 151 Tarentus, a work of the Lacedæmonians, once the capital of Calabria, Apulia and all Lucania, famous both for its size and walls and port as well as its marvelous site, since, placed at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, it sends ships to all countries: Histria, Illyricum, Epirus, Achaia, Africa, Sicily. 152 A theater projects out over the harbor, placed looking toward the sea, which indeed was the cause of all the disasters to the unfortunate city. By chance they were celebrating their games when they saw a Roman fleet rowing up to the shore and, thinking it an enemy, rushed out indiscriminately and began hurling insults. After all, who or whence were the Romans? But that was not enough. An embassy was on the spot bearing a complaint: this too they vulgarized indecently with obscene insults disgusting to mention. And from this came war. 153 But the preparations were horrible, since so many peoples rose up simultaneously for the Tarentines and, fiercer than all, Pyrrhus, who came to defend the half-Greek city founded by Lacedæmonians with all the forces of Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia and — what were unknown at that time — elephants, by sea, land, with men, horses, weapons, and the additional terror of wild beasts. 154 It was near Heraclea of Campania and the river Siris, in the consulate of Lævinus, that they fought the first battle, which was so fierce that Obsidius, the head of the Ferentan squadron,

attacking the king, threw him into disorder and forced him to leave the battle, throwing away his standards. It would have been all over if the elephants, turning the war into a show, had not charged. Our horses, startled by both their size and hideousness and new smell and sound, when they thought the beasts, unfamiliar to them, to be something more than they were, caused flight and slaughter all over. 155 After that in Apulia near Asculum the fighting was more successful, in the consulship of Curius and Fabricius. For now the terror of the beasts had worn off, and Gajus Numicius, a frontline spearman of the Fourth Legion, had shown that when the trunk of one of them was cut off the beasts could die. So javelins were showered on them and torches, slung at the towers, covered the entire formation with fiery ruination. And there was no end to the slaughter until night interrupted it and the king himself, the last of the fleeing men, wounded in the shoulder, was carried back on his own shield by his bodyguards. 156 The last battle was the one of Lucania, close to what they call the Arusine prairie, with the same leaders as before, but this time a total victory. The result that valor would have given was given by chance. For after the elephants had again moved forward into the front line, the blow of a heavy weapon in its head turned away one of their calves which, while running back through the carnage of its own side, was trumpeting in pain, its mother recognized it and, as though to rescue it, sprang out of formation, then with her heavy bulk threw everything around her into chaos as though it were enemy. And so the same beasts that took from us the first victory and made the second one a draw, handed over the third one without controversy. 157 But indeed not only with arms and in the field, but with craftiness and also domestically within the City that the struggle with King Pyrrhus was carried on. Indeed, after the first victory, recognizing Roman fighting strengh, he immediately despaired

of arms and resorted to ruses. For he cremated the slain and treated captives indulgently and returned them without ransom and, sending ambassadors to the City, made every effort to be taken into our friendship by concluding a treaty. 158 But in war and peace, domestically and abroad, by then Roman grandeur manifested itself in every way, and nothing showed the strength of the Roman people, the wisdom of the Senate, the heroism of the generals more than a Tarentine victory 159 And no more beautiful or spectacular triumph ever entered the City. Before that day it would have seen nothing but the cattle of the Volsci, the flocks of the Sabines, the wagons of the Gauls, the broken weapons of the Samnites. But now, if you were looking at captives, there were Molossi, Thessalians, Macedonians, the Bruttian, the Apulan and the Lucan; if at the parade, gold, crimson robes, statues, pictures and Tarentine luxuries. But the Roman people viewed nothing with more pleasure than the beasts which they had feared with their towers, which, not without a sense of captivity, followed the victorious horses with bowed necks. 160 After the Tarentine downfall, the Picentes and their tribe’s capital, Asculum, were conquered by General Sempronius who, upon the ground’s quaking in the middle of the battle, appeased the goddess Earth by promising a temple. 161 To the Picentes were added the Salentines and the capital of these regions, Brundisium, given its famous port, under the generalship of Atilius, and in this struggle the shepherd’s goddess, Pales, demanded a temple on her own. 162

The last of the Italics joining the alliance were the Volsini, the richest of the Etruscans, imploring help against their own former slaves who had turned the freedom given them by their masters against them and, transferring governmental power to themselves, were lording it over them. But under the general Fabius Gurges they too paid the penalty for it. 163 Having subdued and subjugated Italy, the Roman people under the consul Appius Claudius first crossed the strait notorious for its mythical monstrosities and violent in its tides. But it was so little afraid that it even embraced that very tidal violence as a godsend, because the speed of the ships was helped by the sea. And immediately and without delay they conquered the Hiero of Syracuse with such speed that he himself confessed he had been defeated before seeing the enemy, 164 In the consulship of Duilius and Cornelius the nation dared to fight even at sea. Indeed, that time the very speed of the fleet’s construction was an omen of victory. For within sixty days of when the forest had been cut, a fleet of one hundred sixty ships rode at anchor, in a way that they seemed not handmade, but trees converted and changed into ships by a kind of gift of the gods. The shape of the battle was amazing, since our heavy and slow ships entangled the swift and rapid ones of the enemy. Their nautical skills of brushing up against and twisting off the oars, and of outmaneuvering shipbeaks were of no avail to them. For iron grappling-hooks and strong devices, much derided by the enemy before the battle, were thrown onto them and the enemy was forced to fight as on solid ground. 165 Thus the victor at the Lipara islands, having sunk or put to flight the enemy fleet, celebrated the first maritime triumph. What joy of it there was!: since Duilius, the commander, non content with the triumph of one day, throughout his whole life, whenever returning from the banquet, ordered torches lit and flutes played to him, as though he were triumphing every day. In comparison

with such a great victory, the loss incurred in this battle was light: the other consul, Asina Cornelius, was ambushed; invited to a pretended conference and so killed, he was an example of Punic treachery. 166 When Calatinus was dictator, he dislodged almost all of the garrisons of the Carthaginians from Agrigentum, Drepana, Panhormus, Eryx and Lilybæum. There was a great deal of fear in the area of the Camerine forest. but through the extraordinary valor of Calpurnius Flamma, a military tribune, we escaped. Choosing a band of three hundred men, he seized a hillock occupied by the enemy and delayed the enemy long enough so that the entire army escaped. And in that way he equalled the spectacular success of Thermopylæ and the fame of Leonidas; but our man was more illustrious than the latter, because he survived such a great exploit, though he penned nothing in his blood. 167 In the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, when Sicily was already a suburban province of the Roman people, with the spreading war they crossed over to Sardinia and adjoining Corsica. With the destruction of the cities of Olbia on this island and Aleria on that one they terrified the natives and cleansed the Carthaginians from all the land and sea to the point that for victory nothing remained except Africa itself. 168 Under the leadership Marcus Atilius Regulus the war sailed to Africa. There had been no lack of those who quailed at the very name of the Carthaginian sea and its terror. Moreover the tribune Natius {? Nautius? Mannius?} increased the fear: drawing his ax at whomever unless he obeyed, with the fear of death the commander inspired the courage to sail. Given wind and oars, everything then went fast, and such terror of the enemy’s arrival seized the Carthaginians that Carthage was captured almost with open gates.

169 The first introduction to the war was the city of Clupea. For it jets out from the Carthaginian shore like its first citadel and watchtower. Both this and three hundred other fortresses were laid waste. Fighting was done not just with men but with monsters as well, since a serpent of amazing size, found along the Bagrada, seemingly born to avenge Africa, harrassed the camp. 170 But Regulus, the conqueror of all, having spread the fear of his name far and wide and either having captured or holding in chains a great deal of the soldiery and the generals themselves, and having sent on ahead to the City a fleet loaded with immense booty and heavy with triumph material, he now beset Carthage itself, the head of the war, with a siege and fixed on the gates themselves. 171 Here fortune reversed a bit, only so that there might be more displays of Roman valor, whose greatness is normally proven by misfortunes. For when, after the enemy had turned to foreign assistance, Lacedæmon had sent them the general Xanthippus, Regulus was defeated by a man highly versed in warfare, and — a disgraceful disaster and in experience one unknown to Romans. For that enormously brave commander fell alive into the hands of the enemy. 172 But the great man was indeed equal to such a calamity, for he was broken neither by the Carthaginian prison nor the mission he undertook. On the contrary, he advised the opposite of what the enemy had ordered: that there should be neither peace nor an exchange of captives. But his majesty was disfigured neither by his voluntary return to his enemies nor his final imprisonment or execution. In fact what else was more admirable that all of these things than that he triumphed as conqueror over his conquerors and even — because he did not leave Carthage —

over fortune? On the other hand, the Roman people were all the more bitter and more focussed on revenge for Regulus than on victory. 173 Thus in the consulship of Metellus when the Carthaginians were conspiring in a more concentrated way and the war had shifted back to Sicily, the Roman army defeated the enemy so badly that they never again thought about attacking that island. The main result of that huge victory was the capture of about a hundred elephants. Hence it also achieved considerable booty if it had captured that herd not in war but in hunting. 174 When Appius Claudius was consul, he was defeated not by enemies but by the gods themselves whose auspices he had scorned, with the fleet being immediately sunk there where he had ordered the chickens thrown overboard because he was being forbidden by them to fight. 175 Marcus Fabius Buteo defeated an enemy fleet already in the African sea off Ægimurus sailing freely to Italy. And then what a triumph was lost as a result of a storm when the rich spoils of the fleet, driven by contrary winds, filled Africa and the Syrtes, the nations of all peoples, the shores of islands, with its shipwreck! It was a massive disaster, but not without some merit to the royal people that the tempest-intercepted victory and triumph had been lost by shipwreck. And still, since the Carthaginian spoils were floating around all the promontories and islands, the Roman people triumphed even so. 176 Under the consul Lutatius Catulus an end was finally put to the war off the islands called the Ægatæ. At no other time was there ever any greater battle at in the sea: for the fleet was there heavy with provisions, an army, turrets, weapons and in it, so to say, the whole of Carthage — which very thing was its downfall.

The Roman fleet was nimble, light, unencumbered — and was maneuvered as in a kind of campground exercise, using oars just as a sort of reins after the fashion of a cavalry battle, and the shipbeaks, moving into these or those ramstrikes, gave the appearance of living creatures. Thus in a moment the enemy’s shredded barges covered the entire sea between Sicily and Sardinia with its wreckage. In the end, that victory was so great that there was no question of destroying the enemy’s walls. It seemed idle to vent fury against a citadel and walls when Carthage had already been deleted at sea. 177 If indeed the Punic War was finished and our breath not yet caught for a short while, the Ligurian followed. For these Ligures, sticking to the low ranges of the Alps between the Varus and Macra rivers, subsisted hidden in forested thickets, a people whom it was almost a greater task to find than to conquer. Indeed, safe through their locations and by flight, a rugged and fleet-footed type, they engaged in opportunistic robbery rather than wars. So while for a long time and to a great degree the Salluvii, Deciates, Oxubii, Euburiates, and the Ingauni had eluded us, Fulvius finally surrounded their hideouts with fire, while Bæbius drew them down to the plains, Postumius disarmed so them that he hardly left them the iron for the earth to be cultivated with. 178 Soon after them, the Gauls. The Insubres and these inhabitants of the Alps have the minds of wild animals, bodies larger than human, but — it has been learned by experience — indeed, just as their strength is, on the first attack, greater than that of men, so the following one is less than that of women. Alpine bodies raised in a wet climate have something similar to their snows: as soon as the fight has warmed up, they immediately break out in sweat and are dissolved by light exertion as though by the sun. 179 These men had often sworn both at other times and also under their leader Brittomarus {(= Viridomarus)} not to doff their

swordbelts before they had climbed the Capitol. Moreover this happened, and Æmilius unbelted them, defeated, on the Capitol. And because their leader had vowed a gold torque made out of the spoils taken from Roman soldiery to his god Mars, Jupiter intercepted the vow, and Flaminius erected a gold trophy to Jupiter from the torques of Ariovisto himself and the rest of the Gauls. Their king Viridomarus, too, had promised Roman weapons to Vulcan: the vows turned out otherwise. For after he was killed, Marcellus hung the third set of leader’s spoils after father Romulus up to Feretrius Jupiter. 180 But the Illyrians, that is, the Veneti, or Liburni, dwell in the extreme ends of the Alps between the Arsia and Titus rivers, strewn far and wide along the whole coastline of the Adriatic Sea. These people, with a woman, Teutana, as ruler, not content with depredations, added crime to their lawlessness. For Roman ambassadors bringing legal action for wrongs they had committed were slain by them — not, indeed, with a sword, but like sacrificial victims, with an ax; they burned the captains of the ships to death; and what was even more insulting, it was a woman who ordered it. So under the leadership of Gnæus Fulvius Centumalus the were subdued far and wide. And axes wielded on the necks of their leaders offered sacrifice to the ghosts of the ambassadors. 181 After the first Punic war there was a respite of barely four years: behold, there was a second war, admittedly less in duration — since spanning no more than 18 years — but so terrible in the hideousness of its disasters that, if anyone were to compare the losses of both peoples, the people that conquered would be more like the one conquered. It galled the noble people that the sea had been taken from them, the islands seized, the nation used to ordering tribute was paying it. It was for this that the boy Hannibal had sworn vengeance at the altar of his father, and he did not take his time. 182

