History

On these and similar grounds many united in a common attempt at dissuasion and in particular the praetorian prefect Modestus, a man wholly subjected to the influence of the eunuchs of the court, of a boorish nature refined by no reading of the ancient writers. He, wearing a forced and deceptive expression, declared that the trivialities of private cases at law were beneath the dignity of the imperial majesty. Accordingly Valens, thinking that the examination of swarms of legal cases was devised to humble the loftiness of the royal power, in accordance with the advice of Modestus, abstained from it wholly, thereby opening the doors to robbery; and this grew stronger day by day through the wickedness of judges and advocates in collusion; for they sold their decisions of the cases of poorer people to officers in the army, or to powerful men within the palace, and thus gained either wealth or high position.

This trade of forensic oratory the great Plato defined as πολιτικῆς μορίου εἴδωλον (that is, the shadow of a small part of the science of government ) or as the fourth part of flattery; but Epicurus counts it among evil arts, calling it κακοτεχνία. Tisias says that it is the artist of persuasion, and Gorgias of Leontini agrees with him.

This art, thus defined by the men of old, the cunning of certain Orientals raised to a degree hateful to good men, for which reason it is even confined by the restraints of a time fixed beforehand. Therefore after having described in a very few words its unworthiness, with which I became acquainted while I was living in those parts, I shall return to the course of the narrative with which I began.

Formerly judgement-seats gained glory through the support of old-time refinement, when orators of fiery eloquence, devoted to learned studies, were eminent for talent and justice, and for the fluency and many adornments of their diction; for example Demosthenes, to hear whom, when he was going to speak, as the Attic records testify, the people were wont to flock together from all Greece ; and Callistratus, to whom, when he pleaded in that celebrated case in defence of Oropos (which is a place in Euboea ) that same Demosthenes attached himself, forsaking the Academy and Plato; also, Hyperides, Aeschines, Andocides, Dinarchus, and the famous Antiphon of Rhamnus, who, according to the testimony of antiquity, was the first of all to accept a fee for conducting a defence.

Not less eminent among the Romans were men like Rutilius, Galba, and Scaurus, conspicuous for their life, their character, and their uprightness; and later in the various epochs of subsequent times many former censors and consuls, and men who had been honoured with triumphs, such as Crassus, Antonius, Philippus, Scaevola, and many others, after successful campaigns, after victories and trophies, distinguished themselves by civic services to the State, and winning laurels in the glorious contests of the Forum, enjoyed Fame’s highest honours.

After these Cicero, the most eminent of them all, by the floods of his all-conquering oratory often saved the oppressed from the fiery ordeal of the courts, and declared: It might perhaps be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently could be nothing but criminal.

But now it is possible to see in all the regions of the Orient powerful and rapacious classes of men flitting from one forum to another, besieging the home hounds sagaciously picking up the tracks until they come to the very lairs of lawsuits.

Among these the first class consists of those who, by sowing the seeds of all sorts of quarrels, busy themselves with thousands of recognisances, wearing out the doors of widows and the thresholds of childless men; and if they have found even slight retreats of secret enmity, they rouse deadly hatred among discordant friends, kinsfolk, or relatives. And in these men their vices do not cool down in course of time, as do those of others, but grow stronger and stronger. Poor amid insatiable robbery, they draw the dagger of their talent to lead astray by crafty speeches the good faith of the judges, whose title is derived from justice.

By their persistence rashness tries to pass itself off as freedom of speech; and reckless audacity as firmness of purpose; a kind of empty flow of words as eloquence. By the perversity of these arts, as Cicero insists, it is a sin for the conscientiousness of a judge to be deceived. For he says: And since nothing in a state ought to be so free from corruption as the suffrage and judicial decisions, I do not understand why one who corrupts them by money deserves punishment, while one who corrupts them by his eloquence is even praised. For my part, I think that he does more evil who corrupts a judge by a speech than one who does so by money; for no one can corrupt a sensible man by money, but he can do so by words.

A second class consists of those who profess a knowledge of law, which, however, the self-contradictory statutes have destroyed, and reticent as if they were muzzled, in never-ending silence they are like their own shadows. These men, as though revealing destinies by nativities or interpreting a Sibyl’s oracles, assume a solemn expression of severe bearing and try to make even their yawning saleable.

