re mistaken, and though
they were sometimes obstinate in cases which they did not thoroughly
understand. In truth, they brought forward as a plausible argument to
secure credit to their knowledge, that in time past, when Caesar
Maximianus was about to fight Narses, king of the Persians, a lion and a
huge boar which had been slain were at the same time brought to him, and
after subduing that nation he returned in safety; forgetting that the
destruction which was now portended was to him who invaded the dominions
of another, and that Narses had given the offence by being the first to
make an inroad into Armenia, a country under the Roman jurisdiction.

12. On the next day, which was the 7th of April, as the sun was setting,
suddenly the air became darkened, and all light wholly disappeared, and
after repeated claps of thunder and flashes of lightning, a soldier
named Jovianus was struck by the lightning and killed, with two horses
which he was leading back from the river to which he had taken them to
drink.

13. When this was seen, the interpreters of such things were sent for
and questioned, and they with increased boldness affirmed that this
event forbade the campaign, demonstrating it to be a monitory lightning
(for this term is applied to signs which advise or discourage any line
of action). And this, as they said, was to be the more guarded against,
because it had killed a soldier of rank, with war-horses; and the books
which explain lightnings pronounce that places struck in this manner
should not be trodden on, nor even looked upon.

14. On the other hand, the philosophers declared that the brilliancy of
this sacred fire thus suddenly presented to the eye had no special
meaning, but was merely the course of a fiercer breath descending by
some singular power from the sky to the lower parts of the world; and
that if any foreknowledge were to be derived from such a circumstance,
it was rather an increase of renown which was portended to the emperor
now engaged in a glorious enterprise; since it is notorious that flame,
if it meet with no obstacle, does of its own nature fly upwards.

15. The bridge then, as has been narrated, having been finished, and all
the troops having crossed it, the emperor thought it the most important
of all things to address his soldiers who were advancing resolutely, in
full reliance on their leader and on themselves. Accordingly, a signal
having been given by the trumpets, the centurions