The Roman History · Amm. 18.5.7

For having been bred up in active life, and being a thorough man of business, he got possession of the feelings of his hearers, who like what tickles their ears, and who do not utter their praises aloud, but, like the Phæacians in Homer, admire in silence, while he recounted the events of the last forty years; urging that, after all these continual wars, and especially the battles of Hileia and Singara, where that fierce combat by night took place, in which we lost a vast number of our men, as if some fecial had interposed to stop them, the Persians, though victorious, had never advanced as far as Edessa or the bridges over the Euphrates. Though with their warlike power and splendid success, they might have pushed their advances especially at that moment, when in consequence of the protracted troubles of their civil wars the blood of the Romans was being poured out on all sides.

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
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