177

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

the levity of his disposition.* The quaestor re-proached Gallus in haughty language, that aprince who was scarcely authorised to removea municipal magistrate should presume to im-prison a praetorian praefect; convoked a meetingof the civil and military officers; and requiredthem, in the name of their sovereign, to defendthe person and dignity of his representatives.By this rash declaration of war, the impatienttemper of Gallus was provoked to embracethe most desperate counsels. He ordered hisguards to stand to their arms, assembled thepopulace of Antioch, and recommended to theirzeal the care of his safety and revenge. Hiscommands were too fatally obeyed. They rude-ly seized the praefect and the quaestor, and tyingtheir legs together with ropes, they draggedthem through the streets of the city, inflicteda thousand insults and a thousand wounds onthese unhappy victims, and at last precipitatedtheir mangled and lifeless bodies into the streamof the Orontes ."

After such a deed, whatever might have beenthe designs of Gallus, it was only in a field of

* In the present text of Ammianus , we read, asper, quidein, sed adI enitatem propensior; which forms a sentence of contradictory nonsense.With the aid of an old manuscript, Valesius has rectified the first ofthese corruptions, and we perceive a ray of light in the substitution ofthe word ra/er. If we venture to change lenitatem into leuitatem, thisalteration of a single letter will render the whole passage clear andconsistent.

i ” Instead of being obliged to collect scattered and imperfect hintsfrom various sources, we now enter into the^full stream of the historyof Ammianus , and need only refer to the seventh and ninth chapters othis fourteenth book. Philostorgius , however, (I. iii, c. 28; though par-tial to Gallus, should not be entirely overlooked.

VOL. III. N

CHAP.

XIX.