HKB
ARGUMENT.
I. Many persons, even senators and women of senatorial family are accused at Rome of poisonings, adultery, and debauchery, and are punished.--II. The Emperor Valentinian fortifies the whole Gallic bank of the Rhine with forts, castles, and towers; the Allemanni slay the Romans who are constructing a fortification on the other side of the Rhine.--The Maratocupreni, who are ravaging Syria, are, by the command of Valens, destroyed with their children and their town.--III. Theodosius restores the cities of Britain which had been laid waste by the barbarians, repairs the fortresses, and recovers the province of the island which is called Valentia.--IV. Concerning the administration of Olybrius and Ampelius as prefects of the city: and concerning the vices of the Roman senate and people.--V. The Saxons, after a time, are circumvented in Gaul by the manoeuvres of the Romans. Valentinian having promised to unite his forces with them, sends the Burgundians to invade Germany; but they, finding themselves tricked and deceived, put all their prisoners to the sword, and return home.--VI. The ravages inflicted in the province of Tripoli, and on the people of Leptis and OEa, by the Asturians, are concealed from Valentinian by the bad faith of the Roman count; and so are not properly avenged.
I.
A.D. 368.
§ 1. While the perfidy of the king was exciting these unexpected troubles in Persia, as we have related above, and while war was reviving in the east, sixteen years and rather more after the death of Nepotianus, Bellona, raging through the eternal city, destroyed everything, proceeding from trifling beginnings to the most lamentable disasters. Would that they could be buried in everlasting silence, lest perhaps similar things may some day be again attempted, which will do more harm by the general example thus set than even by the misery they occasion.
And although after a careful consideration of different circumstances, a reasonable fear would restrain me from giving a minute account of the bloody deeds now perpetrated, yet, relying on the moderation of the present age, I will briefly touch upon the things most deserving of record, nor shall I regret giving a concise account of the fears which the events that happened at a former period caused me.
In the first Median war, when the Persians had ravaged Asia, they laid siege to Miletus with a vast host, threatening the garrison with torture and death, and at last reduced the citizens to such straits, that they all, being overwhelmed with the magnitude of their distresses, slew their nearest relations, cast all their furniture and movables into the fire, and then threw themselves in rivalry with one another on the common funeral pile of their perishing country.
A short time afterwards, Phrynichus made this event the subject of a tragedy which he exhibited on the stage at Athens; and after he had been for a short time listened to with complacency, when amid all its fine language the tragedy became more and more distressing, it was condemned by the indignation of the people, who thought that it was insulting to produce this as the subject of a dramatic poem, and that it had been prompted not by a wish to console, but only to remind them to their own disgrace of the sufferings which that beautiful city had endured without receiving any aid from its founder and parent. For Miletus was a colony of the Athenians, and had been established there among the other Ionian states by Neleus, the son of that Codrus who is said to have devoted himself for his country in the Dorian war.
Let us now return to our subject. Maximinus, formerly deputy prefect of Rome, was born in a very obscure rank of life at Sopianæ, a town of Valeria; his father being only a clerk in the president's office, descended from the posterity of those Carpi whom Diocletian removed from their ancient homes and transferred to Pannonia.