Res Gestae

That to meet all chances necessity demands the choice of a colleague with equal powers, at the demands of much varied reasoning I neither doubt nor dispute, since I myself also, as a man, fear masses of cares and varied changes of circumstances. But with all our strength we must strive for harmony, through which even the weakest states grow strong; and this will easily be attained, if your calmness combined with fairness willingly allows me what belongs to my position.

For Fortune (I hope) which aids good purposes, so far as I can accomplish this and effect it, will give me after careful search a man of sober character.[*](As colleague in the imperial power.) For as the philosophers teach us, not only in royal power, where the greatest and most numerous dangers are found, but also in the relations of private and everyday life, a stranger ought to be admitted to friendship by a prudent man only after he has first tested him; not tested after he has been admitted to friendship.

This I promise you with the hope of a happier future. Do you, while the winter rest allows, retain your firmness and loyalty of conduct and refresh your strength of spirit and body: then be sure that you will receive without delay what is your due[*](The emperors chosen by the soldiers, on entrance into power often gave them gifts (donativa). According to Dio, this was repeated every fifth and tenth year, and each) because of your imperial nomination of myself.

Having finished his address, to which his unexpected assumption of authority had given greater weight, the emperor gained the favour of the soldier received five aurei. The custom was finally abolished by Justinian.

While the changing lots of the fates were unfolding these events in the Orient, Apronianus, prefect of the eternal city, a just and strict official, among urgent cares with which that office is often burdened, made it his first main effort that the sorcerers, who at that time were becoming few in number, should be arrested, and that those who, after having been put to the question, were clearly convicted of having harmed anybody, after naming their accomplices, should be punished with death; and that thus through the danger to a few, the remainder, if any were still in concealment, might be driven away through dread of a similar fate.

In this work he is said to have shown special activity for the following reason, namely, that after his appointment by authority of Julian, when he was still living in Syria, he had lost one eye on the way, and suspecting that he had been attacked by wicked arts, with justifiable but extraordinary resentment he tracked out these and other crimes with great energy. In this he seemed cruel to some because more than once during the races in the ampitheatre, while throngs of people were crowding in, he in- vestigated the greatest crimes.[*](Cf. xv. 7, 2, of Leontius.)

Finally, after many punishments of the kind, a charioteer[*](Such men used poison and magic against the horses of their rivals; cf. xxviii. 1, 27; 4, 25.) called