kewise.--IX. Procopius is deserted by his troops in
Bithynia, Lycia, and Phrygia, is delivered alive to Valens, and
beheaded.--X. Marcellus, a captain of the guard, his kinsman, and
many of his partisans are put to death.

I.

A.D. 364.

Sec. 1. Having narrated with exceeding care the series of transactions in
my own immediate recollection, it is necessary now to quit the track of
notorious events, in order to avoid the dangers often found in
connection with truth; and also to avoid exposing ourselves to
unreasonable critics of our work, who would make an outcry as if they
had been personally injured, if anything should be passed over which the
emperor has said at dinner, if any cause should be overlooked for which
the common soldiers were assembled round their standards, or if there
were not inserted a mention of every insignificant fort, however little
such things ought to have room in a varied description of different
districts. Or if the name of every one who filled the office of urban
praetor be not given, and many other things quite impertinent to the
proper idea of a history, which duly touches on prominent occurrences,
and does not stoop to investigate petty details or secret motives, which
any one who wishes to know may as well hope to be able to count those
little indivisible bodies flying through space, which we call atoms.

2. Some of the ancients, fearing this kind of criticism, though they
composed accounts of various actions in a beautiful style, forbore to
publish them, as Tully, a witness of authority, mentions in a letter to
Cornelius Nepos. However, let us, despising the ignorance of people in
general, proceed with the remainder of our narrative.

3. The course of events being terminated so mournfully, by the death of
two emperors at such brief intervals, the army, having paid the last
honours to the dead body which was sent to Constantinople to be interred
among the other emperors, advanced towards Nicaea, which is the
metropolis of Bithynia, where the chief civil and military authorities
applied themselves to an anxious consideration of the state of affairs,
and as some of them were full of vain hopes, they sought for a ruler of
dignity and proved wisdom.

4. In reports, and the concealed whispers of a few persons, the name of
Equitius was ventilated, who was at that time tribune of the first class
of the Scutarii; but he was disapproved by the most influential leaders
as bei