So Saguntus was chosen for the cause of war, an old Spanish city and a rich one, an indeed great but sad example of loyalty to the Romans. This city, granted freedom by a common treaty, was overthrown by Hannibal, who was seeking opportunities for revolution, through his own and their hands so that, having broken the treaty, it would open Italy up to him. To the Romans, the essence of treaties is religious. And thus on hearing of the siege of the allied city, mindful of the treaty struck with the Carthaginians, they did not run immediately to arms, while they preferred firstly to complain legally. In the meanwhile the Saguntines, already exhausted for nine months by hunger, war machines and the sword, finally turning their loyalty into madness, piled up an immense pyre in the forum and then with sword and fire destroyed themselves and their family members atop it with all of their wealth. 183 Hannibal, the engineer of this great disaster, was demanded. To the delaying Carthaginians, Fabius, the leader of the embassy, said “What is the delay? In the folds of this toga I carry war and peace. Which do you choose?” When they cried out, “War!,” he said, “So take war!” And, shaking out the lap of his toga in the middle of the Senate House, to everyone’s horror he poured it out as though he were really carrying war in its folds. 184 The sequel of the war was similar to its beginning. For as though the last imprecations of the Saguntines in that public slaughter of their families and that conflagration had commanded these sacrifices to the dead, atonement was made to their ghosts with the devastation of Italy, the capture of Africa, the death of the leaders and kings who waged that war. So when once that dire and lamentable force and storm of the Punic War had moved into Spain and through the Saguntine fire had ignited the thunderbolt now long destined for the Romans, immediately tearing forth in a kind of blast, it broke through the midst of the

Alps and descended into Italy from those snows of mythical height as though hurled from heaven. 185 And indeed the tornado of the first charge thundered down immediately with a powerful crash between the Padus and Ticinus rivers. The army, then led by Scipio, was routed. Wounded, even the commander himself would have fallen into the enemy’s hands, had not his still teenage son, protecting him, snatched his father from death itself. This was the Scipio who grew into the downfall of Africa, to receive a name from its misfortunes. 186 Trebia came after Ticinus. Here raged the second storm of the Punic war, in the consulship of Sempronio. This time the cunning enemy, choosing a frigid and snowy day, after they had warmed themselves first with fire and also oil, — horrible to say — men coming from the south and the sun, defeated our men by means of our own winter. 187 Lake Trasumenus was the third lightening bolt of Hannibal, our commander being Flaminius. It was a new strategem of Punic deception: for his cavalry, covered by lake fog and swamp reeds, suddenly attacked the rear of the fighters. Nor can we complain about the gods: bee swarms settling on the standards and the eagles reluctant to move ahead foretold imminent disaster to the rash leader, as well as an earthquake following the start of the battle — unless it was the running around of horses and men, and the fierce movement of arms that caused that shuddering of the ground. 188 The fourth — that is, almost the final wound for the Empire — was Cannæ, an unknown village of Apulia which came to light through the magnitude of the disaster, its fame bestowed by the slaughter of sixty thousand men. There the general, the earth,

the sky, the day, the whole of nature conspired for the destruction of the unlucky army. Indeed, Hannibal was not content with pretended deserters who had then fallen on the backs of the fighters; the cunning commander, observing the nature of the place in the open fields, that the sun was also extremely fierce there, and there was a great deal of dust, and a wind from the east — constant, as though prearranged —, drew up his battle line so that, with the Romans facing against all these things, he, maintaining a favorable sky, would fight by means of the wind, dust and soil. Thus two enormous armies were cut down to the satiety of the enemy, until Hannibal told his soldiery, “Spare your swords.” 189 One of the leaders fled, the other was killed. It is in question which one was of greater courage: Paulus was ashamed of living; Varro did not despair. Testimony to the catastrophe was the Aufidus river, blood-red for some time. On the order of the leader a bridge of corpses was made over the Vergellus torrent. Two bushels of rings were sent to Carthage, the importance of the cavalry estimated by measuring them. 190 Finally, there will be no doubt that Rome would have had that as its final day, and within five days Hannibal could have dined on the Capitol if — as they say the Carthaginian, Maharbal, son of Bomilcar, said — Hannibal had known how to use his conquest in the same way he knew how to conquer. But in fact at that time, as is commonly said, either the fate of the city which was to rule, or his own mistaken mind and the gods hostile to Carthage took him off on a different path. 191 When he could have exploited his victory, he preferred to enjoy it, and leaving Rome, he proceeded to Campania and Tarentum where both he and the ardor of his army soon became slack to the point that it has been truly said that Capua was Cannæ to Hannibal. Because indeed, the man unconquered by the Alps and undefeated by the weapons of the Campanian was — who

would believe it? — subjugated by the sun and Bajæ with its warm springs. 192 Meanwhile the Romans were permitted to catch their breath and, so to speak, to rise from the grave. There were no weapons; they were taken down from the temples. Men were lacking; slaves were freed to enlist. The treasury was empty; the Senate gladly brought forth its riches into the community; nor, except for what was in their medallions and individual rings, did they leave any gold to themselves. The knights followed that example, and the tribes imitated the knighthood. In the end, under the consuls Lævinus and Marcellus, there were hardly enough registers, hardly enough scribal hands, when the resources of private individuals were signed over to the public purse. 193 So what next? What wisdom the centuries showed in choosing magistrates, when the younger ones sought the advice of the elders in creating consuls! For against an enemy so often victorious, so cunning, it was necessary to fight not with valor alone, but also with his own strategies. The first hope of the returning and, if I might say, resuscitating nation was Fabius, 194 who decided that the new victory over Hannibal would be not to fight. Hence his new and nation-saving name: “Delayer.” Hence the call from the people that he should be called the “shield” of the empire. So through the whole of Samnium, through the forested Falernian and Gauranan uplands he vexed Hannibal in such a way that, because he could not break him by force, he weakened him by delay. 195 Next, through general Claudius Marcellus, he even dared to meet him in battle; he proceeded to hand-to-hand combat and pushed him hard in his own Campania, and drove him off from

the siege of the city of Nola. He also dared, with general Sempronius Gracchus, to follow him through Lucania and to press hard on his rearguard of the retreating man, even though then (how humiliating!) he was fighting with a slave army — for so many evils had compelled him to this. But the slaves, having been given freedom, made Romans out of slavery. What stunning confidence in so many adversities! What extraordinary courage and spirit of the Roman people! In such pressing and distressed conditions that there had to be doubt about their own Italy, they still dared to look in diverse directions, and while the enemy was at their throat, flying around through Campania and Apulia and creating Africa out of the heart of Italy, at the same time they both withstood him and sent forces, strewn all over the earth, to Sicily, Sardinia and Spain. 196 Sicily was assigned to Marcellus. And it did not resist long: for the entire island was conquered in a single city. That huge and thitherto unconquered capital, Syracuse, even though defended by the genius of Archimedes, eventually yielded. Of no use to it were its triple wall and an equal number of citadels, the famous marble port and the celebrated fountain of Arethusa — other than that they helped insofar as the beauties of the conquered city were spared. 197 Gracchus seized Sardinia. That people was helped neither by its savagery nor by its Mad Mountains (for that is how they are called). Ruthlessness was employed on the cities and on the city of cities, Caralis, so that a people obstinate and indifferent to death would be subdued at least by their fondness for their native soil. 198 Sent to Spain, Gnæus and Publius Scipio seized practically the entire province from the Carthaginians. But, surprised by an ambush of Carthaginian deception, they had lost it again, although in great battles when they had smashed the Carthaginian forces. But ambushes of Carthaginian deception

surprised them, the one by the sword while he was striking camp, the other, after he had escaped to a tower, by surrounding him with torches. Thus, to avenge his father and paternal uncle, Scipio, sent with an army, a man to whom the fates had already decreed a great name from Africa, regained that warlike Spain, well known for its men and weapons, that seedbed of the enemy army — now that nourisher of Hannibal (incredible to say) as a whole from the Pyrenees Mountains to the Pillars of Hercules, to the ocean. It is unknown whether it was faster or luckier: how fast, four years are recorded; how easy, just one city proves: on the same day, in fact, that it was besieged, on that same one it was captured, and it was an omen of the African victory that what was captured so easily was Spain’s Carthage. 199 It is a fact, still, that in beating the province the general’s integrity was especially helpful, since he would restore to the barbarians captive boys and girls of extraordinary beauty, not even allowing them to be brought into his sight, lest he should seem even by looking to have subtracted anything from the intactness of their virginity. 200 The Roman people took these operations into diverse regions of the world. But for all that they could not dislodge Hannibal, who stuck fast to the innards of Italy. A great many had defected to the enemy, and the energetic general used Italian forces too against the Romans. However the Romans then expelled him from most towns and regions. They had already regained Tarentum, then Capua too was in their possession, the headquarters, home and second fatherland of Hannibal, the loss of which caused such pain to the Carthaginian general that from that point he turned all his forces on Rome. 201 O people worthy of ruling the world — worthy of the favor and admiration of all men and gods! Forced to the utmost in fear, they did not desist from their project and, while concerned about their own City, did not abandon Capua but, leaving a part of the

army under Appius, part of it following Flaccus to the City, they fought simultaneously absent and present. 202 Why, therefore, do we wonder that the gods themselves again resisted Hannibal advancing his camp from the third milestone? For at every advance of his such a spate of rain poured down, such a gale of wind arose, that it seemed by divine power to force the enemy not from the heavens, but from the walls of the City itself and from the Capitol. So he fled and left and retreated into the farthest recess of Italy after having left the City only unadored. 203 For Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, was coming from Spain with a new army, new troops, a new war machine. It would undoubtedly have been all over, if that man had joined up with his brother. But just as he had descended from the Alps and was setting up camp near the Metaurus river, Claudius Nero, together with Livius Salinator, defeated him too. Nero had warded off Hannibal in the farthest tip of Italy; Livius had turned his standards to the extreme opposite part, that is, to the outermost entrance to Italy. 204 It is hard to say how, with such immense land intervening — that is, with everything where Italy is at its longest —, by what strategy, with what speed, the consuls combined their camps and, with united forces, overwhelmed the unexpecting enemy without Hannibal being aware of its happening. It is a fact that Hannibal, learning of it after seeing his brother’s head, which had been thrown at his camp, said, “I realize the ill fate of Carthage.” This was that famous man’s first admission, not without a certain premonition, of impending fate. 205 Now it was clear that Hannibal, even according to his own admission, could be conquered. But the Roman people, filled

with the confidence of so many successes, viewed it as being very difficult to defeat the extremely bitter enemy in his own Africa. So, turning the entire war machine to Africa itself under general Scipio, they began to imitate Hannibal and to take revenge against Africa for their own Italy’s disasters. Good gods! What of Hasdrubal’s forces did that famous Scipio rout! What cavalry of Syphax, the Numidian king! What and how much of the camp of both fleets did he destroy in a single night by throwing in torches! Finally, with a siege he shook, not from the third milestone, but the very gates, of Carthage. 206 So it came about that he managed to wring Hannibal, clinging to and overhanging Italy, out of it. Under the Roman Empire there was never any greater day than the one where the greatest generals of before and after then, the one the victor of Italy, the other of Spain, drew up their battle lines, going into hand-tohand combat. But there was also a conference between them on conditions of peace. Long they stood, fixed in mutual admiration. When, however, there was no agreement on peace, the trumpet-signals for battle were sounded. 207 From the admission of both it is known that the battle lines could not have been drawn up better nor the fighting been fiercer. Scipio said this openly of Hannibal’s army, Hannibal of Scipio’s. But nevertheless Hannibal yielded, and the reward of victory was Africa. And immediately following Africa, the world. 208 After Africa, no one was ashamed of being conquered any more, but in equal measure everywhere they were subjugated. In the consulship of Lævinus the Roman people therefore first entered the Ionian Sea and traversed the whole coastline of Greece with as it were a triumphing fleet. Indeed, it displayed the spoils of Sicily, Sardinia and Africa, plus the manifest victory which a laurel tree, sprouting on the rear of the prætor’s ship, promised. Attalus, king of the Pergamenes, voluntarily assisted. The Rhodians also helped, a seafaring people who made everything

shudder on the sea with their ships, the consul on the land with his horses and men. 209 The king {Philip V} of the Macedonians was twice defeated, twice routed, twice divested of his camp, since to the Macedonians nothing was more terrible than the mere sight of wounds which, caused not by darts or arrows or any little Greek sword, but by enormous spears and swords no smaller, lay open beyond lethality. Indeed, under general Flaminius the Roman people crossed the thitherto pathless mountains of the Chaonians, and the gorge-penetrating Save river even to the very portals of Macedonia. Having entered it was victory. For afterwards the king, never having dared to offer battle, was defeated near the hills they call Cynoscephalæ {“Dogheads”} in a single battle, and that not even a real one. 210 Numidia at that time was ruled by friends of the Roman people. But Jugurtha generated a war of the Romans against himself on account of his murder of Adherbal and Hiempsal, the sons of Micipsa, and the country was conquered by the consul Metellus, then subjugated by Marius. King Buccho watched over Mauretania. 211 But when the subjugation of all the Mauri happened, King Juba {I}, who had been the cause of the fighting, soon realized that he had been defeated; he took his own life by drinking poison {46 B.C.}, and all of Mauretania became subject to the Romans. For Tripoli and both Mauretanias — Sitifensis and Cæsariensis — touched by the fear of the others, in like manner similarly submitted voluntarily to Roman jursidiction. 212 Although the Saguntine disaster had, as we said above, separated the Spains from friendship with the Romans, nonetheless Scipio again joined them to the Romans both through his beneficence

and his self-discipline, and Sulla {(actually M. Silanus, cf. Liv. 26,19)} pacified them when they once again rebelled. Scipio the Younger quieted, restrained and almost annihilated the Celtiberians who together with the Numantines were similarly rising up against the Romans. 213 The Cantabrians and Asturians, trusting in the redoubt of their mountains, while mounting an insurgency, were utterly destroyed and reduced to a province. The Tarraconensians, Lusitani, Gallæci, Carthaginians, and the Bæticans, all located towards the promontory of Africa, were all overcome in almost a single battle and assigned to Roman provinces. 214 The Epirotans who, although they had conspired with their king Pyrrhus against Italy, had nonetheless been subdued with peace in Illyricum the first time, were rebelling a second and third time, after having been thoroughly subjugated together with the Achæans and Thessalians, were forced to pass under the Roman yoke. 215 For Macedonia had provoked Roman arms against itself first under Philip, then under Perses, thirdly under Pseudo-Philip; and it was crusehd the first time by the consul Flamininus, the second time by Paulus; the third time, defeated by Metellus, it lowered its necks and was made a Roman province. 216 Illyricum, under its king Gentius, helped by the Macedonians, was conquered by Lucius, prætor of the Romans, and reduced to a province. For the first time Curio the proconsul subjugated the Dardani and the Mœsi ; and being the first of all Romans to advance all the way to the Danube river, he laid waste to its whole region. Likewise overcoming the king of the Pannonians in battle, the same Lucius turned both Pannonias into a province. Moreover, after their king had been killed, he made the

