Book 31
1.1
Meanwhile Fortune’s rapid wheel, which is always interchanging adversity and prosperity, armed Bellona in the company of her attendant Furies, and transferred to the Orient melancholy events, the coming of which was foreshadowed by the clear testimony of omens and portents.
1.2
For after many true predictions of seers and augurs, dogs leaped back when wolves howled, night birds rang out a kind of doleful lament, the sun rose in gloom and dimmed the clear morning light; at Antioch, in quarrels and riots of the common people, it became usual that whoever thought that he was suffering wrong shouted without restraint: Let Valens be burned alive! and the words of public criers were continually heard, directing the people to gather firewood, to set fire to the baths of Valens, in the building of which the emperor himself had taken such interest.
1.3
All this almost in plain speech showed that this kind of deathI.e., death by fire. threatened him. Furthermore, the ghostly form of the king of Armenia and the piteous shades of those who shortly before had been executed in connection with the fall of Theodorus,See xxix. 1, 8 ff. shrieking horrible songs at night, in the form of dirges, tormented many with dire terrors.
