Note 141 — Chapter VI

Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 15; duobus navium milibus perrupto Bosporo et litoribus Propontidis Scythicarum gentium catervae transgressae ediderunt quidem acerbas terra marique strages: sed amissa suorum parte maxima reverterunt; whereupon the catastrophe of the Decii is narrated, and into this is inwoven the further notice: obsessae Pamphyliae civitates (to which must belong the siege of Side in Dexippus himself, fr. 23), insulæ populatæ complures, as also the siege of Cyzicus. If in this retrospect all is not confused—which cannot well be assumed to be the case with Ammianus—this falls before those naval expeditions which begin with the siege of Pityus, and are more a part of the migration of peoples than piratical raids. The number of the ships might indeed be transferred hither by error of memory from the expedition of the year 269. To the same connection belongs the notice in Zosimus, i. 28, as to the Scythian expeditions into Asia and Cappadocia as far as Ephesus and Pessinus. The account as to Ephesus in the biography of Gallienus, c. 6, is the same, but transposed as to time.