Amantini, who live between the Save and Drave rivers, into a province in their turn. 217 Also, in that Valeria which lies between the Drave and the Danube, the Marko-manns {“Men of the march, Frontiersmen”} and Kwaði {“the Bad”} were then crushed by the same leader, and boundaries were set up between Romans and the barbarians from Augusta Vindelicorum {(now Augsburg)} through Noricum and Mœsia. Afterwards Trajan, now under his own emperorship, reduced the Dacians to a province on lands beyond the Danube which have a thousand-mile periphery, after defeating their king Decebalus {A.D. 85—106}. But Gallienus, while he was ruling, lost them; and Emperor Aurelian, recalling the legions thence {A.D. 271}, stationed them in Mœsia, and there made part of it into Inland Dacia and Riverbank Dacia, and attached Dardania. 218 But the whole of Illyria, conquered indeed by parts and piecemeal, was nonetheless combined into a single body which has within itself 18 provinces: and there are two Noricums, two Pannonias, Valeria, Swevia, Dalmatia, Mœsia superior, Dardania, two Dacias, Macedonia, Thessalia, Achaja, two Epiruses, Prævales, Creta: altogether 18. 219 However, nothing other than the occasion of the Macedonian war made the Empire attack the Thracian territories. The Thracians are barbaric men and the fiercest of all nations, whose savagery is likewise found among the Scordisci and HæmusMountaineers and Scythians, due to whose savagery Romans have suffered many terrible things, and in many battles an army was beaten. In the end even they were subjugated by Marcus Didius and, with their territory reduced to a province, the tribe succumbed to the Roman yoke. 220

For Marcus Drusus crushed them at home in their own mountains, Minucius annihilated and conquered many of them on the Hebrus river. The Rhodopeji were defeated through Appius Claudius, and Marcus Lucullus made the coastal cities of Europe — which had long been Roman and later rebelled — submit to the Romans. 221 Indeed, as the first one fighting the Bessi in Thrace, he defeated those who were preëminent in bravery and fame, and warring down the Hæmus-Mountaineers, he reduced {72 B.C.} Pulpudeva {(a Thracian translation of “Philippopolis” [now Plovdiv, Bulgaria], although originally named Eumolpias)}, now called Philippopolis, and Uscudama, now called Hadrianopolis, to the overlordship of the Romans. Also similarly capturing the cities which cling to the Pontic coastline — that is, Apollonia, Callatis, Parthenopolis, Tomi, Histria — and subjugating all of the areas to the Danube, demonstrated Roman power to the Scythians. 222 Enough for the western regions: now let us run through what transpired in the eastern sphere. As it happened, Romans first found a position in Asia by the right of inheritance. For in his will King Attalus, a very good friend to the Roman people, exceeding human norms, established the Romans as heirs to his kingdom of Asia, which the Roman people would previously almost not have approached if he had not through his own efforts taken over the neighboring region — that is, Lydia, Caria, the Hellespont and both Phrygias. 223 For the extremely fertile island of Rhodes, the capital of the islands of all of Asia together with almost all of the Cyclades, greatly fearing Roman arms, had long since allied itself as a federate to that people and was contributing aid for the naval war. With the Rhodians the proconsul Servilius, as though sent for the pirate war, nevertheless obtained Pamphylia; he conquered Lycia and Pisidia and made them into a province.

But through a statement in his will the dying King Nicomedes left Bithynia to the Romans. 224 However Gallo-Greece, that is, Galatia, was enveloped in the disaster of the Syriac war. For it too was among the auxiliaries of King Antiochus; it is uncertain whether Manlius Vulso, desirous of a triumph, had just pretended it was. So they were routed and put to flight in two battles, even though, having left their homes at the approach of the foe, they had retreated to very high mountains. The Toloscobogi took positions on Olympus, the Tectosagi on Magaba. Dislodged by slings and arrows from both sides, they gave themselves up for permanent peace. But they were astonishing when tied up, because they had tried undoing their chains with bites and with their mouths, and because they offered their throats to one another to be strangled. And because King Orgiacon’s wife, raped by a centurion, had, in a memorable example, escaped imprisonment and carried the torn-off head of the adulterer back to her husband. 225 So the Senate made their friend Dejotarus head of Galatia. But afterward Cæsar subjugated them and turned them into a province. The Cappadocians too, established under Ariarathes {(IX Eusebes Philopator, 101–89 B.C.)} as their king, first sought partnership with the Romans through their ambassadors then, with Ariobarzanes {(I Philoromaios, 95—62 B.C.)} succeeding him and expelled by Mithridates, surrendered of their own accord to Roman servitude and renamed their own great city Mazaca “Cæsarea” in honor of Cæsar. After that their king, Archelaus, again coming to Rome under Emperor Claudius as though a friend of the Roman people and dying there, through a statement in his will left Cappadocia to the Romans, and so then in its entirety it became a province. 226 Pontus was conquered by Pompey {65 B.C.} with its king Mithridates and became a province. Paphlagonia’s king Pylæmenes, a friend of the Roman people, being tormented by

many, sought the help of the Romans. Dying while he was avenging himself on his enemies, he left the Romans his heirs through his will. 227 Enough for this side of the Taurus range; now let us pass over to the other side and we will go over what countries, or by subjugating which ones, they were united to the Roman people. Antiochus {III the Great}, the most powerful king of Syria, mobilized an enormous war machine against the Roman people: 30 thousand, consequently, armed men and as many scythed chariots as possible, countless elephants turreted and arrayed in order in the battle line like a wall. After Scipio {Asiaticus I}, the brother of Scipio Africanus, had gone against him in Asia outside the city of Magnesia, and after battle had been joined {190 B.C.}, Antiochus was conquered and, having struck a treaty with the Romans, retreated from Asia and was permitted by decision of the Senate to reign beyond the Taurus, and after the death of the father it allowed his sons, led into hostage status at Rome, to reign by position of birthright. 228 The Cilicians, becoming pirates with the Isaurians and engaging in frequent brigandage on the high seas, were conquered by the proconsul Servilius and overthrown. This Servilius was also the first Roman to open a path through the Taurus range and, winning a triumph with their spoils, was called “Isauricus” and “Cilicus.” 229 Cato, unapologetic, invaded Cyprus with a seagoing fleet. While the Cyprians denied having anything, he found great riches belonging to them and fined them with confiscations. Not bearing this, Gnosius their king killed himself by drinking poison, and thus Cyprus became a Roman province {58 B.C.}. Libya — that is, the Pentapolis, all freely granted by the famous first Ptolemæus {VIII Euergetes II Physcon } to the Romans —, despite subsequently opposing elements, was subjected to the Roman people {96 B.C.} through the bequest of {Ptolemæus}

Apion. The whole of Egypt was held through the Ptolemies by friends of the Romans, that is, by the {(dynasty of the Ptolemæic)} Lagids. Afterwards Cleopatra and Antony, usurping it on their own authority, lost both themselves and it. 230 But the mountains of Armenia saw Roman arms first through Lucullus, through whom the Phylarchs of the Saracens too, defeated in Osdroëna, capitulated. And the very same man also invaded the city of Nisibis. After him, Pompey, entering the same area, reinforced it as under the Roman empire. 231 He had invaded the Syrian Cœle, defeating Tigranes in a textbook battle. Under the leadership of the same Pompey, the Arabs and Palestinians were conquered. 232 Yet the frequently fighting Babylonians were often defeated, nonetheless never completely subdued. Still, the proconsul Lucius Sulla defeated them the first time under their king Arsaces and, asked by him through ambassadors, conceded peace to them. The second time, when Lucius Lucullus was expelling from the Pontic kingdom Tigranes, the king of Armenia — conquered with his eighteen thousand soldiers —, and having invaded all of Armenia, he proceeded to Mesopotamia where he captured Nisibis together with the brother of the king of the Parthians {68 B.C.}, wishing with equal luck to lay waste to Persis; but Pompey, ordered by the Senate, had arrived to be his successor. 233 And as a matter of fact Pompey, arriving here immediately, in a night battle soon thereafter overrunning Mithridates {VI Eupator Dionysus (“the Great”)}, slaughtered 42 thousand of his armed forces and set fire to his camp. As a result Mithridates, fleeing with his wife and two bodyguards, made it to the Bosphorus and, seized by great desperation, took poison. But when even so

death did not come to him, he asked one of the two bodyguards to kill him. 234 But while Pompey was going after the king of Greater Armenia for why Tigranes had given aid against the Romans, the latter, in the city of Artaxata, abdicating his kingship, voluntarily offered his crown to Pompey; But Pompey, led by a sense of leniency, for his part allowed him to reign over Greater Armenia, taking from him Mesopotamia and Syria and part of Phœnicia with {(Lesser)} Armenia. For he placed Aristarchus as king over the Bosphorans and Colchians {66 B.C.} and, pursuing the Albanans, he conquered their king Orhodes a third time. Finally implored for it, he granted peace. He received Iberia together with its king Artag in surrender. 235 Vanquishing the Saracens and Arabs, he took over Jerusalem of Judea. Having struck a treaty with the Persians, on his way back he granted the field of Daphne as a gift to the Antiochenes, on account of the great beauty of the place. 236 With these and other operations successful in Syria, the greed of one man spoiled . For Crassus the consul, when gaping after Parthian gold, lost almost eleven legions with his own head. In his sight his son was riddled with enemy missiles and in addition he himself was killed and his head, severed along with his right hand, taken to the king, was a laughingstock, and not an undeserved one: for liquid gold was poured into his open jaws so that even the dead and bloodless body of the one whose mind had burned with the lust for gold would be burned with gold. As for the remnants of the unlucky army, wherever flight whisked them, scattered into Armenia, Cilicia and Syria, they hardly brought back news of such a great catastrophe. 237

So the Parthians, further inflating their egos with this disaster, invaded Syria through general Pacorus and, placing general Labienus {Quintus} — whom they had captured some time previously — at the head of the army, they sent him in battle against the allies, that is, the Romans. But Ventidius {Publius} Bassus, defeating the Persians who were devastating Syria under both generals, routed them and killed Labienus, while he slew the royal youth Pacorus, surrounded on all sides by missiles, and then, cutting off his head and parading it around through the cities which had deserted, he recouped Syria without war. Thus, with the head of Pacorus and the death of Labienus, Ventidius repaid the Crassian catastrophe. 238 But the Roman people was not thereby content to forget the Crassian massacre without continuing to war on the Parthians. 239 For Mark Antony, having invaded Media, waged war against them. While first defeating them, he was subsequently worn down with his two legions by hunger and winter; followed by the Parthians, he barely fled into Armenia, and there escaped. 240 Subsequently, under Augustus Octavian, the Armenians, mixed together with Parthians, were quickly vanquished through Claudius Cæsar, the grandson of Augustus. So the Armenians thought it more beneficial to become reconciled to the friendship of the Romans and to inhabit their own territory rather than, allied with the Parthians, both to lose their territory and have the Romans their enemies. 241 While the Roman army was thus heavily engaged in eastern regions, the western areas were likewise under stress. The Noricans living in the Norican Alps believed as though war could not climb up to their rocks and snows; but soon the Roman army, through the same Claudius Cæsar, defeated all the

tribes of that region: the Breuni, Teutoni, Ucenni and Vindelici. Still, it is easy to show what the level of animalism of the Alpine peoples was even by their women who, lacking weapons, smashed their own young children on the ground and flung them at the faces of the soldiers. 242 The Illyrians, also not second to these people in savagery, were likewise fired up. Advancing against them himself, Augustus ordered a bridge built over which to cross the waters. And while the soldiers were being disrupted in their ascent by the waters and the enemies, he himself snatched a shield and was the first to advance on the way. Then, with the troops following him when, breaking under their numbers, the bridge had collapsed, with wounded arms and legs looking more impressive with blood and more authoritative due to the danger itself, he attacked the backs of the enemy. 243 The Pannonians, on the other hand, are walled off by two fierce rivers, the Drave and the Save. Against them he sent Vinicius, who conquered them more swiftly than their rivers run rapidly in their current. 244 The Dalmatians, dwelling similarly in forests, were laying waste to a large area with their brigandage. To subdue them he ordered Vibius, who forced that extremely wild tribe to dig in the earth and wash out gold from its veins. 245 But the Mœsi — how bestial, how fierce they are! As one of the leaders, calling for silence before the battle, said, “Who are you?” The answer was, “Romans, lords of mankind!” And the former said, “So it will be, if you conquer us!” But as soon as it came to war, they could not even tolerate the trumpet-signal for battle. Thus they were vanquished by Marcus.

