39. And he, abandoning life as an imperious mistress, and defying the sudden destruction thus coming on him, was burnt without giving any sign of shrinking; imitating, in his death, the philosopher Peregrinus, surnamed Proteus, who having determined to quit the world, at the quinquennial games of Olympia, in the sight of all Greece, mounted a funeral pile which he had built himself, and was there burnt alive.
40. After his death, on the ensuing days a vast multitude of almost all ranks, whose names it would be too arduous a task to enumerate, being convicted by calumnious accusations, were despatched by the executioners, after having been first exhausted by every description of torture. Some were put to death without a moment's breathing-time or delay, while the question was still being asked whether they deserved to be punished at all; in fact, men were slaughtered like sheep in all directions.
41. After this, innumerable quantities of papers, and many heaps of volumes were collected, and burnt under the eyes of the judges, having been taken out of various houses as unlawful books; in order to lessen the unpopularity arising from so many executions, though in fact, the greater part of them were books teaching various kinds of liberal accomplishments, or books of law.
42. Not long afterwards, Maximus, the celebrated philosopher, a man of vast reputation for learning, from whose eloquent discourses the emperor Julian derived his great learning and wisdom, being accused of having been acquainted with the verses of the oracle mentioned above, and confessing that he had known something of them, but that he had not divulged what he knew, as being bound to keep silence out of consideration for his promise; but adding that he had of his own accord predicted that those who had consulted the oracle would perish by public execution, was conducted to Ephesus, his native place, and there beheaded. And thus by his own forfeiture of life, he found that the injustice of a judge is the worst of all crimes.
43. Diogenes, too, a man of noble family, great forensic eloquence and pre-eminent courtesy, who had some time before been governor of Bithynia, being entangled in the toils of wicked falsehood, was put to death in order to afford a pretext for seizing on his ample patrimony.
44. Alypius also, who had been governor of Britain, a man of most delightful mildness of temper, and who had lived a tranquil and retired life (since even against such as him did Injustice stretch forth her hands), was involved in the greatest misfortune; and was accused with Hierocles his son, a youth of most amiable disposition of having been guilty of poisoning, on the unsupported information of a low fellow named Diogenes, who had been tortured with extreme severity to force him to make confessions which might please the emperor, or rather, which might please his accuser. When his limbs could no longer endure their punishment, he was burnt alive; and Alypius, after having had his property confiscated, was condemned to banishment, though by an extraordinary piece of good fortune he received back his son after he had been condemned, and had actually been led out to suffer a miserable death.
II.
§ 1. During all this time, Palladius, the original cause of these miseries, whom we have already spoken of as having been arrested by Fortunatianus, being, from the lowness of his original condition, a man ready to fall into every kind of wickedness, by heaping one murder on another diffused mourning and lamentation over the whole empire.
2. For being allowed to name any persons he chose, without distinction of rank, as men contaminated by the practice of forbidden arts, like a huntsman who has learnt to mark the secret tracks of wild beasts, he enclosed many victims within his wretched toils, some as being polluted with a knowledge of poisonings, others as accomplices of those who were guilty of treason.