Res Gestae

A certain Dynamius, superintendent of the emperor’s pack-animals,[*](He had charge during campaigns and journeys of the transportation of the emperor’s baggage; other actuarii are mentioned in xx. 5, 9 (see note), and actuarii a rationibus scrutandis in xxv. 10, 7. Actuarius is an adjective, sc. scriba. ) had asked Silvanus for letters of recommendation to his friends, in order to make himself very conspicuous, as if he were one

So when the abovementioned commander was traversing Gaul in the service of the government and driving forth the savages, who had now lost their confidence and courage, this same Dynamius, being restless in action, like the crafty man he was and practised in deceit, devised a wicked plot. He had as abettors and fellow conspirators, as uncertain rumours declared, Lampadius,[*](See Dessau, Inscr. 4154, note 3.) the praetorian prefect, and Eusebius, former keeper of the privy purse,[*](See Introd., pp. xli. f.) who had been nicknamed Mattyocopus,[*](Glutton, from -κοπέω, cut, and ματτύα, delicacies, delicate food. ) and Aedesius, late master of the rolls,[*](The magister memoriae was a subordinate of the magister officiorum, and head of the scrinium memoriae (first established by Caracalla) consisting of 62 clerks and 12 adiutores. They sent out the acta prepared by the scrinia epistularum et libellorum, and kept on record answers to petitions.) all of whom the said prefect had arranged to have called to the consulship as his nearest friends. With a sponge he effaced the lines of writing, leaving only the signature intact, and wrote above it another text far different from the original, indicating that Silvanus in obscure terms was asking and urging his assistants within the palace or without official position, including both Tuscus Albinus and many more, to help him, aiming as he was at a loftier position and soon to mount to the imperial throne.

This packet of letters, thus forged at his pleasure to assail the life of an innocent man, the prefect received from Dynamius, and coming into the emperor’s

But Malarichus, commander of the gentiles,[*](The foreign contingent of the household troops; see note 3, p. 56.) was at once struck with the unfairness of the procedure, and summoning his colleagues, vigorously protested, exclaiming that men devoted to the empire ought not to be made victims of cliques and wiles. And he asked that he himself—leaving as hostages his relatives and having Mallobaudes, tribune of the heavy-armed guard, as surety for his return—might be commissioned to go quickly and fetch Silvanus, who was not entering upon any such attempt as those most bitter plotters had trumped up. Or as an alternative, he asked that he might make a like promise and that Mallobaudes be allowed to hurry there and perform what he himself had promised to do.