[119] These and other titles, such as "respectable" (spectabiles), "illustrious" (egregrie, illustres), were invented by the emperors of this century. They none of them appear to have conferred any substantive power.
[120] This office had been first established by Augustus, who created two prefects of the prætorian cohorts, under whose command also all the soldiers in Italy were placed. Commodus raised the number to three, and Constantine to four, whom (when he abolished the prætorian cohort), he made, in fact, governors of provinces. There was one præfectus prætorio for Gaul, one for Italy, one for Illyricum, and one for the East.
BOOK XXII.
ARGUMENT.
I. From fear of Constantius Julian halts in Dacia, and secretly consults the augurs and soothsayers.—II. When he hears of Constantius's death he passes through Thrace, and enters Constantinople, which he finds quiet; and without a battle becomes sole master of the Roman empire.—III. Some of the adherents of Constantius are condemned, some deservedly, some wrongfully.—IV. Julian expels from the palace all the eunuchs, barbers, and cooks—A statement of the vices of the eunuchs about the palace, and the corrupt state of military discipline.—V. Julian openly professes his adherence to the pagan worship, which he had hitherto concealed; and lets the Christian bishops dispute with one another.—VI. How he compelled some Egyptian litigants, who modestly sought his intervention, to return home.—VII. At Constantinople he often administers justice in the senate-house; he arranges the affairs of Thrace, and receives anxious embassies from foreign nations.—VIII. A description of Thrace, and of the Sea of Marmora, and of the regions and nations contiguous to the Black Sea.—IX. Having enlarged and beautified Constantinople, Julian goes to Antioch; on his road he joins the citizens of Nicomedia moving to restore their city; and at Ancyra presides in the court of justice.—X. He winters at Antioch, and presides in the court of justice; and oppresses no one on account of his religion.—XI. George, bishop of Alexandria, with two others, is dragged through the streets by the Gentiles of Alexandria, and torn to pieces and burnt, without any one being punished for this action.—XII. Julian prepares an expedition against the Persians, and, in order to know beforehand the result of the war, he consults the oracles; and sacrifices innumerable victims, devoting himself wholly to soothsaying and augury.—XIII. He unjustly attributes the burning of the temple of Apollo at Daphne to the Christians, and orders the great church at Antioch to be shut up.—XIV. He sacrifices to Jupiter on Mount Casius—Why he writes the Misopogon in his anger against the citizens of Antioch.—XV. A description of Egypt; mention of the Nile, the crocodile, the ibis, and the pyramids.—XVI. Description of the five provinces of Egypt, and of their famous cities.
I.
A.D. 361.
§ 1. While the variable events of fortune were bringing to pass these events in different parts of the world, Julian, amid the many plans which he was revolving while in Illyricum, was continually consulting the entrails of victims and watching the flight of birds in his eagerness to know the result of what was about to happen.
2. Aprunculus Gallus, an orator and a man of skill as a soothsayer, who was afterwards promoted to be governor of Narbonne, announced these results to him, being taught beforehand by the inspection of a liver, as he affirmed, which he had seen covered with a double skin. And while Julian was fearing that he was inventing stories to correspond with his desires, and was on that account out of humour, he himself beheld a far more favourable omen, which clearly predicted the death of Constantius. For at the same moment that that prince died in Cilicia, the soldier who, as he was going to mount his horse, had supported him with his right hand, fell down, on which Julian at once exclaimed, in the hearing of many persons, that he who had raised him to the summit had fallen.