es resounded with the horrors of the cruel voice of the
executioners, and the cries uttered amid the clanking of chains: "Hold
him!" "Shut him up!" "Squeeze him!" "Hide him!" and other yells uttered
by the ministers of those hateful duties.

24. And since we saw numbers condemned to death after having endured
cruel torture, everything being thrown into complete confusion as if in
perfect darkness, because the complete recollection of everything which
then took place has in some degree escaped me, I will mention briefly
what I do remember.

25. Among the first who were summoned before the bench, was Pergamius,
who, as we have already mentioned, was betrayed by Palladius, who
accused him of having arrived at a foreknowledge of certain events
through wicked incantations. As he was a man of exceeding eloquence, and
very likely to say dangerous things, and after some very trivial
interrogatories had been put to him, seeing that the judges were
hesitating what questions to put first and what last, he began himself
to harangue them boldly, and shouting out the names with a loud voice
and without any cessation, he named several thousand persons as
accomplices with himself, demanding that people should be brought
forward to be accused of great crimes from every part of the empire, up
to the very shores of the great Atlantic. The task that he thus seemed
to be putting together for them was too arduous; so they condemned him
to death; and afterwards put whole troops of others to death, till they
came to the case of Theodorus, which was regarded, after the manner of
the Olympian games, as a crowning of the whole.

26. The same day, among other circumstances, this melancholy event took
place, that Salia, who a little while before had been the chief
treasurer in Thrace, when he was about to be brought out of his prison
to have his cause heard, and was putting on his shoes, as if suddenly
overwhelmed by the dread of his impending destruction, died in the hands
of his gaolers.

27. So when the court was opened, and when the judges exhibited the
decrees of the law, though, in accordance with the desire of the
emperor, they moderated the severity of the charges brought before them,
one general alarm seized all people. For Valens had now so wholly
departed from justice, and had become so accomplished in the infliction
of injury, that he was like a wild beast in an amphitheatre; and if any
one who had been brought before the court esca