lic prisons, being now completely filled, could no longer
contain the crowds which were confined in them, while private houses
were equally crammed to suffocation, for nearly every one was a
prisoner, and every man shuddered to think when it might be his turn or
that of his nearest relations.

14. At last Theodorus himself arrived, in deep mourning, and half dead
through fear. And while he was kept concealed in some obscure place in
the vicinity, and all things were being got ready for his intended
examination, the trumpet of civil discord suddenly sounded.

15. And because that man who knowingly passes over facts appears to be
an equally unfaithful historian with him who invents circumstances which
never happened, we do not deny (what, in fact, is quite undoubted) that
the safety of Valens had often before been attacked by secret
machinations, and was now in the greatest possible danger. And that a
sword, as one may say, was presented to his throat by the officers of
the army, and only averted by Fate, which was reserving him for
lamentable misfortunes in Thrace.

16. For one day as he was taking a gentle nap in the afternoon, in a
shady spot between Antioch and Seleucia, he was attacked by Sallust, at
that time an officer of the Scutarii; and on various other occasions he
was plotted against by many other persons, from whose treacherous
designs he only escaped because the precise moment of his death had been
determined at his birth by Destiny.

17. As sometimes happened in the times of the emperors Commodus and
Severus, whose safety was continually assailed with extreme violence, so
that after many various dangers at the hands of their countrymen, the
one was dangerously wounded by a dagger in the amphitheatre, as he
entered it for the purpose of witnessing an entertainment, by a senator
named Quintianus, a man of wicked ambition. The other, when extremely
old, was assailed as he was lying in his bedchamber, by a centurion of
the name of Saturninus, who was instigated to the act by Plautian the
prefect, and would have been killed if his youthful son had not come to
his assistance.

18. Valens, therefore, was to be excused for taking every precaution to
defend his life, which traitors were endeavouring to take. But it was an
unpardonable fault in him that, through tyrannical pride, he, with haste
and with inconsiderate and malicious persecution, inflicted the same
severities on the innocent as on the guilty, makin