Res Gestae

After all these matters had been examined with sharp eye, the emperor, in answer to the question put by the judges, under one decree ordered the execution of all of the accused; and in the presence of a vast throng, who could hardly look upon the dreadful sight without inward shuddering and burdening the air with laments—for the woes of individuals were regarded as common to all—they were all led away and wretchedly strangled except Simonides; him alone that cruel author of the verdict, maddened by his steadfast firmness, had ordered to be burned alive.

Simonides, however, ready to escape from life as from a cruel tyrant, and laughing at the sudden disasters of human destiny, stood unmoved amid the flames; imitating that celebrated philosopher Peregrinus, surnamed Proteus,[*](According to Lucian, who wrote his biography, he was a Cynic; he was born at Parion on the Hellespont, and died in Olympiad 236 (A.D. 165).) who, when he had determined to depart from life, at the quinquennial Olympic festival, in the sight of all Greece, mounted a funeral pyre which he himself had constructed and was consumed by the flames.

And after him, in the days that followed, a throng of men of almost all ranks, whom it would be difficult to enumerate by name, involved in the snares of calumny, wearied the arms of the executioners after being first crippled by rack, lead, and scourge. Some were punished without breathing-space or delay, while inquiry was being made whether they deserved punishment; everywhere the scene was like a slaughtering of cattle.

Then, innumerable writings and many heaps of volumes were hauled out from various houses and under the eyes of the judges were burned in heaps as being unlawful, to allay the indignation at the

And not so very long afterward that famous philosopher Maximus, a man with a great reputation for learning, through whose rich discourses Julian stood out as an emperor well stored as regards knowledge,[*](Cf. xxii. 7, 3; xxv. 3, 23; he plays a prominent part in Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean. ) was alleged to have heard the verses of the aforesaid oracle. And he admitted that he had learnt of them, but out of regard for his philosophical principles had not divulged secrets, although he had volunteered the prediction that the consultors of the future would themselves perish by capital punishment. Thereupon he was taken to his native city of Ephesus and there beheaded;[*](By order of Festus, proconsul of Asia.) and taught by his final danger he came to know that the injustice of a judge was more formidable than any accusation.

Diogenes also was entangled in the snares of an impious falsehood. He was a man born of noble stock, eminent for his talent, his fearless eloquence, and his charm; he was a former governor of Bithynia, but was now punished with death in order that his rich patrimony might be plundered.

Lo! even Alypius also, former vice-governor of Britain,[*](Cf. xxiii. 1, 2, end.) a man amiable and gentle, after living in leisure and retirement—since even as far as this had injustice stretched her hand—was made to wallow in utmost wretchedness; he was accused with his son Hierocles, a young man of good character, as guilty of magic, on the sole evidence of a certain Diogenes, a man of low origin, who was tortured with every degree of butchery, to lead him to give testimony agreeable to the emperor, or rather to the instigator

During all this time, the notorious Palladius, the fomenter[*](Or curdler. Literally the rennet. ) of all these troubles, who, as we said at first,[*](1, 5.) was taken in custody by Fortunatianus, being by the very lowness of his condition ready to plunge into anything, by heaping disaster on disaster, had drenched the whole empire with grief and tears.

For having gained leave to name all whom he desired, without distinction of fortune, as dabbling in forbidden practices, like a hunter skilled in observing the secret tracks of wild beasts, he entangled many persons in his lamentable nets, some of them on the ground of having stained themselves with the knowledge of magic, others as accomplices of those who were aiming at treason.