246 Though the Thracians had often done it before, still, they then, with Rhœmetalces ruling over them, rebelled from the Romans. For he had drilled the barbarians in discipline and the use of military standards. But subjugated by Piso, they showed their madness even in captivity: for by plucking at the chains with which they were bound by biting them, they themselves punished their own wildness. 247 With Dacia situated on the other side of the Danube, by sending Lentulus he conquered, expelled and subjugated the Daci who often crossed thence over the frozen Danube riverbed for looting on Roman territory. He also drove the Sarmatians to the other side of the Danube through the same Lentulus. They have nothing else where they live but snow and hoarfrost and forests, and there is so much barbarism in them that they do not even understand what peace is. 248 Moreover through Quirinus he subjugated the Marmaridæ and Garamantes in the eastern, wintery region. 249 The Germans, Gauls, Bretons, Spanish, Iberians, Astures, Cantabrians, living in the western reaches and rebelling after long servitude were forced by Augustus himself personally advancing to serve again and to live under Roman jurisdiction. 250 But Cleopatra {VII Philopator}, queen of the Alexandrines — of the line of the Lagids and successor of the Ptolemies —, against the machinations of her {brother and} husband Ptolemy {XIII} first appealed to Gajus Julius Cæsar who, out of gratitude for adultery, as they report, confirmed her queenship and sent her with a great parade to reign in the city of Alexandria. {Gajus} Cassius {Longinus}, having captured Judea, raided the temple.

251 However after Cæsar had been assassinated in the curia at Rome, his grand-nephew Octavian took over the principate; Antony, while he envied yet could by no means injure him, left the city of Rome and, as though the provisioner of the Roman Republic, went to the confines of Egypt. Finding there Cleopatra a widow without a husband and also joining himself with her, he began to establish overlordship for himself, and not quietly but, forgetful of the name, the toga and the fasces of his country, he fell away into a complete oddity in mind as well as soul and dress: 252 a golden scepter in his hand, at his side a scimitar, a purple robe embroidered with enormous gemstones. Only a crown was lacking for him to be a king himself, enjoying his queen. Hearing this, Augustus Cæsar crossed from Brundisium in Calabria to Epirus to stop him from the beginnings of tyranny. For Antony was already occupying the whole Actian shoreline with his fleets. But when it subsequently came to a battle and his ship began to be thrown into confusion by Cæsar’s fleet, the queen, the first leader in flight, put out into the high sea with her golden stern and purple sails. Antony soon followed. 253 But Cæsar was pressing hard on their tracks. Thus neither their precautions for flight into the ocean nor the garrison-fortified promontories of Egypt, Paretonium and Pelusium, were of any avail. They were almost within grasp. Antony first fell on his sword. The queen, throwing herself at the feet of Augustus, tempted the eyes of the general. Indeed, it was in vain. For beauty was beneath the virtue of the prince. Nor was she struggling for her life, which was being offered to her, but for a share of power. 254

When she despaired of the prince and realized she was being kept for his triumph, having gotten a rather careless custody, she retreated to the mausoleum of the kings and there having donned, as she was wont, her finest clothes, on a throne filled with fragrances, she placed Antony next to her and, pressing serpents to her veins, was thus released by death as though by sleep. This was the end of the wars of Augustus Cæsar, both with citizens and with foreign peoples. 255 So too Augustus Cæsar Octavianus — than whom no emperor was more successful in war nor more moderate in peace — was extremely courteous to everyone. With a single peace pacifying all peoples, from the east to the west, from the north to the south and through the entire circle of the Ocean, he himself closed the gates of Janus. 256 And conducting a census at Rome with Tiberius, he found {([90 * 100,000] + [370 * 1,000] = 9,370,000)} nine million, three hundred seventy thousand people; and he ordered the whole world, pacified at the divine nod of the coming Jesus Christ, to be counted; and he reigned for 55 years. But in the fortysecond year of his command the Lord Jesus Christ deigned to be born of the Holy Ghost and the virgin Mary as true God and true man. 257 Reigning in peace for fourteen years after the Lord’s arrival in bodily presence, he himself also held absolute power and, leaving to those following him the same imperial power along with his name of Augustus, he departed from human affairs, leaving as his successor Tiberius, his stepson. 258 Tiberius Augustus Cæsar reigned for 23 years. Having enticed many kings to himself with flattery, he never let them go back to their own kingdoms, among whom also was Archelaus, king of

the Cappadocians. After this man’s kingdom had been turned into a province following his death, Tiberius renamed his city, Mazaca, « Cæsarea », after his own name. Then in this man’s 18th year, in Judea under Pontius Pilate, our Lord Jesus Christ suffered in the flesh, not in his divinity. 259 Gajus Cæsar, surnamed “Caligula,” reigned for 3 years and 10 months. For he forced Memmius Regulus to give him his own wife in marriage as his daughter, and compelled him to sign the marriage document as her father. Perpetrating these and similar things, as well as setting up a statue of Jupiter in the Jerusalem temple through Gajus Petronius, and slaughtering Jews in Alexandria through the prefect Flaccus Avilius, he was finally killed in the palace at Rome by his bodyguards at the age of twenty-nine. 260 Claudius thereafter succeeding him reigned 13 years 9 months. This Claudius undertook an expedition to the island of Britain which no one before Julius Cæsar nor anyone after him had dared to approach. He led the army and there, without any battle or bloodshed, accepted the surrender of the greater part of the island within a very few days. Moreover he added the Orkney islands located in the ocean beyond Britain to the Roman Empire. And the sixth month after leaving he returned to Rome and died there at the age of 64. 261 Nero, the nephew of Gajus Caligula, reigned for 13 years and 8 months. He wallowed in such luxury that he would bathe in cold and warm ointments. And to be sure, not just because he did not advance the Republic ; instead, he harmed it greatly. For he lost two legions in Armenia simultaneously with the province itself which, submitting to the Parthian yoke, inflicted grave dishonor on the Romans. 262

Besides every outrage and the parricide which he had committed against his own relatives, he added the crime of setting fire to Rome after the fashion of Troy, and laying his hands on the Christians he incited a persecution and killed even the doctors of the faith, Peter and Paul, in the City, nailing the one to a cross, executing the other by beheading. And after he had been disgracefully torn from power, Galba seized power in Hiberia, Vitellius in Germany, Otho at Rome; all of them, however, perishing in a quick death. 263 Vespasian in Judæa, summoned to power by the army, reigned for 10 years. For, leaving his son Tito for the conquest of Jerusalem, he himself, leaving for Rome, reigned in peace. 264 Titus, the son of Vespasian, also called Vespasian, the conqueror of the people of Judæa, reigned for two years and two months. Moreover according to the trustworthiness of Josephus, this man killed eleven hundred thousand Jews by starvation and the sword, and sold another hundred thousand captives to benefit the state. A paschal celebration had gathered together that much of a multitude in Jerusalem. 265 Domitian, the brother of Titus, son of Vespasian, reigned for 15 years and 5 months, and was so haughty that he first ordered himself to be called lord by everyone; and, banishing many of the nobles with exile and killing some, out of their property he made gold and silver statues for himself. Laying hands on the Christians, after he had been unable to kill John the apostle and evangelist when plunged in boiling oil, banished him as an exile to the island of Patmos, where he saw the Apocalypse. Not tolerating the man’s cruelty, the Romans decided to kill him in the palace at Rome, and that everything that he had established would be futile. 266

The very old Nerva reigned for one year and 4 months. Being slack in his private life, he was slacker in governing; nor did he do anything beneficial for the Republic other than that, while still living, he chose Trajan. 267 Trajan, more powerful than almost all emperors, reigned for 18 years and 6 months. For this man triumphed over the Dacians and Scythians and subdued the Iberians and Sauromatæ, the Osdroëni, the Arabs, the Bosphorians, the Colchi after they had erupted into anarchy. He invaded and held Seleucia and Ctesiphon and Babylonia. 268 He also established a fleet in the Red Sea whence he might lay waste to the borderlands of India, and consecrated his own statue there; and after so many labors he died at Seleucia of Isauria from a hemorrhage of the bowels at the age of 63. His bones were arranged in a golden urn and situated under a column in the forum, and alone of all the emperors he was buried in the City. 269 Hadrian, born at Italic in Spain, the son of a maternal cousin of Trajan, reigned for 21 years. This man did almost nothing for the Republic other than that he repaired the long ruined Alexandria and Jerusalem at his own expense, and relaxed the public taxes in a few places. 270 Indeed, calling Jerusalem by his own forename, “Ælia,” he permitted none of the Jews to enter it. For it is clear that he was jealous of Trajan’s accomplishments, since soon after succeeding him he immediately, with no necessity forcing him, recalled the army to himself and left Mesopotamia and Assyria and Armenia to the Persians, establishing the Euphrates river as the limit and boundary between the Parthians and the Romans. During his reign Aquila Ponticus translated the Scriptures from Hebrew. Hadrian died at Bajæ, caused by sickness.

271 Antonius, surnamed “Pius,” reigned with his {adopted} sons, {Marcus} Aurelius and Lucius {Verus}, for 12 years and 3 months. And though Antoninus did nothing beneficial, nonetheless under him the Republic felt no harm. He died at the twelfth milestone from the City in his villa named “Lorium,” at the age of seventy-six. 272 Marcus Antoninus, also called Verus, and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, connected by relationship, governed the Empire with equal rights. Of the two, the younger, leading the military against the Parthians, performing deeds of great valor and took their city Seleucia with four hundred thousand fighters, over whom he triumphed with great glory. The elder, on the other hand, was frequently present in many wars, and more often brought back a triumph through his generals, especially over the nation of the Quadi. But the one died suffering from apoplexy in Altinum, the other passed away of sickness in Pannonia. 273 Commodus, the son of Antoninus, reigned for 13 years and brought back a great triumph over the Germanic people, and afterwards died, strangled, in the house of Vestilian. 274 Helvius Pertinax, more than a sexgenarian when he was heading the Urban Prefecture, having been made emperor by a decree of the Senate, reigned for 6 months. Indeed also, when the Senate was asking to call his wife “Augusta” and his son “Cæsar,” the man said, “It should be enough that I am reigning against my will, when I do not deserve to.” Overly egalitarian and accessible to all, he was killed in the palace by the lawyer {Didius} Julianus who himself was later killed by {Septimius} Severus. 275

{Septimius} Severus, African by birth, from Tripoli, reigned 18 years and, taking vengeance against Julianus for the murder of Pertinax, also called himself Pertinax. In addition, this man won marvelous victories over the Parthians and Adiabenes when they rose against Rome. He also defeated the Arabs of the interior so thoroughly that he made their region a Roman province. Plus, triumphing thus, he was titled Parthicus, Arabicus and Adiabenicus. 276 While he was reigning, a Samaritan, a certain Symmachus, having become a proselyte of the Jews, poured the divine Scriptures from the Hebrew tongue into the Greek language and created his own edition. After him, almost three years later, Theodotion of Pontus likewise in the same effort composed his own edition of the Scriptures. A British war broke out, from which Severus gained a marvelous triumph. 277 {Marcus Aurelius} Antoninus, surnamed Caracalla, the son of Severus, reigned for 7 years. It happened that he got this name for the reason that, in disbursing these same kinds of garments at Rome from the war-spoils, he would give himself the name “Caracalla” {(“hooded sweatshirt”)} and to the garment “Antoniana.” Under him, yet again, an edition of the divine Scriptures — which we call the fifth — was found in Jericho in a jar. And then this emperor, while leading an expedition against the Persians, died in Osdroëne (Edessa). 278 {Marcus Opellius} Macrinus, prefect of the Pretorian Guard, was made emperor and reigned for one year and was killed by Archilaïs. 279 Marcus Aurelius, the son of Antoninus Caracalla and priest of the temple of Ela-Gabal, was made emperor and reigned for 4

years. Emmaus was built in Judæa and called “Nicopolis.” Then also {Sextus Julius} Africanus, a distinguished historian, undertook an embassy to the emperor for that very city. But the emperor, while he overlooked no kind of obscenity during his reign that he would not engage in, was killed by a military revolt. 280 {Severus} Alexander, the son of Mamæa, coming from low fortune, took control of the state while still young and soon, taking up arms against Xerxes, king of the Persians, triumphed magnificently with the spoils of the Parthians. Likewise under this man’s rule, in the Actian Nicopolis, that is, Epirus, an edition — called the “sixth” — of the divine Scriptures was found in a jar. He himself was killed in a Mainz military revolt; Maximinus {I Thrax} of the military corps succeeded him in power. 281 Maximinus, Goth by race, born of a father Mikka {“Big Man”} and a mother Ababa, an Alan, ascending to the emperorship solely through the choice of the soldiers, successfully waged war against the Germans. Coming back from there, after attacking the Christians in a civil battle, reigning for hardly three years, he was killed by Pupienus in Aquileja. 282 {Marcus Antonius} Gordianus {III}, made emperor while still a boy, reigned hardly six years. The facts are that as soon as he entered Rome he killed on the spot Pupienus and Balbinus who, assassinating Maximinus, had seized tyrannical power; and, opening the gates of the double-faced Janus and leaving for the Orient, he made war on the Parthians; and returning thence with victory, he was killed in a trap by Philip, the head of the Prætorian Guard, not far from Roman soil. 283

