en lives in battle than be thus tortured while guiltless of all crime,
having their estates confiscated, as if guilty of treason, and their
bodies mutilated before death, which is the most bitter kind of death.

14. At last, when his ferocity was exhausted by his cruelties, men of
the highest rank were still exposed to proscription, banishment, and
other punishments which, though severe, appear lighter to some people.
And in order to enrich some one else, men of noble birth, and perhaps
still more richly endowed with virtues, were stripped of their patrimony
and driven into exile, where they were exhausted with misery, perhaps
being even reduced to subsist by beggary. Nor was any limit put to the
cruelties which were inflicted till both the prince and those about him
were satiated with plunder and bloodshed.

15. While the usurper, whose various acts and death we have been
relating, was still alive, on the 21st of July, in the first consulship
of Valentinian and his brother, fearful dangers suddenly overspread the
whole world, such as are related in no ancient fables or histories.

16. For a little before sunrise there was a terrible earthquake,
preceded by incessant and furious lightning. The sea was driven
backwards, so as to recede from the land, and the very depths were
uncovered, so that many marine animals were left sticking in the mud.
And the depths of its valleys and the recesses of the hills, which from
the very first origin of all things had been lying beneath the boundless
waters, now beheld the beams of the sun.

17. Many ships were stranded on the dry shore, while people straggling
about the shoal water picked up fishes and things of that kind in their
hands. In another quarter the waves, as if raging against the violence
with which they had been driven back, rose, and swelling over the
boiling shallows, beat upon the islands and the extended coasts of the
mainland, levelling cities and houses wherever they encountered them.
All the elements were in furious discord, and the whole face of the
world seemed turned upside down, revealing the most extraordinary
sights.

18. For the vast waves subsided when it was least expected, and thus
drowned many thousand men. Even ships were swallowed up in the furious
currents of the returning tide, and were seen to sink when the fury of
the sea was exhausted; and the bodies of those who perished by shipwreck
floated about on their backs or faces.

19. Other vessels