The Roman History · Amm. 18.3.2

Barbatio's wife was a woman called Assyria, neither silent nor prudent. And when he had gone on an expedition which caused her much alarm, she, because of the predictions which she recollected to have been given her, and being full of female vanity, having summoned a handmaid who was skilful in writing, and of whom she had become possessed by inheritance from her father Silvanus, sent an unseasonable letter to her husband, full of lamentations, and of entreaties that after the approaching death of Constantius, if he himself, as she hoped, was admitted to a share in the empire, he would not despise her, and prefer to marry Eusebia, who was Constantius's empress, and who was of a beauty equalled by few women.

Ammianus Marcellinus · translated by C. D. Yonge · 1911 reprint
C. D. Yonge translation (preface dated February 1862); G. Bell and Sons, 1911; Project Gutenberg #28587
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.