By purple death I'm seized and fate supreme.
Ἔλλαβε πορφύρεος θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κραταιή.
Original text (Ancient Greek)
Share this quote
Source, in full
Lines from Homer's Iliad which Julian recited upon his elevation to Caesar by Constantius II, reported in Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, bk. 15, ch. 8, sec. 17 (tr. J. C. Rolfe, i, 1935); such elevations had often proven fatal to others.