AD. 374.] DANIEL AND BARZIMERES. 547 escaped. Meanwhile our troops, who had made prisoners of the soldiers who had been thus sent out to impose upon them, waited a long time, while watching for the king, and stretching out their hands, as one may say, to seize the game which they expected would rush into them. And while they were thus waiting for the arrival of Para, he reached his kingdom in safety, where he was received with great joy by his countrymen, and still remained unshaken in his fidelity to us, burying in silence the injuries which he had received. 16. After this, Daniel and Barzimeres, having been thus balked of their prey, returned to Tarsus, and were loaded with bitter reproaches as inactive and blundering officers. But like venomous serpents whose first spring has failed, they only whetted their deadly fangs, in order at the first opportunity to inflict all the injury in their power on the king who had thus escaped them. 17. And, with a view to palliate the effect of their own mistake, or rather of the defeat their hopes, which the deeper sagacity of the king had contrived, they began to fill the emperor's ears, which were at all times most ready to receive all kinds of reports with false accusations against Para; pretending that he was skilled in Circean incantations, so as to be able to transform people, or to afflict them with sickness in a marvellous manner, Adding, moreover, that it was by means of arts of this kind that he had rendered himself invisible, and that if allowed to continue changing his shape, he would cause them great trouble, if permitted to live to boast of having deceived them. 18. In this manner the hatred which Valens had conceived against him was increased to an incredible degree; and plan after plan was laid to take his life, either by force or stratagem; and orders to that effect were transmitted by secret letters to Trajan, who at that time was in Armenia, in chief command of the forces in that kingdom. 19. Trajan, accordingly, began to surround Para with treacherous blandishments-at one time showing him some letters of Valens, which appeared to indicate that he was favourably disposed towards the king-at another, partaking cheerfully of his entertainments, he at last, with: great apparent respect (but in pursuance of a deliberate plot), invited him to supper. Para, fearing no hostility, came, and was placed in the seat of honour at the feast. 20. Exquisite delicacies were set before him, and the splendid palace resounded with the music of lyres and lutes. Presently, when the wine had circulated freely, the master of the feast quitted it for a moment, under pretence of some natural want, and immediately a ferocions barbarian of the troop they call Supra' was sent in, brandishing a drawn sword, and with a terribly ferocious countenance, to murder the youth, against whose escape ample precautions had now been taken. 21. As soon as he saw him, the king. who as it happened was on the further side of the couch, jumped up and drew his dagger to defend his life by every means in his power, but was stabbed in the breast, and fell like a miserable victim, being shamefully cut to pieces with repeated blows. 22. By this foul contrivance was his credulity shamefully deceived at a feast which is respected even on the coast of the Euxine Sea, under the eye of the Deity of Hospitality; and the blood of a stranger and a guest was sprinkled on the splendid tablecloths, and, by its foaming gore, filled the guests with loathing, who at once dispersed in great horror. If the dead can feel sorrow or indignation, then let that illustrious Fabricius Luscinus groan at the evidence of this deed, knowing with what greatness of mind he himself repelled Demochares (or, as some call him, Nicias), the king's servant, who in a secret conference offered to poison Pyrrhus, at that time desolating Italy with cruel wars, and wrote to the king, bidding him beware of his immediate attendants: such great reverence in the first ages of antiquity was there for the rights of hospitality even when claimed by an enemy. 23. But this modern, strange, and shameful act was excused by the precedent afforded by the death of Sertorius; though the emperor's flatterers were perhaps 1 No one has succeeded in explaining this word. Some editors wish to read Suræ, explaining that as men picked out for their great strength," by a reference to Juvenal, xvi. 14-Grandes magna adsubsellia Suræ. Wagner proposes to read Scurræ, a name sometimes given to the guards in this age. A.D. 374.] PROPOSALS OF SAPOR. 549 ignorant that, as Demosthenes-the everlasting glory of Greece--affirms, an unlawful and wicked action cannot be defended by its resemblance to another crime, or by the fact that that crime met with impunity. II. § 1. THESE are the transactions which especially attracted notice in Armenia; but Sapor, after the last defeat which his troops had experienced, having heard of the death of Para, whom he had been earnestly labouring to win to his own alliance, was terribly grieved; and, as the activity of our army increased his apprehensions, he began to dread still greater disasters to himself. 