or Marcus built
the Nymphaeum,[46] an edifice of great magnificence. To that place the
prefect went forthwith, although he was earnestly entreated by all his
household and civil officers not to trust himself among an arrogant and
threatening multitude, now in a state of fury equal to any of their
former commotions; but he, unsusceptible of fear, went right onwards,
though many of his attendants deserted him, when they saw him hastening
into imminent danger.

4. Therefore, sitting in a carriage, with every appearance of
confidence, he looked with fierce eyes at the countenance of the
tumultuous mobs thronging towards him from all quarters, and agitating
themselves like serpents. And after suffering many bitter insults, at
last, when he had recognized one man who was conspicuous among all the
rest by his vast size and red hair, he asked him whether his name was
Petrus Valvomeres, as he had heard it was; and when the man replied in a
defiant tone that it was so, Leontius, in spite of the outcries of many
around, ordered him to be seized as one who had long since been a
notorious ringleader of the disaffected, and having his hands bound
behind him, commanded him to be suspended on a rack.

5. And when he was seen in the air, in vain imploring the aid of his
fellow-tribesmen, the whole mob, which a little while before was so
closely packed, dispersed at once over the different quarters of the
city, so as to offer no hindrance to the punishment of this seditious
leader, who after having been thus tortured--with as little resistance
as if he been in a secret dungeon of the court--was transported to
Picenum, where, on a subsequent occasion, having offered violence to a
virgin of high rank, he was condemned to death by the judgment of
Patruinus, a noble of consular dignity.

6. While Leontius governed the city in this manner, Liberius, a priest
of the Christian law, was ordered by Constantius to be brought before
the council, as one who had resisted the commands of the emperor, and
the decrees of many of his own colleagues, in an affair which I will
explain briefly.

7. Athanasius was at that time bishop of Alexandria; and as he was a man
who sought to magnify himself above his profession, and to mix himself
up with affairs which did not belong to his province, as continual
reports made known, an assembly of many of his sect met together--a
synod, as they call it--and deprived him of the right of administering
the sacrament