In Flaccum

and he, indeed, being convicted by his conscience, fled away in-doors, fearing lest he should be seized; but Flaccus did nothing against him, thinking that now that he had voluntarily removed himself, everything in the city would soon be free from sedition and contention.

I have related these events at some length, not for the sake of keeping old injuries in remembrance, but because I admire that power who presides over all freemen’s affairs, namely, justice, seeing that those men who were so generally hostile to Flaccus, those by whom of all men he was most hated, were the men who now brought their accusations against him, to fill up the measure of his grief, for it is not so bitter merely to be accused as to be accused by one’s confessed enemies;

but this man was not merely accused, though a governor, by his subjects, and that by men who had always been his enemies, when he had only a short time before been the lord of the life of every individual among them, but he was also apprehended by force, being thus subjected to a twofold evil, namely, to be defeated and ridiculed by exulting enemies, which is worse than death to all right-minded and sensible people.

And then see what an abundance of disasters came upon him, for he was immediately stripped of all his possessions, both of those which he inherited from his parents and of all that he had acquired himself, having been a man who took especial delight in luxury and ornament; for he was not like some rich men, to whom wealth is an inactive material, but he was continually acquiring things of every useful kind in all imaginable abundance; cups, garments, couches, miniatures, and everything else which was any ornament to a house;