Res Gestae

While among the Persians (as I have already related)[*](xxvii. 12, 11 ff.) the perfidy of the king was arousing unexpected disturbances, and in the eastern regions

And although, after long consideration of various circumstances, well-grounded dread restrained me from giving a minute account of this series of bloody deeds, yet I shall, relying on the better morals of the present day, set forth briefly such of them as are worthy of notice and I shall not be sorry to tell concisely what I have feared from events of antiquity.

When in the first Medic war the Persians had plundered Asia, they besieged Miletus with mighty forces, threatened the defenders with death by torture, and drove the besieged to the necessity, overwhelmed as they all were by a weight of evils, of killing their own dear ones, consigning their movable possessions to the flames, and each one striving to be first to throw himself into the fire, to burn on the common funeral pyre of their country.

Soon after this, Phrynichus composed a play with this disaster as its plot, which he put upon the stage at Athens in the lofty language of tragedy. At first he was heard with pleasure, but as the sad story went on in too tragic style, the people became angry and punished[*](With a fine of 1000 drachmas. The play was the Capture of Miletus, produced soon after 494 B.C.; cf. Herodotus, vi. 21.) him, thinking that

But let us come to our subject. Maximinus, who formerly held the office of vice-[*](368 A.D.) prefect at Rome, was born at Sopianae, a town of Valeria,[*](Formerly a part of Pannonia (cf. xix. 11, 4).) of very humble parents, his father being an accountant in the governor’s office[*](Cf. praesidialis apparitor, xvii. 3, 6.) and sprung from ancestors who were Carpi, a people whom Diocletian drove from its ancient abode[*](I.e., from Dacia, 294–6.) and transferred to Pannonia.

Maximinus, after some slight study of the liberal arts, and after acting as a pleader without acquiring distinction, became governor of Corsica, also of Sardinia, and finally of Tuscia.[*](Etruria (in 366).) then, because his successor lingered too long on the[*](369–70 A.D.) way, although transferred to the charge of the city’s grain supply, he retained also the rule of Tuscia, and at the beginning acted with moderation, for a three-fold reason.

First, because the prophecies of his father were still warm[*](Cf. xxii. 12, 2; xxii. 16, 17.) in his ears, a man exceedingly skilful in interpreting omens from the flight or the notes of birds, who declared he would attain to high power, but would die by the sword of the executioner; secondly, because he had got hold of a man from Sardinia who was highly skilled in

The first opportunity to widen the sphere of his operations arose from the following affair. Chilo, a former deputy-governor, and his wife Maxima made complaint before Olybrius, at that time prefect of the city,[*](Rome in 368.) declaring that their life had been attempted by poison; and they managed that those whom they suspected should at once be seized and put in prison. The accused were an organ-builder[*](Cf. Suet., Nero, 41, 2; 44, 1; xiv, 6, 18.) Sericus, a wrestler[*](Or wrestling-teacher.) Asbolius, and a soothsayer Campensis.

But as the affair languished because of a severe illness with which Olybrius was long affected, those who had brought the charge, impatient of delay, presented a petition, asking that the examination of the dispute should be turned over to the prefect of the grain supply; and from a desire for a speedy decision this was granted.

Thus Maximinus gained the power of doing harm and poured out the natural cruelty implanted in his hard heart, as often happens with wild beasts in the amphitheatre, when they break in pieces the back-gates and are at last set free. And while the business was being looked into in many ways, as if in a kind of preliminary practice, and some persons, whose sides had been torn into furrows, had named certain nobles as having, through their

On hearing this, the emperor, in anger, being rather a cruel than a strict foe of vices, gave one general judicial sentence to cover cases of the kind, which he arbitrarily fused with the design of treason, and ruled that all those whom the justice of the ancient code and the edicts of deified emperors had made exempt from inquisitions by torture should, if circumstances demanded, be examined with torments.

And that with doubled power and higher rank Maximinus might patch together a greater heap of calamities, the emperor gave him a temporary appointment as acting prefect at Rome;[*](During the illness of Olybrius.)[*](371–72 A.D.) and he associated with him in the investigation of these charges which were being devised for the peril of many the secretary Leo, afterward chief-marshal of the court,[*](Cf. xxx. 2, 10.) a Pannonian and a grave-robber,[*](Cf. tartareus, xv. 6, 1; funereus, xxix. 5, 46; bustuariusis also used of a gladiator who fought at funeral games, Cic. In Pisonem,9, 19.) snorting forth cruelty from the grinning jaws of a wild beast, and no less insatiable in his thirst for human blood than Maximinus.

The persistent natural bent of Maximinus to cruel conduct was increased by the coming of a colleague of the same character and by the charm of a commission conferring lofty rank. Therefore, full of joy, he turned his steps this way and that, seeming to dance rather than walk, and

And now, as the trumpets sounded the signal for the murder of citizens and all were stupified by the horrible situation, besides many harsh and merciless acts, which because of their variety and number cannot be enumerated, the execution of Marinus, a public advocate, was conspicuous. This man was accused of having dared by forbidden arts to try to gain a certain Hispanilla as his wife, and when the truthfulness of the evidence had been perfunctorily examined, Maximinus condemned him to death.

And since I think that perchance some of my readers by careful examination may note and bring it against me as a reproach that this, and not that, happened first, or that those things which they themselves saw are passed over, I must satisfy them to this extent: that not everything which has taken place among persons of the lowest class is worth narrating; and if this were necessary to be done, even the arrays of facts to be gained from the public records themselves would not suffice, when there was such a general fever of evils, and a new and unbridled madness was mingling the highest with the lowest; for it was clearly evident that it was not a judicial trial which was to be feared, but a suspension of legal proceedings.[*](One of Ammianus’ few word-plays; but see Blomgren, pp. 128 ff.)

Then Cethegus, a senator, was accused of adultery and beheaded, Alypius, a young man of noble birth, was banished for a trifling fault, and others of lower rank were publicly put to death; and every one, seeing in their unhappy fate the

At the same time, the case of Hymetius also, a man of distinguished character, was tried, of which we know this to have been the course of events. When he was governing Africa as proconsul he took from the storehouses grain intended for the Roman people[*](Egypt and Africa supplied the Romans with grain until the division of the empire, after which Africa supplied Rome, and Egypt Constantinople.) and sold it to the Carthaginians, who were by that time worn out from lack of food, and a little later, when the crops were again abundant, without any delay completely restored what he had taken.

Moreover, since ten bushels had been sold to the needy for one gold-piece, while he himself now bought thirty,[*](For the same amount; i.e., one gold-piece.) he sent the profit from the difference in price to the emperor’s treasury.[*](I.e., to the treasury in charge of the praetorian prefect, who had general supervision of the grain-supply; see Introd., Vol. I, pp. xxxi.-xxxii.) And so Valentinian, suspecting that he had sent less than he should have sent as the result of his trafficking, punished him with a fine of a part of his property.