Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/516



3. When they arrived at Vagabanta, a place well suited for the manoeuvres of the legions, they supported against their will a rapid charge which was made upon them by the squadrons of the enemy, and retreated with the design not to be the first to slay any of the hostile soldiers, and not to be looked upon as guilty of having broken the treaty. At last, under the pressure of extreme necessity, they came to an engagement with the barbarians, and after having slain a great number of them, were victorious.

4. During the cessation of regular operations which ensued, several slight skirmishes occurred through the impatience of both armies, which ended with different results; and at last the summer ended, and a truce was agreed to by common consent, and the two armies separated, though the generals were violently inflamed against each other. The king of Parthia, intending to pass the winter at Ctesiphon, returned to his own home, and the Roman emperor went to Antioch; and while he tarried there, in complete security from foreign enemies, he had very nearly perished through domestic treachery, as shall be related in the coming narrative.

5.  A certain Procopius, a restless man, at all times, covetous and fond of disturbances, had persuaded Anatolius and Spudasius, officers about the palace, who had been ordered to restore what they had appropriated from the treasury, to bring a plot against the Count Fortunatianus, who was especially obnoxious as being represented to be the principal demander of this restitution. He, being a man of naturally harsh temper, was thereupon inflamed almost to insanity, and exercising the authority of the office which he filled, he delivered up to trial before the tribunal of the prefect a person of the lowest birth. named Palladius, for being a poisoner in the train of Anatolius and Spudasius; Helidorus, also an interpreter of the Fates from the events which happened at any one's birth; with the intent that they should be compelled by torture to relate all that they knew.

6. And when they came with rigid scrutiny to impure into what had been done or attempted, Palladius boldly exclaimed, that the matters now under investigation were trivial, and such as might well be passed over: that he himself, if he might be allowed to speak, could bring forward