Res Gestae

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