h citizens, in order to their trials, on account of their
respective share in the combustion. Their fears were heightened on the
arrival of two officers dispatched from Constantinople to execute the
emperor's orders with regard to the punishment of the rioters. The
reports which were spread abroad on this occasion imported, that the
emperor would cause the guilty to be burned alive, would confiscate
their estates, and level the city with the ground. The consternation
alone was a greater torment than the execution itself could have been.
Flavian, notwithstanding his very advanced age, and though his sister
was dying when he left her, set out without delay in a very severe
season of the year, to implore {238} the emperor's clemency in favor of
his flock. Being come to the palace, and admitted into the emperor's
presence, he no sooner perceived that prince but he stopped at a
distance, holding down his head, covering his face, and speaking only by
his tears, as though himself had been guilty. Thus he remained for some
time. The emperor seeing him in this condition, carrying, as it were,
the weight of the public guilt in his breast, instead of employing harsh
reproaches, as Flavian might naturally have expected, summed up the many
favors he had conferred on that city, and said at the conclusion of each
article: "Is this the acknowledgment I had reason to expect? Is this
their return for my love? What cause of complaint had they against me?
Had I ever injured them? But granting that I had, what can they allege
for extending their insolence even to the dead? Had they received any
wrong from them? Why were they to be insulted too? What tenderness have
I not shown on all occasions for their city? Is it not notorious that I
have given it the preference in my love and esteem to all others, even
to that which gave me birth? Did not I always express a longing desire
to see it, and that it gave the highest satisfaction to think I should
soon be in a condition of taking a journey for this purpose?"

Then the holy bishop, being unable to bear such stinging reproaches or
vindicate their conduct, made answer: "We acknowledge, Sir, that you
have on all occasions favored us with the greatest demonstrations of
your singular affection; and this it is that enhances both our crime and
our grief, that we should have carried our ingratitude to such a pitch
as to have offended our best friend and greatest benefactor: hence,
whatever punishment yo