Book 16
4.1
As he was anxiously weighing these problems, a host of the enemy attacked, fired with increased hope of taking the town, and full of confidence because they had learned from the statements of deserters that neither the targeteers nor the gentilesSee note 3, p. 56. were at hand; for they had been distributed in the towns, so as to be more easily provisioned than before.
4.2
So, having shut the city gates and strengthened a weak section of the walls, Julian could be seen day and night with his soldiers among the bulwarks and battlements, boiling over with rage and fretting because however often he tried to sally forth, he was hampered by the scanty numbers of the troops at hand. Finally, after a month the savages withdrew crestfallen, muttering that they had been silly and foolish to have contemplated the blockade of the city.
4.3
But—a thing to be regarded as a shameful situationI.e. the ill-treatment of Julian. —while Caesar was in jeopardy, Marcellus, master of the horse, although he was stationed in neighbouring posts, postponed sending him reinforcements; whereas even if the city alone was endangered, to say nothing of the prince’s presence there, it ought to have been saved from the hardships of blockade by the intervention of a large force.
