Res Gestae

In that year also, just as the winter season was at hand, there was such a fearful scarcity of water that some brooks dried up, as well as springs which had before over- flowed with plentiful jets of water; but later these were restored to their former condition.

Then, on the second of December, just before evening, the rest of Nicomedia[*](Cf. xvii. 7, 1-8.) was wholly destroyed by an earthquake, as well as a good part of Nicaea.

Although these disasters filled the prince with sorrow and anxiety, yet he did not neglect the urgent duties that remained to be done before the longed- for time of battle arrived. All the same, amid such weighty and serious affairs, it did seem superfluous, that with no satisfactory reason for such a measure, but merely from a desire for popularity, he wished to lower the price of commodities;[*](Diocletian had done the same in his edict, De Pretiis Venaliunz Rerum. ) although sometimes, when this matter is not properly regulated, it is wont to cause scarcity and famine.

And, although the senate at Antioch clearly pointed out that this could not be done at the time when he ordered it, he in no wise gave up his plan, since he resembled his brother Gallus, though without his cruelty. Therefore raging against them one by one as recalcitrant and stubborn, he composed an invective, which he entitled The Antiochian or Misopogon,[*](This work has survived. It means The Beard Hater; see Julian, L.C.L., ii. 420 ff. It is a satire on Julian himself, in which he also scolded the people of Antioch. They made fun of his beard because they them- selves were clean-shaven. Hadrian and his successors wore beards, but Constantine and his successors did not.) in which he enumerated in a hostile spirit the faults of the city, including more than were justified. After this, finding that he was the object of many jests, he was forced at the time to disregard them, but was filled with suppressed wrath.

For he was ridiculed as a Cercops,[*](One of a people living in an island near Sicily, changed by Jupiter into apes; Ov., Metam. xiv. 91, and Suidas, s.v. κέρκωπες. ) as a dwarf, spreading his narrow shoulders and displaying a billy-goat’s beard,[*](Cf. xxv. 4, 22.) taking mighty strides as if he were the