the troops were still
distributed in their winter quarters, the storms of angry fortune
surrounded the commonwealth with fresh dangers through the manifold and
terrible atrocities of Caesar Gallus:[1] who, when just entering into the
prime of life, having been raised with unexpected honour from the
lowest depth of misery to the highest rank, exceeded all the legitimate
bounds of the power conferred on him, and with preposterous violence
threw everything into confusion. For by his near relationship to the
royal family, and his connection with the name of Constantine, he was so
inflated with pride, that if he had had more power, he would, as it
seemed, have ventured to attack even the author of his prosperity.

2. His wife added fuel to his natural ferocity; she was a woman
immoderately proud of her sisterly relationship to Augustus, and had
been formerly given in marriage by the elder Constantine to King
Hannibalianus,[2] his brother's son. She was an incarnate fury: never
weary of inflaming his savage temper, thirsting for human blood as
insatiably as her husband. The pair, in process of time, becoming more
skilful in the infliction of suffering, employed a gang of underhand and
crafty talebearers, accustomed in their wickedness to make random
additions to their discoveries, which consisted in general of such
falsehoods as they themselves delighted in; and these men loaded the
innocent with calumnies, charging them with aiming at kingly power, or
with practising infamous acts of magic.

3. And among his less remarkable atrocities, when his power had gone
beyond the bounds of moderate crimes, was conspicuous the horrible and
sudden death of a certain noble citizen of Alexandria, named Clematius.
His mother-in-law, having conceived a passion for him, could not prevail
on him to gratify it; and in consequence, as was reported, she, having
obtained an introduction by a secret door into the palace, won over the
queen by the present of a costly necklace, and procured a fatal warrant
to be sent to Honoratus, at that time count-governor of the East, in
compliance with which Clematius was put to death, a man wholly innocent
of any kind of wickedness, without being permitted to say a word in his
defence.

4. After this iniquitous transaction, which struck others also with fear
lest they should meet with similar treatment, as if cruelty had now
obtained a licence, many were condemned on mere vague suspicion; of whom
some were p