The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus
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doubtful fidelity, and at any time open to change for a sufficient reward.
31. Therefore, after we had secured our success by the address of some agents among the common soldiers, men by their very obscurity fitted for the accomplishment of such a task, and now excited by the expectation of reward, at sunrise, as soon as the east began to redden, a band of armed men suddenly sallied forth, and, as is common in critical moments, behaving with more than usual audacity. They slew the sentinels and penetrated into the palace, and so having dragged Silvanus out of a little chapel in which, in his terror, he had taken refuge on his way to a conventicle devoted to the ceremonies of the Christian worship, they slew him with repeated strokes of their swords.
32. In this way did a general of no slight merit perish, through fear of false accusations heaped on him in his absence by a faction of wicked men, and which drove him to the utmost extremities in order to preserve his safety.
33. For although he had acquired strong claims on the gratitude of Constantius by his seasonable sally with his troops before the battle of Mursa, and although he could boast the valorous exploits of his father Bonitus, a man of Frankish extraction, but who had espoused the party of Constantine, and often in the civil war had exhibited great prowess against the troops of Licinius, still he always feared him as a prince of wavering and fickle character.
34. Now before any of these events had taken place in Gaul, it happened that one day in the Circus Maximus at Rome, the populace cried out with a loud voice, "Silvanus is conquered." Whether influenced by instinct or by some prophetic spirit, cannot be decided.
35. Silvanus having been slain, as I have narrated, at Agrippina, the emperor was seized with inconceivable joy when he heard the news, and gave way to exceeding insolence and arrogance, attributing this event also to the prosperous course of his good fortune; giving the reins to his habitual disposition which always led him to hate men of brave conduct, as Domitian in former times had done, and desiring at all times to destroy them by every act of opposition.
36. And he was so far from praising even his act of diligence and fidelity, that he recorded in writing a charge that Ursicinus had embezzled a part of the Gallic treasures, which no one had ever touched. And he ordered strict inquiry to be made into the fact, by an examination of Remigius, who was at that time accountant-general to Ursicinus in his capacity of commander of the heavy troops. And long afterwards, in the time of Valentinian, this Remigius hung himself on account of the trouble into which he fell in the matter of his appointment as legate in Tripolis.
37. And after this business was terminated, Constantius, thinking his prosperity had now raised him to an equality with the gods, and had bestowed on him entire sovereignty over human affairs, gave himself up to elation at the praises of his flatterers, whom he himself encouraged, despising and trampling under foot all who were unskilled in that kind of court. As we read that Crœsus, when he was king, drove Solon headlong from his court because he would not fawn on him; and that Dionysius threatened the poet Philoxenus with death because, when the king recited his absurd and unrhythmical verses, he alone refused to fall into an ecstasy while all the rest of the courtiers praised them.
38. And this mischievous taste is the nurse of vices; for praise ought only to be acceptable in high places, where blame also is permitted when things are not sufficiently performed.
VI.
§ 1. And now, after the re-establishment of security, investigations as usual were set on foot, and many persons were put in prison as guilty. For that infernal informer Paulus, boiling over with delight, arose to exercise his poisonous employment with increased freedom, and while the members of the emperor's council and the military officers were employed in the investigation of these affairs, as they were commanded, Proculus was put to the torture, who had been a servant of Silvanus, a man of weak body and of ill health; so that every one was afraid lest the exceeding violence of his torture should prove too much for his feeble limbs, so that he would expose numbers to be implicated in the accusations of atrocious crimes. But the result proved quite different to what had been expected.
2. For remembering a dream in which he had been forbidden, while asleep, as he affirmed, to accuse any innocent person, though he should be tortured till he was brought to the very point of death, he neither informed against, nor even named any one; but, with reference to the usurpation of Silvanus, he invariably asserted that he had been driven to contemplate that act, not out of ambition, but from sheer necessity; and he proved this assertion by evident arguments.
3. For he adduced one important excuse, which was established by the testimony of many persons, that, five days before he assumed the ensigns of imperial authority, he addressed the soldiers, while distributing their pay to them, in the name of Constantius, exhorting them to prove always brave and loyal. From which it was plain that if he had then been thinking of seizing on a loftier fortune, he would have given them this money as if it had proceeded from himself.
4. After Proculus, Pœmenius was condemned and put to death: he who, as we have mentioned before,[45] when the Treveri had shut their gates against Cæsar Decentius, was chosen to defend that people. After him, Asclepiodotus, and Luto, and Maudio, all Counts, were put to death, and many others also, the obdurate cruelty of the times seeking for these and similar punishments with avidity.
VII.
§ 1. While the fatal disturbances of the state multiplied these general slaughters, Leontius, who was the governor of Rome itself, gave many proofs of his deserving the character of an admirable judge; being prompt in hearing cases, rigidly just in deciding them, and merciful by nature, although, for the sake of maintaining lawful authority, he appeared to some people to be severe. He was also of a somewhat amorous temperament.
2. The first pretext for exciting any sedition against him was a most slight and trumpery one. For when an order had been issued to arrest a charioteer, named Philoromus, the whole populace followed him, as if resolved to defend something of their own, and with terrible violence assailed the prefect, presuming him to be timorous. But he remained unmoved and upright, and sending his officers among the crowd, arrested some and punished them, and then, without any one venturing to oppose him, or even to murmur, condemned them to banishment.
3. A few days later the populace again became excited to its customary frenzy, and alleging as a grievance the scarcity of wine, assembled at the well-known place called Septemzodium, where the Emperor Marcus built the Nymphæum,[46] an edifice of great magnificence. To that place the prefect went forthwith, although he was earnestly entreated by all his household and civil officers not to trust himself among an arrogant and threatening multitude, now in a state of fury equal to any of their former commotions; but he, unsusceptible of fear, went right onwards, though many of his attendants deserted him, when they saw him hastening into imminent danger.
4. Therefore, sitting in a carriage, with every appearance of confidence, he looked with fierce eyes at the countenance of the tumultuous mobs thronging towards him from all quarters, and agitating themselves like serpents. And after suffering many bitter insults, at last, when he had recognized one man who was conspicuous among all the rest by his vast size and red hair, he asked him whether his name was Petrus Valvomeres, as he had heard it was; and when the man replied in a defiant tone that it was so, Leontius, in spite of the outcries of many around, ordered him to be seized as one who had long since been a notorious ringleader of the disaffected, and having his hands bound behind him, commanded him to be suspended on a rack.
5. And when he was seen in the air, in vain imploring the aid of his fellow-tribesmen, the whole mob, which a little while before was so closely packed, dispersed at once over the different quarters of the city, so as to offer no hindrance to the punishment of this seditious leader, who after having been thus tortured—with as little resistance as if he been in a secret dungeon of the court—was transported to Picenum, where, on a subsequent occasion, having offered violence to a virgin of high rank, he was condemned to death by the judgment of Patruinus, a noble of consular dignity.
6. While Leontius governed the city in this manner, Liberius, a priest of the Christian law, was