e alliance, men from their natural ferocity and
the desperateness of their situation ready for acts of the most
mischievous audacity, and has conspired against the public safety,
trampling down justice, the parent and nurse of the Roman world. That
power I believe, both because I myself have experienced it, and because
all antiquity assures me of its might, will, as an avenger of
wickedness, soon trample down their pride like so many ashes.

14. "What then remains, except to hasten to encounter the whirlwind thus
raised against us? so as by promptitude to crush the fury of this rising
war before it comes to maturity and strength? Nor can it be questioned
that, with the favour of the supreme deity, by whose everlasting
sentence ungrateful men are condemned, the sword which they have
wickedly drawn will be turned to their own destruction. Since never
having received any provocation, but rather after having been loaded
with benefits, they have risen up to threaten innocent men with danger.

15. "For as my mind augurs, and as justice, which will aid upright
counsels, promises, I feel sure that when once we come to close
quarters, they will be so benumbed with fear as neither to be able to
stand the fire of your glancing eyes nor the sound of your battle cry."
This speech harmonized well with the feelings of the soldiers. In their
rage they brandished their shields, and after answering him in terms of
eager good-will, demanded to be led at once against the rebels. Their
cordiality changed the emperor's fear into joy; and having dismissed the
assembly, as he knew by past experience that Arbetio was most eminently
successful in putting an end to intestine wars, he ordered him to
advance first by the road which he himself designed to take, with the
spearmen and the legion of Mattium,[118] and several battalions of light
troops; he also ordered Gomoarius to take with him the Leti, to check
the enemy on their arrival among the defiles of the Succi; he was
selected for this service because he was unfriendly to Julian on account
of some slight he had received from him in Gaul.

XIV.

Sec. 1. While the fortune of Constantius was now wavering and tottering in
this tumult of adverse circumstances, it showed plainly by signs which
almost spoke that a very critical moment of his life was at hand. For he
was terrified by nocturnal visions, and before he was thoroughly asleep
he had seen the shade of his father bringing him a beautif