Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/589

This page needs to be proofread.

Besides all these things, the ghost of the king of Armenia, and the miserable shades of those who had lately been put to death in the affair of Theodorus, agitated numbers of people with terrible alarms, appearing to them in their sleep, and shrieking out verses of horrible import.

4. . . . and its death indicated an extensive and general calamity arising from public losses and deaths. Last of all, when the ancient walls of Chalcedon were thrown down in order to build a bath at Constantinople, and the stones were torn asunder, on one squared stone which was hidden in the very centre of the walls these Greek verses were found engraved, which gave a full revelation of what was to happen:—

"But when young wives and damsels blithe, in dances that delight, Shall glide along the city streets, with garlands gaily bright; And when these walls, with sad regrets, shall fall to raise a bath,Then shall the Huns in multitude break forth with might and wrath.By force of arms the barrier-stream of Ister they shall cross, O'er Scythic ground and Moesian lands spreading dismay and loss: They shall Pannonian horsemen brave, and Gallic soldiers slay, And nought but loss of life and breath their course shall ever stay."

II

1. The following circumstances were the original cause of all the destruction and various calamities which the fury of Mars roused up, throwing everything into confusion by his usual ruinous violence: the people called Huns, slightly mentioned in the ancient records, live beyond the Sea of Azov, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a race savage beyond all parallel.

2. At the very moment of their birth the cheeks of their infant children are deeply marked by an iron, in order that

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.