Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/294



6. To these shameful vices was added the loss of military discipline; the soldier practised songs instead of his battle-cry, and a stone would no longer serve him for a bed, as formerly, but he wanted feathers and yielding mattresses, and goblets heavier than his sword, for he was now ashamed to drink out of earthenware; and he required marble houses, though it is recorded in ancient histories that a Spartan soldier was severely punished for venturing to appear under a roof at all during a campaign.

7. But now the soldier was fierce and rapacious towards his own countrymen, but towards the enemy he was inactive and timid, by courting different parties, and in times of peace he had acquired riches, and was now a judge of gold and precious stones, in a manner wholly contrary to the recollection of very recent times.

8. For it is well known that when, in the time of the Caesar Maximian, the camp of the king of Persia was plundered; a common soldier, after finding a Persian bag full of pearls, threw the gems away in ignorance of their value, and went away contented with the mere beauty of his bit of dressed leather.

9. In those days it also happened that a barber who had been sent for to cut the emperor's hair, came handsomely dressed; and when Julian saw him, he was amazed, and said, "I did not send for a superintendent, but for a barber." And when he was asked what he made by his business, he answered that he every day made enough to keep twenty persons, and as many horses, and also a large annual income, besides many sources of accidental gain.

10. And Julian, angry at this, expelled all the men of this trade, and the cooks, and all who made similar profits, as of no use to him, telling them, however, to go where they pleased.

V
1. And although from his earliest childhood he was inclined to the worship of the gods, and gradually, as he grew up, became more attached to it, yet he was influenced by many apprehensions which made him act in things relating to that subject as secretly as he could.