Philip {I, “the Arab”} shamelessly entered into the emperorship, and reigned 7 years. For indeed he made his own son, also Philip {II}, his partner in command, and he himself was the first of all emperors to become Christian. In the third year of his reign he celebrated the festival of the city of Rome, in the thousandth year which it had completed. Rebuilding the city of his own name in Thracia which used to be called Pulpudeva {(actually “Eumolpias”; “Pulpudeva” (now “Plovdiv”) is a Thracian translation of “Philippopolis”)}, he renamed it “Philippopolis.” 284 {C. Messius Quintus Trajanus} Decius from Lower Pannonia, born at Budalia {(now Martinci, Serbia)}, after both Philips had been killed, reigned for one year and three months, directing arms against the Christians out of hatred for the name of the Philips. He himself, fighting the Goths, with his son died a cruel death at Abrittus {(modern Razgrad)} 285 {Gajus Vibius Trebonianus} Gallus and {Gajus Vibius Afinius Gallus Veldumnianus} Volusianus reigned 2 years and 4 months. When they left the City to go against {Marcus Æmilius} Æmilianus who was engineering a revolt in Mœsia, they were killed at Forum Flaminii. 286 But Æmilianus was killed in the third month of having taken over the tyranny. 287 {Publius Licinius Cornelius} Valerianus and {Publius Licinius Egnatius} Gallienus, while the one was raised to the emperorship in Rætia by the soldiers, the other at Rome by the Senate, reigned for 15 years. As it happened, Valerianus, starting a persecution against the Christians, was shortly captured by Shapur {I}, king of the Persians, and there grew old in wretched slavery. Gallienus, seeing his fate, gave peace to the

Christians. But when he became too degenerate in the emperorship and did nothing manly, the Parthians laid waste to Syria and Ciliciam, the Germans and the Alans ravaging the Gauls came all the way to Ravenna. The Goths devastated Greece, the Quadi and Sarmatæ invaded the Pannonias. The Germans again seized the Spains. Hence Gallienus was assassinated at Milan. 288 {Marcus Aurelius Valerius} Claudius {II Gothicus} reigned for 1 year and 8 months. Undertaking a war against the Goths who had been ravaging Illyricum and Macedonia for 15 years, he obliterated them amidst incredible carnage, in fact so much so, that a golden shield was placed in his honor in the curia and on the Capitol a golden statue. He was assassinated at Sirmium {(modern Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia)} 289 After his death, {Marcus Aurelius Claudius} Quintillus, his brother, declared Augustus by the Senate, was assassinated at Aquileja on the eighteenth day of his reign. 290 {Lucius Domitius} Aurelianus, originating in Riparian Dacia, reigned for 5 years and 6 months. He soon recaptured the Gauls, with {Gajus Pius Esuvius} Tetricus betraying his own army among the Catalauni; and making an expedition to the Danube, he beat the Goths in huge battles; and he persecuted the worshippers of the Divine Name. Odænath of Palmyra, gathering a band of peasants and expelling the Persians from Mesopotamia, had, previous to him, himself invaded their places. 291 Following his death, his wife held power; Aurelian undertook an expedition against her, defeated her at Immæ in the vicinity of Antioch, and led her alive in his triumph in Rome. And from there, embarking on an expedition, he was assassinated between

between Byzantium at Heraclea in Cænophrurium of the old route. 292 Tacitus reigned for 6 years. After his assassination near Pontus, {Marcus Annius} Florianus took over power and held it for 88 days. Similarly, at Tarsus he himself was also assassinated. 293 {Marcus Aurelius} Probus reigned for 6 years and 4 months. He permitted Gauls and Spaniards to have vineyards. At which time Saturninus, Master of the Soldiery, while he had been sent for the restoration of the city of Antioch, usurping tyrannical power in that very place, was soon defeated and killed at Apamea {in Syria}. Emperor Probus himself was also killed in a military revolt at Sirmium in the tower called “the Iron-Clad.” 294 {Marcus Aurelius} Carus, a native of Narbonne of Gaul, reigned 2 years with his sons Carinus and Numerianus. Having admirably laid waste to almost the whole of Persia, this man seized their famous cities Coche and Ctesiphon. He won the Sarmatian war successfully. Carus himself, while pitching camp on the Tigris river, also died struck by lightning. 295 {Marcus Aurelius Numerius} Numerianus, racked with eye pain, while being carried in a litter, murdered through the treachery of his father-in-law, Aper, was barely discovered only on the third day due to the stench of his cadaver. As for {Marcus Aurelius} Carinus, he was killed, conquered in battle near Margus {now Ćuprija, Serbia}. 296 {Gajus Aurelius Valerius} Diocletianus, from Dalmatia, the son of a scribe, reigned for 20 years. And as it happened, shortly after being raised to power, he killed Aper on the spot in a

soldiers’ assembly, swearing that it was without any crime of his own that Numerius had died. And soon afterward he summoned {Marcus Aurelius} Maximianus Herculius to his partnership. Having crushed the mob of peasants that they call “Bagaudæ,” this Maximianus returned peace to the Gauls. 297 At this time {Marcus Aurelius Mausæus} Carausius, having donned the purple, had taken over Britain; Narses, king of the Persians, had made war on the East; the Quinquegentiani had attacked Africa; Achilleus had invaded Egypt. 298 Because of all this Constantius {I Chlorus (father of Constantine)} and {Gajus} Galerius {Valerius} Maximianus were brought into the administration as “Cæsars.” Of whom Constantius was the grandson of Claudius {II Gothicus} through his daughter, while Galerius had been born in Dacia, not far from Serdica {(now Sofia, Bulgaria)}. And, so that Diocletian could unite them with marriage ties, Constantius married {Marcus Aurelius} Herculius’s stepdaughter, Theodora (by whom he also fathered six children), whereas Galerius took Valeria, Diocletian’s daughter — both of the men repudiating their former marriages. 299 So then the tribe of the Carpi was defeated and transferred onto Roman soil. Moreover at that time Diocletian, as the first of all emperors, ordered that he be adored as a god, and braided gemstones in his clothes and footwear and a diadem on his head, whereas before him they had all had only a purple cloak to distinguish them from private citizens, and were saluted as other magistrates. 300 With each of the princes therefore taking charge of an expedition, Diocletian, having defeated the tyrant of Egypt within eight months, subjugated the entire province.

Maximianus Herculius vanquished the Quinquegentiani in Africa. In a single day Constantius massacred 60 thousand Alamanni near Lingonae {(now Langres)}. 301 Galerius Maximianus, beaten by Narseus in the first battle, ran in front of Diocletian’s wagon dressed in purple. Stung by that humiliation, the second time he fought like a man, defeated Narseus, made off with his wives and children, and was received by Diocletian with fitting honor. 302 After that victory, Diocletian and Maximianus celebrated a spectacular triumph, with the children and wives of the king of the Persians walking before them, and with that enormous booty of various peoples. Thus, also whipping up a persecution of the Christians, Diocletian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * {Note:} At this point (between paragraphs 302 and 303) in the Romana there is an extensive lacuna in the narrative of the extant manuscripts. Since most of the text before and after this lacuna closely follows (indeed, is often plucked verbatim from) St. Jerome’s Chronicle, a good idea of the missing text may be gathered from the relevant sections of the latter work, here presented: Excerpts from the The Chronicle of St. Jerome (§§ 2317-2377) Veturius, Master of the Soldiers, persecutes the Christian soldiers, the persecution against us beginning little by little from just that time. {(Jerome § 2317)} Galerius Maximian, after he had defeated Narses, and captured his wives, children and sisters, is received by Diocletian with great honour. Diocletian and Maximian Augusti celebrated a triumph at Rome with notable pomp. Before their chariot went the wife, sisters

and children of Narses, and all the booty, which they had looted from the Parthians. In a horrible earthquake at Tyre and Sidon, many edifices were ruined and an immense number of people were crushed. In the nineteenth year of Diocletian, during the month of March, in the days of Easter, the churches were destroyed. However in the 4th year of the persecution, Constantine began to reign. In the second year of the persecution, Diocletian at Nicomedia, and Maximianus at Milan, laid down the purple. Maximinus {Daia} et Severus are made Cæsars by Galerius Maximianus. In the 16th year of his reign Constantius {I Chlorus} died in Britain at York; after him his son Constantine, born from the concubine Helena, takes possession of the empire. Maxentius, the son of Maximianus Herculius, is named Augustus at Rome by the Prætorian Guard. Severus Cæsar, sent against Maxentius by Galerius Maximianus, is killed at Ravenna in the second year of his reign. Licinius made emperor at Carnuntum by Galerius. Maximianus Herculius, detected by his daughter Fausta, because he was preparing a swindle against his son-in-law Constantine, in flight is slain at Marseilles. Galerius Maximianus dies. Maximinus, after a persecution had been carried out against the Christians, when now about to be punished by Licinius, dies at Tarsus. Maxentius, defeated by Constantine near the Milvian Bridge, dies. The war against Licinius at Cibalæ.

Diocletian dies in his villa at Split, not far from Salonæ, and, alone of all (the emperors), is declared to be among the gods as a private citizen. Crispus and Constantine, sons of Constantine, and Licinius, the adolescent son of Licinius Augustus, the offspring of Constantine's sister, are appointed Cæsars; of these, Lactantius, the most eloquent man of his time, educated Crispus in Latin literature; but he (Lactantius) was in fact so poor in this life that he generally lacked even the necessities. Licinius expels the Christians from his palace. Constantius, the son of Constantine, appointed Cæsar. Licinius, contrary to a solemn pledge, is slain as a private citizen at Thessalonica. Crispus, the son of Constantine, and Licinius junior, the son of Constantia, the sister of Constantine, and of Licinius, are very cruelly killed. The Vicennalia of Constantine held in Nicomedia, and proclaimed at Rome in the following year. Constantine, restoring the city of Drepana in Bithynia in honor of the martyr Lucian, who was buried there, named it “Helenopolis,” from the name of his mother. In Antioch the construction of the Dominicum which is called “Aureum” begun. Constantine kills his wife Fausta. Constantinople is dedicated by denuding nearly every other city. By an edict of Constantine the temples of the gentiles were overthrown. The Romans defeated the Goths in the land of the Sarmatians.

Constans, the son of Constantine, is promoted to the royal power. An innumerable multitude perish from pestilence and famine in Syria and Cilicia. The Limigantes Sarmatians, having gathered a force, expelled their masters, who are now called the Argaragantes, onto Roman soil. Calocerus revolts in Cyprus and is suppressed. Constantine and his children sent an honorific letter to Antonius. On the Tricennalia of Constantine, Dalmatius is named a Cæsar. The prætorian prefect Tiberian, an eloquent man, rules the Gallic provinces. Constantine, baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia at the very end of his life, falls into the dogma of Arius, and from that time until now seizures of churches and discord of the whole world have followed. While preparing for war against the Persians, Constantine dies at Ancyra in a public villa near Nicomedia at the age of 66; after him his three sons are hailed Augusti from being Cæsars. Ablabius the Prætorian Prefect and many of the nobles slaughtered. Šapor, king of Persia, after Mesopotamia had been devastated, besieged Nisibis for almost two months. Dalmatius Cæsar, whom his uncle Constantine had left as a colleague in the power of his sons, is murdered by a plot of his cousin Constantius and in a military disturbance. From this point the Arian impiety, propped up by the support of the ruler, Constantius, with exiles and imprisonments and various types of affliction first persecuted Athanasius and then all bishops not of their party.

Constantine, waging war against his brother near Aquileja, is slain at Alsa. Constans fights against the Franks with mixed fortune. Many cities of the east collapsed in a horrible earthquake. The Franks are subdued by Constans and peace made with them. Šapor, king of the Persians, persecutes the Christians. Dyrrachium collapsed in an earthquake, and for three days and nights Rome tottered and many cities of Campania were shaken. A sea-port constructed in Seleucia of Syria at great expense to the state. Šapor for three months again besieges Nisibis. An eclipse of the sun happened. {(A.D. 346 June 6)} Nocturnal Persian battle at Singara in which we lost a certain victory by the stupidity of the soldiers. Nor indeed was there any more serious battle out of nine extremely serious conflicts against the Persians, for, to pass over the others, Nisibis was besieged and Bizabde and Amida were captured. After Magnentius had seized the emperorship at Augustodunum, Constans is killed in the thirtieth year of his life not far from Spain in a camp which is named Helena; on account of this, since the state was thrown into turmoil, Vetranio, at Mursa, and Nepotian, at Rome, became emperors. At Rome, the people rebelling against the followers of Magnentius are betrayed by Heraclides the senator. The head of Nepotian paraded through the City on a pike, and many proscriptions and slaughters of noblemen carried out.

