Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/190

 m THE DECLINE AND FALL to the duty of his office, the governor of the province dispatched a faithful narrative of the whole transaction ; while the trem- bling citizens intrusted the confession of their crime, and the assurance of their repentance, to the zeal of Flavian their bishop and to the eloquence of the senator Hilarius, the friend, and most probably the disciple, of Libanius, whose genius, on this melancholy occasion, was not useless to his country. ^^ But the two capitals, Antioch and Constantinople, were separated by the distance of eight hundred miles ; and, notwithstanding the diligence of the Imperial posts, the guilty city was severely punished by a long and dreadful interval of suspense. Every rumour agitated the hopes and fears of the Antiochians, and they heard with terror that their sovereign, exasperated by the insult which had been offered to his own statues, and, more especially, to those of his beloved wife, had resolved to level with the ground the offending city ; and to massacre, without distinction of age or sex, the criminal inhabitants ; ^' many of whom were actually driven by their apprehensions to seek a refuge in the mountains of Syria and the adjacent desert. At March 22 length, twcnty-four days after the sedition, the general Helle- bicus and Caesarius, master of the offices, declared the will of [arrive March the cmpcror and the sentence of Antioch. That proud capital was degraded from the rank of a city ; and the metropolis of the East, stripped of its lands, its privileges, and its revenues, was subjected, under the humiliating denomination of a village, to the jurisdiction of Laodicea.S'^ The baths, the circus, and the theatres were shut ; and, that every source of plenty and pleasure might at the same time be intercepted, the distribution of corn was abolished by the severe instructions of Theodosius. His commissioners then proceeded to inquire into the guilt of individuals ; of those who had perpetrated, and of those who had not prevented, the destruction of the sacred statues. The tribunal of Hellebicus and C^sarius, encompassed with armed soldiers, was erected in the midst of the Forum. The noblest and most wealthy of the citizens of Antioch appeared before 86Zosimus, in his short and disingenuous account (1. iv. p. 258, 259 [c. 41]), is certainly mistaken in sending Libanius himself to Constantinople. His own orations fix him at Antioch. fear of a massacre was groundless and absurd, especially in the emperor's absence ; for his presence, according to the eloquent slave, might have given a sanction to the most bloody acts. ssLaodicea, on the sea coast, sixty-five miles from Antioch (see Noris, Epoch. ^yro-Maced. Dissert, iii. p. 230). The Antiochians were offended that the dependent city of Seleucia should presume to intercede for them.
 * 7 Libanius (Orat. i. p. 6, edit. Venet.) declares that, under such a reign, the