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[4] Well, then, the emperor (as I have said), in order to improve the pressing situation, set out with splendid equipment and came to Valeria, once a part of Pannonia, but made into a province and named in honour of Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian. There, with his army encamped along the banks of the river Hister, 1 he watched the savages, who before his coming, under pretext of friendship but really intending secretly to devastate the country, were planning to enter Pannonia in the dead of winter, when the snows are not yet melted by the warmth of spring and so the river can be crossed everywhere, and when our soldiers would with difficulty, because of the frosts, endure life in the open.

1 The Danube; usually its lower course, but used also of the whole river.

Ammianus Marcellinus. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935-1940.

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