Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/374

344 householders Eubulus and Truphera, as they could get no security in their own house either by parleying with Philinus or barricading themselves against his attack, ordered one of their slaves not to kill them barbarously, as one might not unjustly have been tempted by anger to do, but to keep them off by throwing the contents of the close-stool upon them: but that the slave, whether intentionally or unintentionally—for he persisted in denying intention—let the vessel slip with its contents, so that Eubulus was knocked down, though he better deserved to have escaped than his brother.

I send you the actual depositions. And I should have wondered how it came about that the defendants were so much afraid of the examination of the slaves being held in your courts, had it not been that you seemed to me to have been much irritated with them and to have shown a perverted indignation—not against those who deserved every kind of punishment for coming to attack another man's house by night with force and violence three distinct times, to the common danger of you all, but against those who have met with an accident while acting in self-defence, but have done no wrong.

But now you will in my opinion be acting rightly if, in accordance with my decision on this matter, you make the entry in your public records also to agree therewith.”

Asinius Gallus, who was commissioned by Augustus to take the depositions of the slaves, was at the time proconsul of Asia, but he does not act in that capacity because Cnidus is a free state, not under the jurisdiction of the provincial governor. He acts as Caesar's legatus, and sends the depositions to Rome, where they are considered by Augustus him- self, who acquits the accused and orders the decree passed against then in Cnidus to be erased.

Thus the personal authority of the Emperor is felt in every part of the Empire, and no one, however