e Asturians, are concealed from Valentinian by the
bad faith of the Roman count; and so are not properly avenged.

I.

A.D. 368.

Sec. 1. While the perfidy of the king was exciting these unexpected
troubles in Persia, as we have related above, and while war was reviving
in the east, sixteen years and rather more after the death of
Nepotianus, Bellona, raging through the eternal city, destroyed
everything, proceeding from trifling beginnings to the most lamentable
disasters. Would that they could be buried in everlasting silence, lest
perhaps similar things may some day be again attempted, which will do
more harm by the general example thus set than even by the misery they
occasion.

2. And although after a careful consideration of different
circumstances, a reasonable fear would restrain me from giving a minute
account of the bloody deeds now perpetrated, yet, relying on the
moderation of the present age, I will briefly touch upon the things
most deserving of record, nor shall I regret giving a concise account of
the fears which the events that happened at a former period caused me.

3. In the first Median war, when the Persians had ravaged Asia, they
laid siege to Miletus with a vast host, threatening the garrison with
torture and death, and at last reduced the citizens to such straits,
that they all, being overwhelmed with the magnitude of their distresses,
slew their nearest relations, cast all their furniture and movables into
the fire, and then threw themselves in rivalry with one another on the
common funeral pile of their perishing country.

4. A short time afterwards, Phrynichus made this event the subject of a
tragedy which he exhibited on the stage at Athens; and after he had been
for a short time listened to with complacency, when amid all its fine
language the tragedy became more and more distressing, it was condemned
by the indignation of the people, who thought that it was insulting to
produce this as the subject of a dramatic poem, and that it had been
prompted not by a wish to console, but only to remind them to their own
disgrace of the sufferings which that beautiful city had endured without
receiving any aid from its founder and parent. For Miletus was a colony
of the Athenians, and had been established there among the other Ionian
states by Neleus, the son of that Codrus who is said to have devoted
himself for his country in the Dorian war.

5. Let us now return to our subject. Maximin