And in order that even wives should have no time to weep over the misfortunes of their husbands, men were immediately sent to put the seal[*](Until the owner should be acquitted or condemned; in the latter case his house and property went to the fiscus. ) on the houses, and during the examination of the furniture of the householder who had been condemned, to introduce privily old-wives’ incantations or unbecoming

As a result, throughout the oriental provinces owners of books, through fear of a like fate, burned their entire libraries; so great was the terror that had seized upon all.[*](Cf. also Zos. iv. 14. In this way Valens greatly diminished our knowledge of the ancient writers, in particular of the philosophers.) Indeed, to speak briefly, at that time we all crept about as if in Cimmerian darkness,[*](See xxviii. 4, 18, note.) feeling the same fears as the guests of the Sicilian Dionysius, who, while filled to repletion with banquets more terrible than any possible hunger, saw with a shudder the swords hanging over their heads from the ceilings of the rooms in which they reclined and held only by single horsehairs.[*](Cf. Cic., Tusc. Disp. v. 21, 61 f.)

At that time Bassianus also, one of a most illustrious family and serving as a secretary of the first class,[*](See Index II, Vol. I, s.v. notarii. ) was accused of trying to gain foreknowledge of higher power, although he himself declared that he had merely inquired about the sex of a child which his wife expected; but by the urgent efforts of the kinsfolk by whom he was defended, he was saved from death; but he was stripped of his rich patrimony.

Amid the crash of so many ruins Heliodorus, that hellish contriver with Palladius of all evils, being a mathematician[*](I.e., an astrologer, a caster of nativities.) (in the parlance of the vulgar) and pledged by secret instructions from the imperial court, after he had been cajoled by every enticement of kindness to induce him to reveal what he knew or could invent, now put forth his deadly stings.

For he was most solicitously pampered with the choicest foods, and earned a great amount of contributed money for presents to his concubines; and so he strode about anywhere and everywhere, displaying his grim face, which struck fear into all. And his assurance was the greater because, in his capacity as chamberlain, he constantly and openly visited the women’s apartments, to which, as he himself desired, he freely resorted, displaying the warrants[*](See xiv. 5, 5, note 3.) of the Father of his People,[*](Ironical, for the emperor.) which were to be a cause of grief to many.

And through these warrants Heliodorus instructed Palladius (as though he were an advocate in public law-suits) what to put at the beginning of his speech, in order the more easily to make it effective and strong, or with which figures of rhetoric he ought to aim at brilliant passages.[*](Text and exact meaning are uncertain. It is not clear what the subject of praemonebat is. G reads Valens for et valere and praemonebatur. )

And since it would be a long story to tell all this gallows-bird[*](The word may mean one who crucifies or one who deserves to be crucified—hence hangman or gallows-bird. The latter seems preferable.) contrived, I will recount this one case, showing with what audacious confidence he smote the very pillars of the patriciate. For made enormously insolent by secret conferences

Eagerly drinking this in, the menacing madman,[*](Valens.) to whom nothing ought to have been permitted, since he thought that everything, even what was unjust, was allowed him,[*](Cf. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 12, 7, nihil tibi liceat, dum irasceris. Quare? Quia vis omnia licere; and Consol. ad Polybium, 7, 2.) inexorably summoned from the farthest boundaries of the empire all those whom the accuser, exempt from the laws, with profound assurance had insisted ought to be brought before him, and ordered a calumnious trial to be set on foot.

And when in much-knotted bonds of constriction justice had long been trodden down and tied tightly, and the wretched scoundrel persisted in his strings of assertions, severe tortures could force no confession, but showed that these distinguished men were far removed even from any knowledge of anything of the kind. Nevertheless, the calumniator was as highly honoured as before, while the accused were punished with exile and with fines; but shortly afterwards they were recalled, had their fines remitted, and were restored to their former rank and honour unimpaired.

Yet after these so lamentable events Valens acted with no more restraint or shame; since excessive power does not reflect that it is unworthy for men of right principles, even to the disadvantage of their enemies, willingly to plunge into crime, and that nothing is so ugly as for a cruel nature to be joined to lofty pride of power.[*](Cf. Cic., Ad Quint. Frat. i. 1, 13, 37, nihil est tam deformed quam ad summum imperium etiam acerbitatem naturae adiungere. )