11. He, being every day alarmed at the prospect of a successor, addressed himself to the task of conciliating Valens, who was of a rustic and rather simple character, by tickling him with all kinds of disguised flattery and caresses, calling his uncouth language and rude expressions "flowers of Ciceronian eloquence." Indeed, to raise his vanity higher, he would have promised to raise him up to the stars if he had desired it.
12. So Theodorus also was ordered to be arrested with all speed at Constantinople, to which city he had repaired on some private business, and to be brought to the court. And while he was on his way back, in consequence of various informations and trials which were carried on day and night, numbers of people were dragged away from the most widely separated countries—men eminent for their birth and high authority.
13. The public prisons, being now completely filled, could no longer contain the crowds which were confined in them, while private houses were equally crammed to suffocation, for nearly every one was a prisoner, and every man shuddered to think when it might be his turn or that of his nearest relations.
14. At last Theodorus himself arrived, in deep mourning, and half dead through fear. And while he was kept concealed in some obscure place in the vicinity, and all things were being got ready for his intended examination, the trumpet of civil discord suddenly sounded.
15. And because that man who knowingly passes over facts appears to be an equally unfaithful historian with him who invents circumstances which never happened, we do not deny (what, in fact, is quite undoubted) that the safety of Valens had often before been attacked by secret machinations, and was now in the greatest possible danger. And that a sword, as one may say, was presented to his throat by the officers of the army, and only averted by Fate, which was reserving him for lamentable misfortunes in Thrace.
16. For one day as he was taking a gentle nap in the afternoon, in a shady spot between Antioch and Seleucia, he was attacked by Sallust, at that time an officer of the Scutarii; and on various other occasions he was plotted against by many other persons, from whose treacherous designs he only escaped because the precise moment of his death had been determined at his birth by Destiny.
17. As sometimes happened in the times of the emperors Commodus and Severus, whose safety was continually assailed with extreme violence, so that after many various dangers at the hands of their countrymen, the one was dangerously wounded by a dagger in the amphitheatre, as he entered it for the purpose of witnessing an entertainment, by a senator named Quintianus, a man of wicked ambition. The other, when extremely old, was assailed as he was lying in his bedchamber, by a centurion of the name of Saturninus, who was instigated to the act by Plautian the prefect, and would have been killed if his youthful son had not come to his assistance.
18. Valens, therefore, was to be excused for taking every precaution to defend his life, which traitors were endeavouring to take. But it was an unpardonable fault in him that, through tyrannical pride, he, with haste and with inconsiderate and malicious persecution, inflicted the same severities on the innocent as on the guilty, making no distinction between their deserts; so that while the judges were still doubting about their guilt, the emperor had made up his mind about their punishment, and men learnt that they were condemned before they knew that they were suspected.
19. But his obstinate resolution was strengthened since it received a spur from his own avarice, and that also of those who at that time were about the palace, and were constantly seeking new sources of gain; while if on any rare occasion any mention was made of humanity, they styled it slackness; and by their bloodthirsty flatteries perverted the resolution of a man who bore men's lives on the tip of his tongue, guiding it in the worst direction, and assailing everything with unseemly confusion, while seeking to accomplish the total ruin of the most opulent houses.
20. For Valens was a man who was especially exposed and open to the approaches of treacherous advisers, being tainted with two vices of a most mischievous character: one, that when he was ashamed of being angry, that very shame only rendered him the more intolerably furious; and secondly, that the stories which, with the easiness of access of a private individual, he heard in secret whispers, he took at once to be true and certain, because his haughty idea of the imperial dignity did not permit him to examine whether they were true or not.