g no distinction
between their deserts; so that while the judges were still doubting
about their guilt, the emperor had made up his mind about their
punishment, and men learnt that they were condemned before they knew
that they were suspected.

19. But his obstinate resolution was strengthened since it received a
spur from his own avarice, and that also of those who at that time were
about the palace, and were constantly seeking new sources of gain; while
if on any rare occasion any mention was made of humanity, they styled it
slackness; and by their bloodthirsty flatteries perverted the
resolution of a man who bore men's lives on the tip of his tongue,
guiding it in the worst direction, and assailing everything with
unseemly confusion, while seeking to accomplish the total ruin of the
most opulent houses.

20. For Valens was a man who was especially exposed and open to the
approaches of treacherous advisers, being tainted with two vices of a
most mischievous character: one, that when he was ashamed of being
angry, that very shame only rendered him the more intolerably furious;
and secondly, that the stories which, with the easiness of access of a
private individual, he heard in secret whispers, he took at once to be
true and certain, because his haughty idea of the imperial dignity did
not permit him to examine whether they were true or not.

21. The consequence was that, under an appearance of clemency, numbers
of innocent men were driven from their homes, and sent into exile: and
their property was confiscated to the public treasury, and then seized
by himself for his private uses; so that the owners, after their
condemnation, had no means of subsistence but such as they could beg;
and were worn out with the distresses of the most miserable poverty. For
fear of which that wise old poet Theognis advises a man to rush even
into the sea.[177]

22. And even if any one should grant that these sentences were in some
instances right, yet it surely was an odious severity; and from this
conduct of his it was remarked that the maxim was sound which says,
"that there is no sentence more cruel than that which, while seeming to
spare, is still harsh."

23. Therefore all the chief magistrates and the prefect of the
praetorium, to whom the conduct of these investigations was committed,
having been assembled together, the racks were got ready, and the
weights, and lead, and scourges, and other engines of torture. And all
plac