Res Gestae

And while he was kept there in closest confinement, already as good as buried by fear of his approaching end, there hastened to him Eusebius, at that time grand chamberlain, Pentadius, the secretary, and Mallobaudes, tribune of the guard,[*](See note 3, p. 56.) to compel him by order of the emperor to inform them, case by case, why he had ordered the execution of all those whom he had put to death at Antioch.

At this, o’erspread with the pallor of Adrastus,[*](Proverbial; cf. Virgil, Aen. vi. 480, Adrasti pallentis imago. Adrastus turned pale at the death of his sons-in-law Tydeus and Polynices (when the seven champions attacked Thebes), and never recovered his colour.) he was able to say only that he had slain most of them at the instigation of his wife Constantina,[*](See note 1, p. 4.) assuredly not knowing that when the mother of Alexander the Great urged her son to put an innocent man to death and said again and again, in the hope of later gaining what she desired, that she had carried him for nine months in her womb, the king made this wise answer: Ask some other reward, dear mother, for a man’s life is not to be weighed against any favour.

On hearing this the emperor, smitten with

But the justice of the heavenly power was everywhere watchful; for not only did his cruel deeds prove the ruin of Gallus, but not long afterwards a painful death overtook both of those whose false blandishments and perjuries led him, guilty though he was, into the snares of destruction. Of these Scudilo, because of an abscess of the liver,[*](Augustus was cured of this disease by Antonius Musa (Suet., Aug. 81, 1).) vomited up his lungs and so died; Barbatio, who for a long time had invented false accusations against Gallus, charged by the whispers of certain men of aiming higher than the mastership of the infantry, was found guilty and by an unwept end made atonement to the shades of the Caesar, whom he had treacherously done to death.

These and innumerable other instances of the kind are sometimes (and would that it were always so!) the work of Adrastia,[*](See Index.) the chastiser of evil deeds and the rewarder of good actions, whom we also call by the second name of Nemesis. She is, as it were, the sublime jurisdiction of an efficient divine power,

She, as queen of causes and arbiter and judge[*](Cf. Cic., Acad. ii. 28, 91, veri etfalsi quasi disceptatricem et iudicem.) of events, controls the urn with its lots and causes the changes of fortune,[*](Cf. Ovid, Metam. xv. 409, alternare vices. ) and sometimes she gives our plans a different result than that at which we aimed, changing and confounding many actions. She too, binding the vainly swelling pride of mortals with the indissoluble bond of fate, and tilting changeably, as she knows how to do, the balance of gain and loss, now bends and weakens the uplifted necks of the proud, and now, raising the good from the lowest estate, lifts them to a happy life. Moreover, the storied past has given her wings in order that she might be thought to come to all with swift speed; and it has given her a helm to hold and has put a wheel beneath her feet, in order that none may fail to know that she runs through all the elements and rules the universe.[*](With this description cf. that of Fortune in Pacuvius, inc. xiv., Ribbeck (p. 144), and Horace, Odes, i. 34.)

By this untimely death, although himself weary of his existence, the Caesar passed from life in the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a rule of four years. He was born in Etruria at Massa in the district of Veternum, being the son of Constantius, the brother of the emperor Constantine, and Galla, the sister of Rufinus and Cerealis, who were distinguished by the

He was conspicuous for his handsome person, being well proportioned, with well-knit limbs. He had soft golden hair, and although his beard was just appearing in the form of tender down, yet he was conspicuous for the dignity of greater maturity. But he differed as much from the disciplined character of his brother Julian as did Domitian, son of Vespasian, from his brother Titus.

Raised to the highest rank in Fortune’s gift, he experienced her fickle changes, which make sport of mortals, now lifting some to the stars, now plunging them in the depths of Cocytus. But although instances of this are innumerable, I shall make cursory mention of only a few.

It was this mutable and fickle Fortune that changed the Sicilian Agathocles from a potter to a king, and Dionysius, once the terror of nations, to the head of an elementary school, at Corinth.

She it was that raised Andriscus[*](For Andriscus and other names in 31–33, see Index.) of Adramyttium, who was born in a fullery, to the title of the Pseudo-Philip, and taught the legitimate son of Perseus the blacksmith’s trade as a means of livelihood.[*](Cf. Plutarch, Aem. 37.)

She, too, delivered Mancinus, after his supreme command, to the Numantians, Veturius to the cruelty of the Samnites, and Claudius to the Corsicans, and she subjected Regulus to the savagery of the Carthaginians. Through her injustice Pompey, after he had gained the surname Great by his

Eunus, too, a workhouse slave, commanded an army of runaways in Sicily. How many Romans of illustrious birth at the nod of that same arbiter of events embraced the knees of a Viriathus[*](Flor., i. 33, 15 ff.) or a Spartacus How many heads dreaded by all nations has the fatal excutioner lopped off! One is led to prison, another is elevated to un-looked-for power, a third is cast down from the highest pinnacle of rank.

But if anyone should desire to know all these instances, varied and constantly occurring as they are, he will be mad enough to think of searching out the number of the sands and the weight of the mountains.