Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/498

 discriminator of right and wrong; an equitable judge, and very gentle towards those placed under his authority.

2. But all these good qualities were clouded by one vice which, though not injurious to the commonwealth, was very discreditable to a judge of high rank; namely, that his private life was one of great luxury, devoted to theatrical exhibitions, and to amours, though not such as were either infamous or incestuous.

3. After him Ampelius succeeded to the government of the city; he also was a man addicted to pleasure, a native of Antioch, and one who from having been master of the offices was twice promoted to a proconsulship, and sometime afterwards to that supreme rank, the prefecture. In other respects he was a cheerful man, and one admirably suited to win the favour of the people; though sometimes over-severe, without being as firm in his purposes as might have been wished. Had he been, he would have corrected, though perhaps not effectually, the gluttonous and debauched habits which prevailed; but, as it was, by his laxity of conduct, he lost a glory which otherwise might have been enduring.

4. For he had determined that no wine-shop should be opened before the fourth hour of the day; and that none of the common people, before a certain fixed hour, should either warm water or expose dressed meat for sale: and that no one of respectable rank should be seen eating in public.

5. Since these unseemly practices, and others still worse, owing to long neglect and connivance, had grown so frequent that even Epimenides of Crete, if, according to the fabulous story, he could have risen from the dead and returned to our times, would have been unable by himself to purify Rome; such deep stains of incurable vices overwhelmed it.

6. And in the first place we will speak of the faults of the nobles, as we have already repeatedly done as far as our space permitted; and then we will proceed to the faults of the common people, touching, however, only briefly and rapidly on either.

7. Some men, conspicuous for the illustriousness of their ancestry as they think, gave themselves immoderate airs,