The insignia of imperial power taken away from Vetranio by Constantius at Naissus. Magnentius conquered at Mursa, in which battle the Roman forces were ruined. Gallus, cousin of Constantius, made Cæsar. Gallus crushed the Jews, who after killing the soldiers by night had taken possession of arms in order to rebel, with the slaughter of many thousands of men, even including those of innocent years, and turned over to fire their cities, Diocæsarea, Tiberias and Diospolis, and a great many towns. Some of the nobles of Antioch killed by Gallus. Magnentius of Lugdunum kills himself in the palace by his own hand; and his brother Decentius, whom he had sent to look after the Gallic provinces, ends his life among the Senones with a noose. Gallus Cæsar, deceived by his cousin Constantius, under whose suspicion he had come because of his outstanding inborn ability, is executed at Histria. Silvanus, having revolted in Gaul, died on the twenty-eighth day. Julian, brother of Gallus, is named Cæsar at Milan. Large numbers of the forces of the Alamanni crushed by Julian Cæsar at Argentoratum, a city of the Gallic provinces. Saracens, rushing into the monastery of Blessed Anthony, kill Sarmata. After Constantius had entered Rome, the bones of the apostle Andrew and evangelist Luke were received from the people of Constantinople with marvellous goodwill. Nicomedia utterly destroyed by an neighbouring cities partially damaged.

earthquake;

the

Gratian, who is now emperor, is born. Constantius II dies at Mopsucrene, between Cilicia and Cappadocia, in the forty-fifth year of his life. {(A.D. 361 — Jerome § 2377)} * 303 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Constantius {II, son of Constantine the Great and Fausta} died {[at Mopsucrenæ (or Mopsuestia, now Messis), on the way between Cilicia]} and Cappadocia. 304 {Flavius Clausius} Julianus the Apostate reigned one year and 8 months and, having left Christianity, he turned to the worship of idols and, enticing many with flattering pressure, he compelled them to sacrifice to idols. He himself, indeed an extraordinary man and necessary for the Republic, took up war against the Parthians with an immense apparatus. When leaving, he vowed the blood of Christians to his gods after victory, and took the surrender of a number of Parthian towns, devastated them with great violence, and for a while had his camp near Ctesiphon. 305 Having left there, led into the deserts through the treachery of a certain defector, at a time when his army was perishing, undone through the effects of thirst and the sun’s heat, he himself being anxious about such dangers, while he was wandering more uncautiously through the wastelands of the desert, died, pierced in the groin with a lance by a cavalryman of the enemy at the age of thirty-three. After him, on the following day, {Flavius (Jovinus)} Jovianus, the head of the imperial guard, was elected to power by the army. 306 Jovianus reigned for eight months. Forced by the necessity of the situation, he handed over Nisibis and a large part of

Mesopotamia to Shapur, king of the Parthians; and he himself died, suffocated by the fumes of coals, at Dadastana at the age of 33. 307 Valentinian {I} and {Flavius Julius} Valens reigned for 13 years and 5 months. For they were Pannonians, born at Cibalæ, brothers on both sides. Valentinian had been filling the office of the tribunate in Nicomedia and, elected emperor, made his brother Valens his colleague in power. He himself was extraordinary and similar to Aurelian in behavior except for the fact that some denounced his excessive severity and thrift as cruelty and avarice. Leaving his brother in the Eastern empire, he himself held the West. 308 During his reign, another Valentinian {(actually Valentine)} in Britain, seizing tyrannical power, was crushed on the continent. Also at Constantinople, a certain Procopius, rebelling against Valens and achieving nothing, left the city and, exercizing tyranny over Phrygia Salutaris, was executed, and many of the Procopian faction were killed and outlawed. Valens, converted and baptized by Eudoxius, an Arian bishop, hostilely attacked the orthodox. 309 Valentinianus made {Flavius} Gratianus, his son by Severa in a previous marriage, emperor at Amiens; and he was going to war against the Saxons and Burgundians who, over 80 thousand armed men in number, were for the first time pitching camp on the edge of the Rhine; but at Brigetio {(now Komarom-Szöny, Hungary)} he died suddenly of apoplexy and a hemorrhage. 310 Then Gratianus took Valentinianus {II}, his brother born of Justina, the second wife, as his colleague in the emperorship. For Valentinianus {I} senior, given that his wife Severa had long been praising the beauty of Justina, took her to himself in

marriage and created laws on account of her that all men who wanted to might with impunity contract double marriages, because for that reason nations were populous, since among them this is customary, and a single man is heard of as being the husband of many wives. 311 Therefore Valentinianus {I}, having taken Justina, fathered four children by her: the above-said emperor Valentinianus {II}; and Grata; and Justa; and Galla. By this Galla the emperor Theodosius, after the death of Flacilla who had borne Arcadius and Honorius, later begot Placidia who was the mother of the most recent Valentinianus {III} junior, the emperor. But let us return to our subject. 312 Emperor Valens, having given a law that monks must serve as soldiers, also commanded that the refusers be executed. During this, even Theodosius, the father of the later emperor Theodosius {I (“the Great”)}, and many nobles were killed through Valens’ insanity. Emperor Gratianus slaughtered in war more than 30 thousand Alamanni near the town of Argentarium {(actually Argentovaria, now Colmar, France)} of Gaul, and pacified the Gauls. 313 Attacking the Goths, the race of the Huns subjugated certain of them, routed others. The latter, coming onto Roman territory and being accepted without the surrender of their arms, were forced by hunger, due to the greed of General Maximus, to rebel; and having beaten the Romans in battle, they poured into the Thraces. 314 Against them {Flavius Julius} Valens, forced to leave from Antioch, departed for Thrace; and there, engaging in a deplorable war, the emperor, wounded by an arrow, was carried wounded into a paltry house where, with the Goths swooping

down on it and setting it ablaze, he was incinerated. But with the emperor killed, the Goths, now safe, rushed to the city of Constantinople where then {Albia} Dominica Augusta, Valens’ wife, by distributing a large amount of money to the people, prevented the enemy from devastating the city and loyally and manfully saved the empire of her relative {(actually her nephewin-law) Flavius Gratianus (emperor of the West)} until he could appoint Theodosius {I (“the Great”)}. 315 The Spaniard Theodosius {I}, of the city of Italica {(now Itálica, Spain)} of the divine Trajanus, was made emperor by Gratianus Augustus at Sirmium after the death of Valens, and reigned for 17 years. Arriving at Thessalonica {(now Thessaloniki, Greece)}, he was baptized by the holy bishop Ascholius and greatly distinguished himself as a religious propagator of the Church and an exceptional defender of the Empire. For in various battles he conquered the Huns and Goths who had exhausted it under Valens, and checked them in their criminal devastations. Petitioned, he also struck a peace treaty with the Persians. 316 On the other hand, attacking from the East together with Emperor Valentinianus at Mediolanum {(now Milan)}, he encircled, captured and killed the tyrant Maximus, who had killed Gratianus and was claiming the Gauls for himself. 317 Armed with divine assistance, he also vanquished the tyrant {Flavius} Eugenius and {Flavius} Arwa-gast {“Fast-guest,” “Expeditious-visitor”}, annihilating their ten thousand fighters. For indeed this Eugenius, depending on the forces of Arwa-gast after the latter had killed Valentinian {II} at Vienna {(now Vienne, France)}, usurped power, but soon lost his throne along with his life. 318

For after the death of Arwa-gast, he killed himself in despair. Theodosius, with all of his enemies vanquished, departed from human affairs in peace at Mediolanum, leaving one apiece of the two republics, both tranquil, to each of his two sons. In the same year his body was transported to Constantinople and buried. 319 The brothers Arcadius and Honorius, the sons of Emperor Theodosius, began to rule both empires, only with separate headquarters, that is, Arcadius, the older, the city of Constantinople, but Honorius the Roman one. Then the patrician Rufinus, setting a trap for Prince Arcadius, invited Alareik {“All-ruler”}, king of the Goths, to lay waste to the Greek territories, by secretly sending him money. In the sequel, Rufinus was exposed, was deservedly cut to pieces in front of the gates of the city by soldiers from Italy sent with Count Gaina to Arcadius, and his head and right hand were paraded around in ridicule at Constantinople and, after his wife had been exiled, the eunuch Eutropius gained all his wealth. 320 Gildo, formerly appointed count of Africa by Theodosius, as though despising the youthful twofold reign, began looking to obtain Africa for himself; and, after finding himself revealed by his own brother Mascezel and close to liquidation, he slew himself with his own hand. On the other hand, the abovementioned Count Gaina, stirring up a civil war in Constantinople, disrupted the entire city with fire and the sword; and fleeing to the Hellespont, he lived like a pirate. After a naval battle had been launched against him, many of his Goths were killed. He himself, escaping from the war too, nonetheless soon paid for it with his head. 321 After his suppression, the Isaurians running around through the Taurus range inflicted enormous damage on the Republic. {Manlius Boëthius} Narbazaicus {(original Armenian name: Artabazakos)}, sent against them, immediately paid them back

with greater losses. However in the realm of Emperor Honorius, to begin with, Hraða-gais {“Agile-spear,” “Quick-javelin”}, a Scythian, inundated the western empire with two hundred thousand of his men. Vanquishing him, Huldin and Sarwa {“Armament,” “War-equipment,” “Arms”}, kings of the Huns and Goths, sold all the captives they brought back for one gold coin apiece. 322 But Count Stilika {“Stealer”} — whose two daughters, Maria and Thermantia, were individually wives of Emperor Honorius, and both of whom died as virgins —, scorning Honorius and gaping after his power, stirred up the peoples of the Alans, Sweves and Vandals against the dominion of Honorius, enticing them with gifts and money, wanting to appoint his own son Eucherius as Cæsar — a pagan, and one engineering traps for Christians. On the discovery of the plot, he was killed together with that same son. In the same year Arcadius, emperor of the East, also died, having reigned for 13 years after the death of his father. 323 Theodosius {II} junior, son of Arcadius, a distinguished young man, succeeded to his father’s place on the throne and reigned for 43 years. Ala-reik {“All-ruler”}, king of the Visigoths, having laid waste to Italy, entered Rome and, after having plundered the wealth of Honorius the Augustus, took his sister Placidia captive and later assigned her to Aþa-wulf {“Noble wolf”}, his own successor, for him to take her in marriage. 324 At that time a certain Constantine {III}, having taken over the Gauls, went after the emperorship. < Immediately his enemies, raging against him and desiring to deprive his > son < of the throne, made the latter a monk. He himself, having returned safely from Gaul, > out of the monk made his son Constans a Cæsar. But shortly he himself lost his throne together with his life at Arelatum {(now Arles, France)}, his son lost his at Vienna.

{Note:} < Statim … sævientes, > … < illius regno … filium > (“< Immediately … to deprive his > … < of the throne … from Gaul, >”): these portions are not found in the better codices or in Marcellinus. 325 Similarly, forgetful of their demise, Jovinus and Sebastianus set up a tyranny there in the Gauls, but they themselves also came to their end right away. Subsequently Heracleanus arrived with seventy-three armed ships to plunder the city of Rome. Count Marinus, going out against him, so terrified him that he fled with only a single ship to Carthage where in a short time he entered and was killed. 326 Wallia {“Selected one,” “Elite”}, king of the Visigoths, having concluded a peace with Honorius, returned Placidia, his sister — after joining whom in matrimony to the patrician Constantius who had called for her return, Honorius departed from human affairs. Maximus and Jovinus, bound in irons, were led away from the Spains and executed. 327 But after the death of Honorius, John {“the Usurper”} took over the Western empire. Placidia, having been made an Augusta, and her son Valentinian {III}, a Cæsar, were sent against him. Aspar and Arða-baúrjis {“Earth-son,” “Child of the land”} also conquered him more through trickery than through Aëtius’s valor. 328 After the death of John the tyrant, Valentinianus was ordained emperor at Ravenna by his paternal uncle Theodosius. The latter’s sister, {Justa Grata} Honoria, being that she was forced to maintain her virginity for the honor of the court, by secretly sending an emissary, invited Attila, king of the Huns, to Italy. And when she could not fulfil her vow once Attila had come, she

furthermore committed the crime which she had not done with Attila, with Eugenius her steward. For which she was taken into custody by her brother and sent to Constantinople to Theodosius, the emperor. 329 The third year afterward, Valentinian {III} came from Rome to Constantinople to take in marriage {Licinia} Eudoxia, the daughter of Emperor Theodosius and, giving as a present to his father-in-law all of Illyria, after having celebrated the wedding, he returned to his realm with his wife. 330 The African province was surrendered to the Vandals by Count Boniface and removed from Roman jurisdiction because Boniface, after having fallen into the disfavor of Valentinian {III}, sought to defend himself with national harm. Having invited in Gaisa-reik {“Spear Ruler, Javelin Ruler”}, king of the Vandals, from the Spains, he achieved the treachery that he had devised. 331 The king of the Huns, Attila, having allied to himself the Gibiðos {“The Givers”} under Arða-reik {“Earth-ruler,” “Homeground ruler”} and the Goths under Wala-mer {“Beloved famous one”}, and different other tribes with their kings, ravaged all of Illyria and Thrace, and both Dacias, Mœsia et Scythia. Against them Arni-gisl {“Eagle-arrowshaft,” “Eaglejavelin”}, the general in charge of Mœsia, leaving from Marcianopolis, fought valiantly, and with his horse collapsing under him he was outmaneuvered and, even so, not ceasing to fight, was killed. 332 Emperor Marcianus reigned for 6 years and 6 months. Indeed, this man, called to the throne soon after the death of Theodosius {II}, taking in marriage Theodosius’s sister Pulcheria who as a mature woman in the palace had still kept her virginity, repaired

with divine foresight the empire that his effeminate ruling predecessors and forerunners had by turns diminished through almost sixty years, to the point that great joy grew in everyone. 333 For with the constantly warring Parthians and the Vandals he established peace; he checked the threats of Attila; through Florus, governor of the city of Alexandria, he quelled the Nubades and Blemmyes who had slipped in from Æthiopia, and drove them back from the frontiers of the Romans; and to his good fortune he learned of the death of Attila and downfall of Zenon the Isaurian — of men of misfortune — before he died. And, with the Lord’s power, stomping on the necks of all of his foes, reigning in his sixth year and sixth month, he died in peace. 334 Valentinianus {III}, however, the western emperor, was assassinated in an ambush of the patrician Maximus, through whose deception Aëtius had also perished, in the Campus Martius by Uftila {“Often,” “Frequent” (i.e, “Always at the ready”)} and Þrafstila {“Consoler,” “Encourager”}, bodyguards of Aëtius, after the eunuch Heracleus had already been killed. The same Maximus usurped his throne also, and in the third month of his tyranny was torn limb from limb at Rome by the Romans. Then Gaisa-reik, king of the Vandals, having been invited by Valentinian’s wife Eudoxia, entered Rome from Africa and, having plundered that city of everything, returning to Africa took her and her two daughters with him. 335 Through the power of the patrician Aspar, Leo {I (“the Great”)}, of Bessian origin, from being a tribune of the soldiers was made emperor. Through his backing, the man soon ordained Cæsar in the place of Valentinian {III} at Ravenna was Majorianus who, not yet having completed his third year in the emperorship, was killed near Dertona {(now Tortona, Italy)}, and {Libius} Severus took over his place without Leo’s permission. 336