In order to seem to have a deeper knowledge of the law, they talk of Trebatius, Cascellius, and Alfenus, and of the laws of the Aurunci and Sicani, which were long since forgotten and buried many ages ago along with Evander’s mother. And if you pretend that you have purposely murdered your mother, they promise, if they have observed that you are a moneyed man, that their many recondite studies will secure an acquittal for you.

A third group consists of those who, in order to gain glory by their troublous profession, sharpen their venal tongues to attack the truth, and with shameless brow and base yelping often gain entrance wherever they wish. When the anxious judges are distracted by many cares, they tie up the business in an inexplicable tangle, and do their best to involve all peace and quiet in lawsuits and purposely by knotty inquisitions they deceive the courts, which, when their procedure is right, are temples of justice, when corrupted, are deceptive and hidden pits: and if anyone is deluded and falls into those pits, he will not get out except after many a term of years, when he has been sucked dry to his very marrow.

The fourth and last class, shameless, headstrong, and ignorant, consists of those who have broken away too soon from the elementary schools, run to and fro through the corners of the cities, thinking out mimiambic lines, rather than speeches suitable to win law-suits, wearing out the doors of the rich, and hunting for banquets and fine choice food.

When they have once devoted themselves to shady gain and to eagerness for money from any and every source, they urge all kinds of innocent people to involve themselves in vain litigations. And when they are allowed to defend suits, which rarely happens, amidst the very turning-points of the disputes they learn the name of their client and the purport of the business in hand from the mouth of the judge, and they so overflow with disarranged circumlocutions that in the foul hotchpotch you would think you were hearing a Thersites with his howling din.

But when they find themselves in the end unable to defend the charges, they turn to unbridled licence in abuse; and on this account, because of their constant insults of persons of rank, they are prosecuted and often condemned; and among them are some who are so ignorant that they cannot remember that they ever possessed a law-book.

And if in a circle of learned men the name of an ancient writer happens to be mentioned, they think it is a foreign word for some fish or other edible; but if any stranger asks for the orator Marcianus (for example), who was before unknown to him, at once they all pretend that their own name is Marcianus.

And they no longer have before their eyes any right, but as if sold to and enslaved by avarice, they understand nothing except endless licence in making demands. And if once they have caught anyone in their nets, they entangle him in a thousand toils, purposely defaulting by pretending sicknesses one after another; and they prepare seven plausible preambles in order that the useless reading of well-known law may be introduced, thus weaving swarms of long delays.

And when the contending parties are stripped of everything, and days, months and years are used up, at last the case, now worn out with age, is introduced, and those brilliant principals come forth, bringing with them other shadows of advocates. And when theyhave come within the barriers of the court, and the fortunes or safety of some one begins to be discussed, and they ought to work to turn the sword or ruinous loss from an innocent person, the advocates on both sides wrinkling their brows and waving their arms in semblance of the gestures of actors (so that they lack only the oratorical pipe of Gracchus behind them) stand for a long time opposite each other. At last, in accordance with a prearranged agreement, the one who is more confident in speech utters a kind of a sweet prologue, promising to emulate the ornamental language of a speech for Cluentius or Ctesiphon; and when all are wishing for the end, such is the method of his peroration that the advocates, after the semblance of a trial has gone on for three years, allege that they are not yet fully informed; and after they have obtained a further postponement, as if they had struggled with Antaeus of old, they persistently demand the pay for their danger and toil.

But yet, in spite of this, advocates suffer many inconveniences, not easy to be endured by a man who would live rightly. For, allured by the profits of their sedentary trade, they differ among themselves and become enemies, and they offend many by their outbursts of abusive ferocity (as has been said), which they blab out in a torrent when they have no arguments strong enough to fortify the weakness of the cases which have been entrusted to them.

And they have to deal with judges who sometimes are taught by the sophisms of Philistion or Aesopus, rather than reared in the discipline of your Aristides the Just or Cato. Such men, having bought public office for large sums of money, like tiresome creditors prying into the resources of every kind of fortune, shake out booty from other men’s bosoms.

Finally, the profession of advocate has, with the rest, this serious and dangerous evil, which is native to almost all litigants, that although their cases may be lost by a thousand accidents, they think their ill-success lies wholly in the ability of their advocates, and they are accustomed to attribute the outcome of every contest to them; and they vent their anger not on the weakness of their case or the frequent injustice of the magistrate who decides it, but only on their defenders. But let us return to the point from which we made the digression.

