Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/223

 of various kinds; but as they are not now publicly expiated, as they were among the ancients, they are unheard of and unknown to people in general.

XIII
1. During this period the Isaurians, who had been tranquil for some time after the transactions already mentioned, and the attempt to take the city of Seleucia, gradually reviving, as serpents come out of their holes in the warmth of spring, descended from their rocky and pathless jungles, and forming into large troops, harassed their neighbours with predatory incursions; escaping, from their activity as mountaineers, all attempts of the soldiers to take them, and from long use moving easily over rocks and through thickets.

2. So Lauricius was sent among them as governor, with the additional title of count, to reduce them to order by fair means or foul. He was a man of sound civil wisdom, correcting things in general by threats rather than by severity, so that while he governed the province, which he did for some time, nothing happened deserving of particular notice.