But he himself too, after having completed the third year of his tyranny, died at Rome. Leo then, raising Anthemius, the son-inlaw of the divine Marcian, from being a patrician to Cæsar, set him up in the emperorship at Rome, whereupon he killed Bigeles {(= Beorgor, cf. Getica, 236)}, king of the Getæ, through Aspar’s son Arða-baúrjis. 337 < Leo erred greatly, > Sending his brother-in-law {Flavius} Basiliscus — that is, the brother of his Augusta, {Ælia} Verina — to Africa with an army, a man who, often attacking Carthage in naval battles, being conquered by avarice, sold it to the king of the Vandals for money rather than subjecting it to Roman power. 338 However he slaughtered the patrician Aspar, along with his sons Arða-baúrjis and Patriciolus, in the palace at the prompting of Zenon’s son-in-law; and, with Anthemio killed at Rome, through his own client Domitian, at Ravenna he ordained {Julius} Nepos, the son of Nepotianus, as Cæsar, having joined his niece to him in marriage. Having assumed power legitimately, this Nepos, expelling from the emperorship Glycerium who had tyrannically usurped power for himself, made him a bishop in Salona of Dalmatia. 339 Thus also Leo {I}, appointing his own grandson (through his daughter {Ælia} Ariadne), Leo {II} the Younger to the Eastern emperorship, he died in the sixteenth year of his reign. 340 While for a few short months Leo the Younger had ruled the child-led Empire — his father nevertheless appointing him —, with his own hand crowning his own father Zenon and making him emperor, he departed from human affairs.

341 Zeno, Isaurian by nationality, son-in-law of Emperor Leo, reigned for 17 years. As it happened, while he was in conferences at Chalcedon, suddenly his mother-in-law, Verina, the Augusta, bringing her brother Basiliscus into the emperorship, proclaimed him Augustus in the city. 342 Discovering this, Zeno left Chalcedon for Isauria without any harm to the Republic, preferring to be exiled alone with Ariadne, his Augusta, than to bring about any damage to the Republic through civil wars on his account. Learning of this, Basiliscus, happy over Zeno’s flight, ordained his own son Marcus as Cæsar. Inflated with the Nestorian perfidy, this man immediately tried to do a lot against the Church; but through the will of God, this inflated man died suddenly before he could stand repentent. 343 For Zeno, returning again to his own kingdom, sent both him and his father and mother to exile in the town of Limnai of the province of Cappadocia. Where, because the love of God and of neighbor had turned cold in them, they were overcome with cold and lost their lives along with their power. 344 In the realm of the West, Orestes, having put Emperor Nepos to flight, placed his own son Augustulus on the throne. But soon Auða-wakr {“Blest-awake,” "Fortunate (in) alertness,” “Auspiciously conscious”}, Rugian {“Hard-striver,” “Exerter,” “Toiler”} by nationality, reinforced by masses of Þorkilings {= Þwaírhei-l-ingos? (= ∼ingos “Progeny”) “the Sons of Wrath, Race of Ire”?}, Skeiri {“Pure(-blooded) ones”}, and Aíruli {“Earls,” “Men”}, invaded Italy and, having torn Emperor Augustulus from power, condemned him to a punishment of exile in the Lucullan castle of Campania. 345

Thus too the Western empire and the lordship of the Roman people which, in the seven hundred and ninth year after the foundation of the city, Octavian Augustus began to hold as the first of the Augusti, perished with this Augustulus, in the five hundred twenty-second year of the succeeding emperors of the realm, Gothic kings thenceforth holding Rome. 346 Þiuða-reik {“People-ruler,” “Prince over the folk”}, the son of Triarius, surnamed “Squinter,” king of the Goths, having mustered his men, arrived battle-ready at the fourth city milestone from Stabulum Diomedis {(near Philippi in Macedonia)}; nonetheless, having injured none of the Romans, he immediately turned back; hastening on to Illyria, while he was advancing among the moving wagons of his men, impaled by the point of a javelin lying atop a cart and the jolt of his scared horse, he died, run through by it, and gave the Republic a holiday with his death. 347 With Wala-mer {“Beloved famous one”}, king of the Goths, having died in the war of the Skeiri, Þiuði-mer {“Peoplefamed”} succeeded to his brother’s kingship with his brother Wiði-mer {I, “Forest-fame”}, and his son Þiuða-reik. But by casting lots, the Western parts went to Wiði-mer {I} with his son Wiði-mer {II}, Illyria went to Þiuði-mer with his son Þiuða-reik — and the Thraces — to be raided. Thus, leaving Pannonia, the one undertook the ravaging of Italy, the other that of Illyria; but soon after entering the apportioned areas, both kings quickly departed from human affairs — Wiði-mer {I} in Italy, in Illyria, Þiuði-mer. They died leaving sons, of whom Wiði-mer {II}, conquered by Italian bribes, headed for the regions of Gaul and Spain, abandoning Italy. 348 Þiuða-reik, seduced by the civility of Zeno the Augustus, went to Constantinople where, made Presental Master of the Soldiers, he celebrated the triumph of a year-starting {(“ordinarius”)} consul

at public expense. But because then, as we have said, Auðawakr had taken command of Italy, Emperor Zeno, realizing that now the tribes held that land, he prefered to entrust it to Þiuðareik — as though to a man already his own client — rather than to someone whom he did not know. And thinking thus, ordering him to the regions of Italy, he committed the Roman people and Senate to his care. 349 And triumphantly Þiuða-reik, king of tribes and Roman consul, headed for Italy and, after exhausting Auða-wakr in great battles, took him in surrender. Later, as it happened, killing him in the palace at Ravenna on the pretext that he was suspicious, he wisely and peacefully maintained the kingship of his own tribe and the overlordship of the Roman people for thirty years. However Illus the Isaurian, the Master of Offices and close intimate of Zeno in his private life and connected with him through friendship, while to the detriment of {Ælia} Ariadne, the Augusta, he secretly talked with her husband, he stirred the Augustus up in jealousy. 350 He, determining to kill her, secretly entrusted the affair to one of his own men. As the latter was getting ready to execute this, he revealed to some chambermaid the crime he was about to commit that very night. The queen discovered the plot and, leaving in her own bed the same woman who had informed her of the matter, escaped without anyone’s knowing it to the bishop’s house, to Acacius. 351 On the following day Zeno, thinking the matter accomplished, while, as though buried in grief, he received no one, the bishop Acacius, entering, attacked his impiety and demanded a guarantee of pardon, and assured him that the Augusta was innocent of suspicion; having received the guarantee, with the pledge of pardon, the Augusta returned. As she repeatedly mulled over by what fate she might exact vengeance on her enemy, having (as she thought) gotten the opportunity, she

ordered one of her men standing in concealment to kill Illus as he was leaving her. Obeying the orders of the queen, the man, as he was eagerly striking with his sword on his head, did not cut off his neck, as he wanted, but his ear. 352 Escaping this danger, Illus, shortly leaving the city and hostile towards Zeno, seized the East. Leontius, sent against him, enticed through seductive verbiage by that very man, usurped the crown; and with Leontius and Illus having simultaneously become enemies of the Republic, as tyrants they rampaged through the regions of Syria and Isauria. Adding tribute above the usual to the Isaurians, they all conspired simultaneously against Zeno, with whose treasures, found in the strongly fortified Papirian stronghold, they ran wild. 353 But not much later they were captured and beheaded in the same stronghold by Zeno’s army, and their heads were brought to Constantinople and rotted away spitted on lances. Thus Zeno, having defeated his enemies, also died in good peace. 354 {Flavius} Anastasius was suddenly raised from being a silentiary {(imperial official charged with keeping silence and order in the court)} to the emperorship by the Augusta Ariadne, and at the same time gained fame as both emperor and husband, and reigned for 27 years and 2 months. The Isaurians took up arms against him since they were cheated by him of the donative which the tyrant Illus had provided them with, and Zeno, for the sake of reconciliation, had unwillingly granted them. 355 With the war begun, having set up camp near Cotyaëum, a city of Phrygia, they fought the Republic for almost six continuous years. Where when Longinus {(probably) Calvus} also, their foremost man in both war and strategy, even though slow on his feet due to bodily weakness, nonetheless extremely fierce as a

cavalryman in war, had been killed, all the Isaurians fled and were dispersed and vanquished, and expelled everywhere, and some of their cities were razed to the ground. 356 For the soldiery, exhausted by various battles under Anastasius, both now in Illyria with Sabinianus and Mund {“Guardarm,” "Protection"; Hun with a Gothic name} at the Margus {modern Morava} river, and now with Pompey at Adrianople, now with Aristus at the Zurta river, now with the Parthians in Syria — to say nothing of the civil disasters and battles in the forum of the royal city —, finally fighting against Italy in a war more piratical than national, was brought to naught. 357 But what was more to be regretted was the fact that for six years he protracted a civil war against his own servant, Vitalianus of Scythia. Indeed, this Vitalianus, approaching with 60 thousand armed men mobilized within almost three days, hostile not to the Republic but to the emperor, desolated many suburban districts of the royal city by plunder and pillage. 358 While Hypatius, the nephew of Cæsar, going with a multitudinous army to fight against him, was starting out — before he, as the opponent, could show himself in open battle on the opposite side — beforehand, he was captured by the Hun auxiliaries and, sitting on a female mule, ignominiously sold to Vitalianus. After Hypatius, Rufinus and Alathar, the Master of the Soldiery {(for the Thraces)}, were both often likewise defeated, often ridiculed by him and held in contempt. 359 Thus also Anastasius, walled in on different sides by enemy armies, often groaned; still, he did not deserve to hear the punishment of any of his enemies, as he himself did not keep the laws of the Church; rather, lamenting and raging, he departed from human affairs over eighty years of age and in the twenty-

eighth year of his reign; and, under his successor Justinus, the buffeted Republic barely caught its breath a little. 360 Justinus, elected emperor by the Senate from being Count of the Imperial Guard, reigned for 9 years. The man soon struck down Amantius, the Palace Manager, Andrew and Misaël and Arðabaúrjis {“Earth-son,” “Child of the land”}, the chamberlains, perceiving them to be gaping after his throne. Indeed, he cut down Amantius and Andrew with the sword, and sent Misaël and Arða-baúrjis into exile at Serdica {(now Sofia, Bulgaria)}. Also taking captive and imprisoning Theocritus, Amantius’s bodyguard, whom the same Amantius had secretly readied for ruling, he crushed him with huge rocks and threw him into the salt sea, depriving him of a burial as well as of the power he had lusted after. 361 He struck an alliance with Vitalianus and, having called him to himself, also made him a Presental Master of the Soldiers and a year-starting {(“ordinarius”)} consul; suspecting him of returning to his earlier project, he had him stabbed to death with 16 wounds in the palace together with his bodyguards Celerianus et Paulus. 362 Also, this emperor, the fourth month before his own death, taking into consideration his own old age and the welfare of the Republic, ordaining Justinian, his nephew through his sister, as his consort in power and successor in the emperorship, departed from human affairs. 363 Emperor Justinianus, with the help of the Lord, then reigned for 24 years. As soon as he was put in charge of the royal scepters by his uncle, he shortly checked the war-initiating Parthians by sending an army against them and, guarding his own frontiers, often struck down many Parthians. But afterwards, given that

