y trees, bought acquittals
at immense prices; and that poor men who had little or no means of
purchasing safety were condemned out of hand. And therefore truth was
overshadowed by falsehood, and sometimes falsehood obtained the
authority of truth.

10. In these days Gorgonius also was summoned to court, the man who had
been the Caesar's principal chamberlain. And though it was made plain by
his own confession that he had been a partner in his undertakings, and
sometimes a chief instigator of them, yet through the conspiracy of the
eunuchs justice was overpowered by dexterously arranged falsehoods, and
he was acquitted and so escaped the danger.

III.

Sec. 1. While these events were taking place at Milan, battalions of
soldiers were brought from the East to Aquileia, with a number of
members of the court, who, being broken in spirit, while their limbs
were enfeebled by the weight of their chains, cursed the protraction of
their lives which were surrounded with every variety of misery. For they
were accused of having been the ministers of the ferocity of Gallus, and
it was believed to be owing to them that Domitian had been torn to
pieces, and that Montius and others had been brought to destruction.

2. Arboreus, and Eusebius, at that time high chamberlain, both men of
insane arrogance, and equally unjust and cruel, were appointed to try
these men. And they, without any careful examination, or making any
distinction between the innocent and the guilty, condemned some to
scourgings, others to torture and exile, some they adjudged to serve in
the lowest ranks of the army, and the rest they condemned to death. And
when they had thus filled the sepulchres with dead bodies, they returned
as if in triumph, and brought an account of their exploits to the
emperor, who was notoriously severe and implacable against all offences
of the kind.

3. After this, throughout the rest of his reign, Constantius, as if
resolved to reverse the prescribed arrangement of the Fates, behaved
with greater violence than ever, and opened his heart to numbers of
designing plotters. And owing to this conduct, many men arose who
watched for all kinds of reports, at first attacking, as with the
appetite of wild beasts, those in the enjoyment of the highest honours
and rank, and afterwards both poor and rich indiscriminately. Not like
those Cibyratae in the time of Verres,[32] fawning on the tribunal of a
single lieutenant, but harassing the limb