al furies tormented with an insatiate thirst of human blood.
[16] Instead of employing her influence to insinuate the mild counsels
of prudence and humanity, she exasperated the fierce passions of her
husband; and as she retained the vanity, though she had renounced, the
gentleness of her sex, a pearl necklace was esteemed an equivalent price
for the murder of an innocent and virtuous nobleman. [17] The cruelty of
Gallus was sometimes displayed in the undissembled violence of popular
or military executions; and was sometimes disguised by the abuse of law,
and the forms of judicial proceedings. The private houses of Antioch,
and the places of public resort, were besieged by spies and informers;
and the Caesar himself, concealed in a a plebeian habit, very frequently
condescended to assume that odious character. Every apartment of the
palace was adorned with the instruments of death and torture, and a
general consternation was diffused through the capital of Syria. The
prince of the East, as if he had been conscious how much he had to fear,
and how little he deserved to reign, selected for the objects of his
resentment the provincials accused of some imaginary treason, and his
own courtiers, whom with more reason he suspected of incensing, by their
secret correspondence, the timid and suspicious mind of Constantius.
But he forgot that he was depriving himself of his only support, the
affection of the people; whilst he furnished the malice of his enemies
with the arms of truth, and afforded the emperor the fairest pretence of
exacting the forfeit of his purple, and of his life. [18]

[Footnote 15: See Julian. ad S. P. Q. A. p. 271. Jerom. in Chron.
Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, x. 14. I shall copy the words of Eutropius,
who wrote his abridgment about fifteen years after the death of Gallus,
when there was no longer any motive either to flatter or to depreciate
his character. "Multis incivilibus gestis Gallus Caesar.... vir natura
ferox et ad tyrannidem pronior, si suo jure imperare licuisset."]

[Footnote 16: Megaera quidem mortalis, inflammatrix saevientis assidua,
humani cruoris avida, &c. Ammian. Marcellin. l. xiv. c. 1. The sincerity
of Ammianus would not suffer him to misrepresent facts or characters,
but his love of ambitious ornaments frequently betrayed him into an
unnatural vehemence of expression.]

[Footnote 17: His name was Clematius of Alexandria, and his only crime
was a refusal to gratify the desires of his