sins were being committed, a battle having been begun on Saturday, the eve of holy Easter, at the instigation of the army, not of the general, a multitudinous Roman army fleeing the Parthians plunged into the Euphrates river. Through his magistrates he frequently shielded Illyria from the ravaging Aíruli {“Earls,” “Men”}, Gibiðos {“The Givers”} and Bulgars and manfully beat them. 364 Next, Hypatius and Pompey, insurgents against their own government, having gathered a band of civilians and entered the Circus — with Hypatius crowned with a golden wreath for a diadem and already taking over the emperor’s seats, and Pompey wearing armor under his shirt and now invading the palace —, both stopped, arrested in front of the palace gates and fettered, were sentenced; and, having their heads cut off, he made them lose their power before they had it. With those of their associates who escaped the slaughter outlawed, the emperor celebrated a triumph with spoils, as though a great enemy had been defeated. 365 In the same year, after the interminable and immense labor of a war that had been waged against the Parthians with the sweat of the Romans, through the patrician Rufinus and Hermogenes the Master of Offices, both sent by the emperor as ambassadors, peace was agreed to and a treaty entered upon, and gifts were sent mutually to one another by both emperors. 366 Soon, with the army of the Eastern theatre disbanded, he chose Belisarius, the same general whom he had sent across some time ago to the Orient; with a great many and the most valiant soldiers having been assigned to the man, he sent him to the southern regions against the Vandals. Through divine favor he defeated the Vandals with as much speed as the ease with which he had come and, uniting Libya to the body of the whole Republic, in the royal city offered king Gaila-mer {“Gladfamous,” “Cheerfully-renowned”} and the riches of Carthage to

the emperor with the people looking on. Having been rewarded under the latter’s approval, and shortly thereafter designated year-starting consul, Belisarius celebrated a triumph with the Vandal spoils. 367 But after King Þiuða-reik had died in Italy, in accordance with his directions his grandson Aþala-reik followed him in office, although he was just an eight-year-old boy; for that reason his mother Amala-swinþo {“Amal strength”} directed the government. At that time the long-held Gaulic lands were returned to the Franks at their insistence. 368 After Aþala-reik’s death his mother made her cousin Þiuða-haþ {“Folk-conflict,” “Nation-battle,” “Clash-of-peoples”} her coregent, but not long afterwards she was killed at his command. And because quite some while before she had placed herself and her son under the protection of Emperor Justinian, the latter was grieved to hear of her death and did not let it go unpunished. Instead, he sent the same army commander who had vanquished the Phœnicians and who was still invested with consular powers from his triumph over the Vandals {534}, to the western land at the head of troops from various nations. 369 In his first attack Belisarius took Sicily, where the Gothic field commander Sinþa-reþ {“Marching plan,” “Journey plan”} was beaten. But while he remained there a bit to reorganize the country, he learned that in Africa civil wars and an internal conflict were raging. For Stotzas, effectively the dregs of soldiery and a retainer of Martinus, the Master of Soldiery {in the East after Belisarius}, having killed Cyrillus, Marcellus, Fara {“Farer,” “Traveler,” “Courier”} and other administrators by trickery, had seized upon despotism ; he had been made the leader of mutineers and was raging against the general Salomon, tyrannically devastating all of Africa {536}. 370

So Belisarius crossed over the water from Sicily to Africa and with his usual success defeated the rebels, liberated the province, re-installed Salomon in Carthage, and then returned to Sicily. Here Ibr-moð {“Boar-mood”}, the Gothic king Þiuða-haþ’s sonin-law who had come with an army to fight him, seeing the success of the victorious consul, surrendered to him of his own accord. He urged him to come to the aid of Italy which, suspicious of his own arrival, now eagerly desired him. So lining up his army and leading it with both fleet and cavalry, Belisarius surrounded Naples with a wall, forced his way into the city by night through an aquaduct after a siege of a few days, killed both the Goths and the rebellious Romans in it, and plundered it thoroughly. 371 When Þiuða-haþ learned of this, he appointed Weiti-gis {“Punishing spear”}, one of his commanders, to the head of the army and sent him against Belisarius. 372 Having hardly arrived at the Barbarian Plains {(= probably the Pomptine Marshes between Rome and Terracina)} in Campania, Weiti-gis immediately won the favor of the army which he suspected was against Þiuða-haþ. So he said, “What do you want?” Whereupon they answered, “Get rid of him who seeks to have his own crimes excused with the blood and downfall of the Goths.” And they rushed upon him and unanimously acclaimed him king. Thus raised to power, as he himself had wanted, in accordance with the people’s wishes he immediately sent off several of his companions and had Þiuða-haþ killed on the latter’s way back to Ravenna. 373 To consolidate his rule, he broke off the campaign, repudiated his wife, a commoner, and — more through force than by love — joined to himself in marriage the princess Maþu-swinþo {“Good strength”}, a granddaughter of Þiuða-reik’s. While he was enjoying his new wedding in Ravenna, Consul Belisarius

entered Rome {536 December 9/10} and was accepted by that people and Senate that had been formerly Roman (their name having practically died together with their virtue). He quickly occupied the neighboring positions — the fortifications of the cities and towns. 374 In his first clash with the Goths under the leadership of Hunila {“Powerful one”} near the city of Perusia, he won, slaughtering more than seven thousand of them, and chased the rest all the way to Ravenna. In the second one he fought with Weiti-gis himself while the latter was surrounding the fortifications of Rome with siege works, used fire to destroy the machines and towers with which he was trying to attack the City, and, even though hard pressed by famine, outsmarted him for a full year. 375 After that he pursued him to Ariminum, chased him from there too, shut him up within Ravenna and forced him to surrender. Also, this one consul, while he was fighting against the Goths, triumphed with almost the same success over the Franks, who had come to Italy in a force more than two hundred thousand strong with their King Þiudða-baírht {“People-gleaming,” “Bright Folk,” “Glorious Nation”}. But because Belisarius, busy with other things, did not want to get tied down elsewhere, at the request of the Franks he gave them peace and, without losing any of his own men, expelled them from Italy. Having taken King Weiti-gis and his queen prisoner, he also took the treasures of their palace together with them back to the Emperor who had sent him. Thus within a short time Emperor Justinian, through his faithful consul, subjected two kings and two kingdoms to his rule. 376 Learning of this, the Parthians, becoming inflamed with the torches of envy, advanced into Syria and, laying waste to Callinicum {(also called Nicephorium or Leontopolis; on the Euphrates river in northeastern Syria)}, Sura {(on the Euphrates, west of Callinicum)} and Neocaesaria {(Neocaesarea, also

called Athis, on the Euphrates, west of Sura)}, proceeded to Antioch. When the patrician Germanus, together with Justin, his son and Consul, had returned from the province of Africa, since he could not block the arrival of the Parthians, he left the city and withdrew to Cilicia {southern Asia Minor}. The Persians took over the City of Antioch, which was empty of troops, and saw the populace intermixed with soldiers fleeing to the seaside Seleucia {Pieria, Mediterranean port city for Antioch} along the route of the Orontes river, yet did not pursue them but competed with one another in pillaging Antioch. They then passed on, partly invading the neighboring cities and towns, partly bypassing them after exacting sums of money from them. Indeed, the Parthians took the wealth of almost all of Cœlesyria in the space of a single year. 377 And they did not leave, but kept constantly fighting against the Roman Empire. Consul Belisarius, victor over the Vandals and the Goths, was sent against them as usual. Even if he did not subdue them as he did the rest of the nations, he still compelled them to retreat to behind their own borders, and victory over this people, too, would have been granted to this successful general if the disaster of Italy, which had happened after his departure, had not made Martinus his rapid successor. {I.e., Martinus was directed to replace Belisarius in Italy in 542, cf. Procopius, Bell. Pers. 2, 21. 24.} Even if in troops he was unequal to the Parthians, he was not inferior in strategy, even though paired with Constantianus {Master of Soldiery of the East and Count of the Imperial Stables}; since he was unable to hold them at bay, he made peace instead of dragging the war out over a long period. 378 But so that the reader may understand more clearly the disaster in the West which I spoke about, I will be more explicit. When Consul Belisarius left Italy taking, as we said, the King and Queen and the treasure of the Palace back to the Emperor, the Goths who dwelt on the other side of the Po in Liguria revived their will to war, rose up, installed Hildi-baðu {"Battle-combat"} as chieftain, and emerged as adversaries. Although the Emperor

tried various outfits of not just one but diverse generals against them, the Goths proved themselves the stronger side and held firm. And after little more than a year Hildi-bað was killed and Aira-harjis {“Early(?)-soldier,” “Early(?) warrior”} took his place. 379 This man, too, was assassinated in office in just over a year. Then, to the misfortune of Italy, the youthful Baðwila {or Baðu “(Little) Combatant,” “(Little) Fighter,” (“-ila” is a diminutive suffix) ; Totila’s real name}, a nephew of Hildi-bað’s, was elevated to the throne {October 541}. He quickly and without delay went into battle {spring 542} near the city of Faventia {modern Faenza, southwest of Ravenna} on the soil of Æmilia, and defeated the Roman army. Not long afterwards he fought a successful battle through his officers near Mucelli {modern Mugello}, in grain-supplying Tuscany, put the officials to flight, won the army over partly by gifts and partly by flattery, and marched through the whole of Italy including Rome. He tore down the fortifications of all of the cities and, after destroying Rome, moved the Senators, one and all, to the state of Campania, after he had divested them of everything {547}. 380 Belisarius was sent against him from the Orient with just a few troops, thinking he would find intact the entire army that he had left. So when after his arrival in Ravenna {544} he found no forces with whom he could face Baðwila, he went back over the Adriatic Sea to Epirus, where Johannes and Valerianus joined him. But while these three were arguing and quarreling with one another, Totila {Tot- = perhaps -tojis "doer, worker" (cf. fullatojis "perfectly wrought," Lat. per-fectus, & ubil-tojis "evildoing") + -ila, i.e., "(Little) Doer, "Achiever"}, also called Baðwila, completed his hostile work in Italy. Belisarius, who could not face this cruelty, weighed anchor with a fleet from Sicily, betook himself through the Tyrrhenian Sea to anchorage at the port of Rome {546}; going thence to the City and finding it destroyed and desolate, it pained him and, exhorting his comrades, he set about to restore the great City.

381 When the wall around the city was not yet quite finished, he found Totila attacking him ; but given all of his usual victories he was unafraid, marched out against him with but few troops and put him to flight so badly, that more fleeing men drowned in the Tiber than died by the sword {547}. Then, after having exhorted his army, he returned to Sicily to, insofar as possible, provide the city with grain and, being close to the straits, cause trouble for Totila who was staying in Campania. But as usual, there is a change of events also depending on the varying will of emperors. 382 When the Empress Theodora died, Belisarius was called back to Constantinople from Sicily. After his departure Totila, unhampered and with renewed madness, attacked Rome, which the Isaurians also handed over to him. And thus, gathering forces from everywhere and fortified with military auxiliaries, he invaded and conquered Sicily. 383 Now the emperor had given Maþu-swinþo, the granddaughter of Þiuða-reik and widow of Weiti-gis, in marriage to the Patrician Germanus. But while he was to set out with the army against Totila, he died in the city of {Ulpia} Serdica {(now Sofia, Bulgaria)} , leaving behind a pregnant wife. (After his death she bore him a posthumous son and named him Germanus.) When Totila heard of this stroke of luck, deriding the Romans, he laid waste almost the whole of Italy. 384 But in Africa, with Salomon long since killed by the Moors {543}, Stotzas and John fell together, mutually, in a duel-like battle. Adopting tyranny, yet another John — called “Stotzas the Younger” — persuaded Gunþi-reik {"Battle-ruler"}, Master of the Soldiery, to go along with him. He, having killed her husband {543} Arja-bind {“Aryan-bound,” “Noble bond”} and seeking to acquire the Emperor’s niece as wife, was forestalled

in this by Artabanes. Having killed Gunþi-reik at a banquet, he both sent the Emperor’s rescued niece with honor to Constantinople, to the Emperor, and at the same time also sent him John the tyrant chained in iron shackles — the one who, after Stotzas’ murder, had taken the latter’s place in the selfsame tyranny. 385 After he had been put on trial in the city and his hands cut off, the prefect hung him on an X-cross as an example to others. After the command of Africa had been assigned to John the Patrician, surnamed Troglita, Artabanus was recalled and accepted the title of Presental Master of the Soldiery. Not long afterwards, Artabanus, seeking to lay hands on the Emperor himself, was exposed and convicted, but through Imperial pardon he remained unpunished, and as if being faithful he hastened with the patrician Liberius to Sicily against Totila. John, on the other hand, was working successfully in the African province. After having defeated the Moors of the hostile faction through the Peacefurthering Moors, in a single day he annihilated seventeen of their leaders and with the help of the Lord achieved the peace of the whole of Africa. 386 The nation of the Langobards {“Long-beards”}, which was allied with the princes of the Roman Empire and had joined the daughter of the sister of Þiuða-haþ {“Folk-conflict,” “Nationbattle,” “Clash-of-peoples”} (whom the Emperor had given to them) to their king in marriage, in one day launched a battle against the enemies of the Romans, the Gibiðos {“The Givers”}, and practically overran their camp. Altogether on both sides more than sixty thousand men died. 387 And they say that in our times no battle equal to this one has been heard of in these parts since the days of Attila, other than the one before this with the Gibiðos which had happened under Callux the Master of the Soldiery, or, similarly, that of Mundo {“Guardarm,” "Protection"; Giped/Hun with a Gothic name}

with the Goths, in both of which the initiators of the war fell equally. 388 These are the misfortunes of the Roman Empire aside from the daily inroads of the Bulgars, Antes and Slavs. If anyone wishes to know them, let him go through the annals and the history of the consuls without disdain, and he will find a modern-day empire worthy of a tragedy. And he will know whence it arose, how it grew or in what way it subjected all lands to itself and how again it lost them through ignorant rulers. It is something we, to the extent of our ability, have treated so that, through reading, the serious reader may gain a broader knowledge of these things. Explicit (Added by later copyists) The end of the history of the Roman Empire.