When spring was already ripening, Valentinian moved from Trier and hastened by quick marches along the familiar roads; and when he came to the regions for which he was aiming, he was met by a deputation of the Sarmatians, who threw themselves at his feet and begged in peaceful terms that his visit might be favourable and merciful to them, since he would find that their countrymen were neither participants in, nor aware of, any outrage.

When they often repeated these same statements, after mature deliberation the emperor made this answer: that these acts must be investigated, in the place where they were said to have been committed, and punished in the light of the most reliable evidence. And when thereafter he entered Carnuntum, a town of the prefecture of Illyricum, now indeed deserted and in ruins, but very convenient for the leader of an army, he proceeded (whenever chance or design gave the opportunity) to check the attacks of the savages from a station near by.

And though he was a terror to all while his arrival was waited for, since he was likely in bitter anger to order at once the punishment of officials who through perfidy or desertion had exposed that side of Pannonia, yet on his arrival he became so mild that he neither made inquiry into the murder of King Gabinius, nor carefully investigated the wounds branded on the body of the state to learn through whose negligence or guilt they had come about. And indeed it was his way to be severe in punishing common people, but more lenient towards personages of higher rank, even when they deserved a severe rebuke in harsh words.

Probus alone he attacked with bitter hatred, never ceasing to threaten him from the first time he had seen him, nor showing him any mildness; and for this conduct there were obvious weighty reasons. Probus had then, not for the first time, attained the rank of praetorian prefect, and in his longing to prolong his tenure of office in many ways (I only wish that they had been justifiable), he relied more on flattery than on worth otherwise than the glory of his stock admonished him.

For considering the emperor’s inclination to seek out ways of getting money from every quarter without distinction between right and wrong, he did not call him back when he strayed from the path of justice (as peace-loving counsellors have often done), but himself also followed the emperor on his devious and perverse course.

Hence resulted the grievous troubles of his subjects, and the ruinous items of imposts that had been instituted, long-continued practice in oppression finding one pretext after another, each more effective than the others, enfeebled and cut the sinews of the fortunes of rich and poor alike. Finally, the burden of tributes and the repeated increase in taxes compelled some of the most distinguished families, hounded by the fear of the worst, to leave their country; others, crushed by the severity of the dunning tax-collectors, having nothing to give, became permanent inmates of the prisons; and some of these, now weary of life and light, died by the noose as a welcome release.

These things, as persistent rumour maintained, went on thus with increasing treachery and ruthlessness; but Valentinian knew nothing of them, as if his ears were stopped with wax, being eager for indiscriminate gain even from the slightest things, and taking into consideration only what was offered. Yet perhaps he would have spared Pannonia, if he had known earlier of these lamentable sources of profit, of which he learned all too late from the following chance occurrence.

After the example of the rest of the provincials the Epirotes also were compelled by the prefect to send envoys to the emperor to offer him their thanks, and forced a philosopher called Iphicles, a man renowned for his strength of soul, against his own desire to go and perform that duty.

And he, when he came into the emperor’s presence, being recognized and asked the reason for his coming, replied in Greek; and when the emperor asked explicitly whether those who sent him thought well of the prefect in their hearts, he said, as became a philosopher who made a profession of truth: With groans and against their will.

By these words the emperor was struck as by a dagger, and like a keen-scented hound he searched into all the conduct of the prefect, asking Iphicles in his native tongue about people whom he personally knew: where in the world, for example, was so and so who excelled his countrymen in honour and reputation; or another, who was rich; or still another of high rank. And when he learned that one had fallen victim to the noose, that another had gone across the sea, that a third had committed suicide or had died under the blows of the knout, he burned with tremendous rage, to which Leo, who was then chief marshal of the Court (oh, horror!), added blazing fuel, a man who himself aspired to the prefecture, in order to fall from a greater height. And if he had attained and ruled the office, in comparison with what he would have dared, the administration of a Probus would be praised to the skies!

And so the emperor remained at Carnuntum, where throughout the entire three summer months he was preparing arms and supplies, intending, if in anyway fortune favoured, to find opportunity to attack the Quadi, the instigators of the terrible uprising. It was in that town that Faustinus, nephew of Viventius, the praetorian prefect, when serving as a state-secretary, after an investigation conducted by Probus, was first tortured and then put to death by the hand of the executioner. The charge was that he had killed an ass, as some of his accusers alleged, for use in secret arts, but as he himself declared, to strengthen the weakness of his hair, which was falling out.

