Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/312

300 1. At this time, Gaudentius the secretary, whom I have mentioned above as having been sent by Constantius to oppose Julian in Africa, and a man of the name of Julian, who had been a deputy governor, and who was an intemperate partisan of the late emperor, were brought back as prisoners, and put to death.

2. And at the same time, Artemius, who had been Duke of Egypt, and against whom the citizens of Alexandria brought a great mass of heavy accusations, was also put to death, and the son of Marcellus too, who had been commander both of the infantry and of the cavalry, was publicly executed as one who had aspired to the empire by force of arms. Romanus, too, and Vincentius, the tribunes of the first and second battalion of the Scutarii, being convicted of aiming at things beyond their due, were banished.

3. And after a short time, when the death of Artemius was known, the citizens of Alexandria who had feared his return, lest, as he threatened, he should come back among them with power, and avenge himself on many of them for the offences which he had received, now turned all their anger against George, the bishop, by whom they had, so to say, been often attacked with poisonous bites.

4. George having been born in a fuller's shop, as was reported, in Epiphania, a town of Cilicia, and having caused the ruin of many individuals, was, contrary both to his own interest and to that of the commonwealth, ordained bishop of Alexandria, a city which from its own impulses, and without any special cause, is continually agitated by seditious tumults, as the oracles also show.

5. Men of this irritable disposition were readily incensed by George, who accused numbers to the willing ears of Constantius, as being opposed to his authority; and, forgetting his profession, which ought to give no counsel but what is just and merciful, he adopted all the wicked acts of informers.

6. And among other things he was reported to have maliciously informed Constantius that in that city all the edifices which had been built by Alexander, its founder,