The Death of Jovian

So the emperor checked, for the time being, the eagerness of those inclined to quarrel. He left Antioch at once and went to Tarsus in Cilicia, where he duly performed the funeral rites for Julian, after which he was declared consul. Going on from there straight toward Constantinople, he came to a place called Dadastana, on the border between Galatia and Bithynia. There Themistius the philosopher, with others of the senatorial order, met him and delivered the consular oration before him, which he afterward recited before the people at Constantinople. And indeed the Roman empire, blessed with so excellent a ruler, would no doubt have flourished greatly, since both the affairs of state and those of the church would likely have been well administered, had not his sudden death robbed the state of so eminent a man. For an illness caused by some obstruction attacked him at that place in the winter season, and he died there on the seventeenth of February, in the consulship of himself and his son Varronian, in the thirty-third year of his age, after reigning seven months. [a]

This book contains an account of the events of a period of two years and five months.