Res Gestae

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.