Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/520

 the resolution of a man who bore men's lives on the tip of his tongue, guiding it in the worst direction, and assailing everything with unseemly confusion, while seeking to accomplish the total ruin of the most opulent houses.

20. For Valens was a man who was especially exposed and open to the approaches of treacherous advisers, being tainted with two vices of a most mischievous character: one, that when he was ashamed of being angry, that very shame only rendered him the more intolerably furious; and secondly, that the stories which, with the easiness of access of a private individual, he heard in secret whispers, he took at once to be true and certain, because his haughty idea of the imperial dignity did not permit him to examine whether they were true or not.

21. The consequence was that, under an appearance of clemency, numbers of innocent men were driven from their homes, and sent into exile: and their property was confiscated to the public treasury, and then seized by himself for his private uses; so that the owners, after their condemnation, had no means of subsistence but such as they could beg; and were worn out with the distresses of the most miserable poverty. For fear of which that wise old poet Theognis advises a man to rush even into the sea.

22. And even if any one should grant that these sentences were in some instances right, yet it purely was an odious severity; and from this conduct of his it was remarked that the maxim was sound which says, "that there is no sentence more cruel than that which, while seeming to spare, is still harsh."

23. Therefore all the chief magistrates and the prefect of the praetorium, to whom the conduct of these investigations was committed, having been assembled together, the racks