Kitap 23
3.2
Having delayed there several days for necessary preparations, and to offer sacrifices according to the native rites to the Moon, which is religiously venerated in that region, before the altar, with no witness present, Julian is said secretly to have handed his purple mantle to his relative Procopius, and to have ordered him boldly to assume the rule, if he learned that the emperor had died among the Parthians.
3.3
Here, as Julian slept, his mind was disturbed by dreams, which made him think that some sorrow would come to him. Therefore, both he himself and the interpreters of dreams, considering the present conditions, declared that the following day, which was the nineteenth of March, ought to be carefully watched. But, as was afterwards learned, it was on that same night that the temple of the Palatine Apollo, under the prefecture of Apronianus, was burned in the eternal city; and if it had not been for the employment of every possible help, the Cumaean booksThese Sibylline books had been kept in the pedestal of the statue of Apollo, in accordance with the desire of Augustus, who built the temple. See Suet., Aug. xxxi. 1 (L.C.L., i. 170). also would have been destroyed by the raging flames.
