. The wealthiest
families were ruined by fines and confiscations; the most
innocent citizens trembled for their safety: and we may form some
notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant
assertion of an ancient writer [Ammianus Marcellinus], that in
the obnoxious provinces the prisoners, the exiles, and the
fugitives formed the greatest part of the inhabitants. The
philosopher Maximus,' it is added, 'with some justice was
involved in the charge of magic; and young Chrysostom, who had
accidentally found one of the proscribed books, gave himself up
for lost.'[28]

[28] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, xxv.

The similarity of this to the horrible catastrophe of Arras,
recorded by the chroniclers of the fifteenth century, excepting
the grosser absurdities of the latter, is almost perfect.
Valentinian and Valens, who seem to have emulated the atrocious
fame of the Caesarean family, with their ministers, concealed, it
is probable, under the disguise of a simulated credulity the real
motives of revenge and cupidity.

The Roman world, Christian and pagan, was subject to the
prevailing fear. That portion of the globe, however, comprehended
but a small part of the human race. The records of history are
incomplete and imperfect; nor are they more confined in point of
time than of extent. History is little more at any period than an
imperfect account of the life of a few particular peoples.
Necessarily limited almost entirely to an acquaintance with the
history of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman
Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of that vastly
larger proportion of the earth's surface, the extra-Roman world,
embracing then, as now, civilised as well as barbarous nations.
The Chinese empire (the most extraordinary, perhaps, and whose
antiquity far surpasses that of any known), comprehending within
its limits two-thirds of the population of the globe; the refined
and ingenious people of Hindustan, an immense population, in the
East: in the Western hemisphere nations in existence whose
remains excited the admiration of the Spanish invaders; the
various savage tribes of the African continent; the nomad
populations of Northern Asia and Europe; nearly all these more or
less, on the testimony of past and present observation,
experienced the tremendous fears of the vulgar demonism.[29]

[29] It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated
modern philo