stood among them, looking pale and ghost-like;
and as a proper royal robe could not be found, he wore a tunic spangled
with gold, like that of an officer of the palace, and the lower part of
his dress like that of a boy at school; and purple shoes; he also bore a
spear, and carried a small piece of purple cloth in his right hand, so
that one might fancy that some theatrical figure or dramatic
personification had suddenly come upon the stage.

16. Being thus ridiculously put forward as if in mockery of all honours,
he addressed the authors of his elevation with servile flattery,
promising them vast riches and high rank as the first-fruits of his
promotion; and then he advanced into the streets, escorted by a
multitude of armed men; and with raised standards he prepared to
proceed, surrounded by a horrid din of shields clashing with a mournful
clang, as the soldiers, fearing lest they might be injured by stones or
tiles from the housetops, joined them together above their heads in
close order.

17. As he thus advanced boldly the people showed him neither aversion
nor favour; but he was encouraged by the love of sudden novelty, which
is implanted in the minds of most of the common people, and was further
excited by the knowledge that all men unanimously detested Petronius,
who, as I have said before, was accumulating riches by all kinds of
violence, reviving actions that had long been buried, and oppressing all
ranks with the exaction of forgotten debts.

18. Therefore when Procopius ascended the tribunal, and when, as all
seemed thunderstruck and bewildered, even the gloomy silence was
terrible, thinking (or, indeed, expecting) that he had only found a
shorter way to death, trembling so as to be unable to speak, he stood
for some time in silence. Presently when he began, with a broken and
languid voice, to say a few words, in which he spoke of his relationship
to the imperial family, he was met at first with but a faint murmur of
applause from those whom he had bribed; but presently he was hailed by
the tumultuous clamours of the populace in general as emperor, and
hurried off to the senate-house, where he found none of the nobles, but
only a small number of the rabble of the city; and so he went on with
speed, but in an ignoble style, to the palace.

19. One might marvel that this ridiculous beginning, so improvidently
and rashly engaged in, should have led to melancholy disasters for the
republic, if one were ignor