Res Gestae

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.

To add to his calamity, this also had happened at that same time, which was not less fatal. The soothsayer Amantius, at that time especially notorious, was betrayed on secret evidence of having been employed by the said Hymetius, for the purpose of committing certain criminal acts, to perform a sacrifice; but when brought to trial, although he stood bent double upon the rack,[*](Tortured until he was permanently disfigured. For sub eculeo see xxvi. 10, 13, note.) he denied it with obstinate insistence.

Upon his denial, his secret papers were brought from his house and a memorandum in the handwriting of Hymetius was found, begging him that by carrying out a solemn sacrifice he should prevail upon the deity to make the