a vice in the following passage of
Cicero. "If anger be implacable, it is the extreme of severity; if it
yield to entreaties, it is the extreme of levity; though in times of
misfortune even levity is to be preferred to cruelty."

41. After these events, Leo arrived, and was received as his successor,
and Maximin was summoned to the emperor's court and promoted to the
office of prefect of the praetorium, where he was as cruel as ever,
having indeed greater power of inflicting injury, like a basilisk
serpent.

42. Just at this time, or not long before, the brooms with which the
senate-house of the nobles was swept out were seen to flower, and this
portended that some persons of the very lowest class would be raised to
high rank and power.

43. Though it is now time to return to the course of our regular
history, yet without neglecting the proper order of time, we must dwell
on a few incidents, which through the iniquity of the deputy prefects of
the city, were done most unjustly, being in fact done at the word and
will of Maximin by those same officers, who seemed to look on themselves
as the mere servants of his pleasure.

44. After him came Ursicinus, a man of a more merciful disposition,
who, wishing to act cautiously and in conformity to the constitution,
confronted a man named Esaias with some others who were in prison on a
charge of adultery with Rufina; who had attempted to establish a charge
of treason against Marcellus her husband, formerly in a situation of
high trust. But this act led to his being despised as a dawdler, and a
person little fit to carry out such designs with proper resolution, and
so he was removed from his place of deputy.

45. He was succeeded by Simplicius of Emona, who had been a
schoolmaster, but was now the assessor of Maximin. After receiving this
appointment, he did not grow more proud or arrogant, but assumed a
supercilious look, which gave a repulsive expression to his countenance.
His language was studiously moderate, while he meditated the most
rigorous proceedings against many persons. And first of all he put
Rufina to death with all the partners of her adultery, and all who were
privy to it, concerning whom Ursicinus, as we have related, had already
made a report. Then he put numbers of others to death, without any
distinction between the innocent and the guilty.

46. Running a race of bloodshed with Maximin, as if he had, as it were,
been his leader, he sought to surpass h