hints, which showed
that he had conceived a sure hope of such events from the prophecies of
the soothsayers; and was not inclined to delay, but was looking for an
opportunity of attaining the object of his desires.

36. After the establishment of these facts, the prisoners were removed;
and Eutropius, who at that time was governing Asia with the rank of
proconsul, having been involved in the accusation as having been a
partisan of theirs, was nevertheless acquitted; being exculpated by
Pasiphilus the philosopher, who, though cruelly tortured to make him
implicate Eutropius by a wicked lie, could not be moved from his
vigorous resolution and fortitude.

37. To that was added the philosopher Simonides, a young man, but the
most rigidly virtuous of all men in our time. An information had been
laid against him as having been made aware of what was going on by
Fidustius, as he saw that his cause depended, not on its truth, but on
the will of one man, avowed that he had known all that was alleged, but
had forborne to mention it out of regard for his character for
constancy.

38. When all these matters had been minutely inquired into, the emperor,
in answer to the question addressed to him by the judges, ordered them
all to be condemned and at once executed: and it was not without
shuddering that the vast populace beheld the mournful spectacle; filling
the whole air with lamentations (since they looked on the misery of each
individual as threatening the whole community with a similar fate) when
the whole number of accused persons, except Simonides, were executed in
a melancholy manner. Simonides being reserved to be burnt alive by the
express command of the savage judge, who was enraged at his dignified
constancy.

39. And he, abandoning life as an imperious mistress, and defying the
sudden destruction thus coming on him, was burnt without giving any sign
of shrinking; imitating, in his death, the philosopher Peregrinus,
surnamed Proteus, who having determined to quit the world, at the
quinquennial games of Olympia, in the sight of all Greece, mounted a
funeral pile which he had built himself, and was there burnt alive.

40. After his death, on the ensuing days a vast multitude of almost all
ranks, whose names it would be too arduous a task to enumerate, being
convicted by calumnious accusations, were despatched by the
executioners, after having been first exhausted by every description of
torture. Some were put to death