According to another, who was also suborned to ruin him, when one Nigrinus in jest asked for an appointment as state-secretary, Faustinus laughed at the man and said: Make me emperor, if you want to get that office. Since this jest was unjustly interpreted, Faustinus himself, as well as Nigrinus and others, were put to death.

Valentinian now sent Merobaudes on ahead with the division of foot-soldiers under his command, and in company with Count Sebastianus, to plunder and burn the cantons of the barbarians; the emperor himself quickly moved his camp to Acincum, joined together boats for the sudden emergency, and having with swift energy made a bridge of planks upon them, crossed through another quarter into the territory of the Quadi. They indeed were watching for his coming from the steep mountains, to which most of them, in doubt and uncertain what was happening, had withdrawn with their families; but they were overcome with amazement when, contrary to their expectation, they saw the imperial standards in their territories.

Valentinian then advanced forcing the pace as far as occasion demanded, put to death without distinction of age all those who were still roaming about and were taken unawares by his sudden onset, burned the dwellings, and returned without losing a man of those whom he had led with him. He also lingered at Acincum, since the autumn was swiftly passing on, and being in lands where the cold weather always covered everything with ice, he looked about for suitable winter quarters; and he could find no convenient place except Savaria, although that town was then weak and had suffered from repeated misfortunes.

Therefore, setting this aside for a time, in spite of the great need for a halt, he quickly moved from there, marched along the banks of the river, and having protected his camp with an adequate force and with castles came to Bregitio. There the fate which had long been designed to end the emperor’s labours foretold his approaching end by a repeated series of portents.

For a very few days before his arrival comets blazed in the heavens; these foreshadow the downfall of men of high position, and of their origin I have already given an account. Before that, at Sirmium, with sudden crash of the clouds, a thunderbolt fell and set fire to a part of the palace, the senate house, and the forum. Also at Savaria, where the emperor was still settled, an owl perched on the top of the imperial bath, and uttered notes foretelling death; and no skilful hand could bring it down with arrows or with stones, although many vied with one another in eager attacks upon it.

Again, when he was on his way from the aforesaid city to a campaign, he wished to go out through the same gate by which he had entered, in order to gain an omen that he would quickly return to Gaul; but while the neglected place was being cleared of accumulated debris, the iron-clad door which barred the exit was found to have fallen, and could not be removed by the greatest efforts of a large number of men; and to avoid wasting a day there, he was forced to go out by another gate.

And on the night before the day which was to deprive him of life, he had a vision (as men often do in their sleep); he saw his absent wife sitting with disordered hair and dressed in mourning attire; and it was possible to infer that she was his own Fortune, on the point of leaving him in the garb of sorrow.

Then the next morning, when he came out somewhat gloomy and with frowning brow, the horse that was brought to him would not allow him to mount, but reared its fore feet high in the air contrary to its usual manner; whereupon the emperor fell into one of his innate fits of anger and, being naturally cruel, ordered the groom’s right hand, which as usual had supported him in leaping on to the animal, to be cut off. And the guiltless young man would have suffered a cruel fate, had not Cerealis, the tribune in charge of the stable, at the risk of his own life postponed the terrible wrong.

After this, envoys of the Quadi appeared, humbly begging for peace and forgetfulness of their past offences; and in order to obtain this without hindrance, they promised to provide recruits and some other things helpful to the Roman state.

When it was decided that the envoys be received and allowed to return home with the grant of the truce for which they were asking (for neither lack of supplies nor the unfavourable time of year allowed further attacks upon them), on the advice of Aequitius they were admitted to the councilchamber. And as they stood there with bended limbs weak and stricken by fear, on being bidden to tell their mission, they gave the usual series of excuses and supported them by adding the pledge of an oath. They declared that there had been no common consent of the chiefs of their race in any wrong that had been done us, but that the hostile acts had been committed by bands of foreign brigands dwelling near the river; and they added, and maintained that it was a valid excuse for their conduct, that the building of a barrier, which was begun both unjustly and without due occasion, roused their rude spirits to anger.

At this the emperor burst into a mighty fit of wrath, and being particularly incensed during the first part of his reply, he railed at the whole nation in noisy and abusive language, as ungrateful and forgetful of acts of kindness. Then he gradually calmed himself and seemed more inclined to mildness, when, as if struck by a bolt from the sky, he was seen to be speechless and suffocating, and his face was tinged with a fiery flush. On a sudden his blood was checked and the sweat of death broke out upon him. Then, that he might not fall before the eyes of a throng of the common sort, his body-servants rushed to him and led him into an inner chamber.