2. He therefore sent Arsaces as his ambassador to the emperor, to advise him utterly to destroy Armenia as a perpetual cause of trouble; or, if that plan should be decided against, asking that an end might be put to the division of Hiberia into two provinces, that the Roman garrison might be withdrawn, and that Aspacuras, whom he himself had made the sovereign of the nation, might be permitted to reign with undivided authority. 3. To this proposal, Valens replied, that he could not change the resolutions which had been agreed to by both of them; and, indeed, that he should maintain them with zealous care. Towards the end of the winter, letters were received from the king of a tenor very contrary to this noble determination of Valens, full of vain and arrogant boasting. For in them Sapor affirmed that it was impossible for the seeds of discord to be radically extirpated, unless those who had been witnesses of the peace which had been made with Julian were all collected, some of whom he knew to be already dead. 4. After this, the matter becoming a source of greater anxiety, the emperor, who was more skilful in choosing between different plans than in devising them himself, thinking that it would be beneficial to the state in general, ordered Victor, the commander of the cavalry, and Urbicius, the Duke of Mesopotamia, to march with all speed to Persia, bearing a positive and plain answer to the proposals of Sapor: namely, that he, who boasted of being a just man, and one contented with his own, was acting wickedly in coveting Armenia, after a promise had been made to its inhabitants, that they should be allowed to live according to their own laws. And unless the soldiers who had been left as auxiliaries to Sauromaces returned without hindrance at the beginning of the ensuing year, as had been agreed, he would compel Sapor by force to perform what he might at present do with a good grace. 5. And this embassy would in all respects have been a just and honourable one, if the ambassadors had not, contrary to their instructions, accepted some small districts in this same Armenia which were offered them. When the ambassadors returned, the Surena (the magistrate who enjoys an authority second only to that of the king) came with them, offering the said districts to the emperor which our ambassadors had ventured to take. 6. He was received with liberality and magnificence; but dismissed without obtaining what he requested. And then great preparations were made for war, in order that, as soon as the severity of the winter was over, the emperor might invade Persia with three armies; and with this object he began with all speed to bargain for the services of some Scythian auxiliaries. 7. Sapor not having succeeded in obtaining what his vain hopes had led him to reckon on, and being exasperated in an extraordinary degree, because he had learnt that our emperor was preparing for an expedition, nevertheless stifled his wrath, and gave the Surena a commission to endeavour to recover by force of arms (if any one should resist him) the territories which Count Victor and Urbicius had accepted, and to press hostilities with the utmost rigour against those soldiers who had been destined to aid Sauromaces. 8. His orders were at once carried out. Nor was it found possible to prevent or resist their execution, because a new cause of alarm suddenly came on the republic; as the entire nation of the Goths suddenly burst into Thrace. The calamities which we experienced from that event shall be related succinctly in their proper places. 9. These were the occurrences which took place in the A.D. 374] REMIGIUS COMMITS SUICIDE. 551. East. And while they were proceeding, as has been related, the unfailing arm of justice avenged the losses we had sustained in Africa, and the slaughter of the ambassadors of Tripoli, whose shades were still wandering about unavenged. For Justice, though a late, is yet a scrupulous and unerring discriminator between right and wrong. 10. Remigius, whom we have already spoken of as favouring Count Romanus, who had laid waste these provinces after Leo had succeeded him as master of the offices, retired from office and from public life, and devoted himself to rural pursuits in his own native district near Mayence. 11. And while he was living there in security, Maximin, the prefect of the prætorium, despising him because of his return to a tranquil life, as he was accustomed to attack everything like a terrible pestilence, set to work to do him injury by every means in his power. And, in order to hunt out all his secrets, he seized Cæsarius who had formerly been a servant of his, and afterwards had become a secretary of the emperor, and put him to the question, torturing him with great severity to learn from him what Remigius had done, and how much he had received to induce him to countenance the wicked actions of Romanus. 12. But when Remigius heard this in his retreat, to which, as has been said, he had retired; being oppressed by the consciousness of his acts, or perhaps letting the dread of false accusation overpower his reason, he hanged himself. III. § 1. THE next year Gratian took Equitius as his colleague in the consulship; and Valentinian, after desolating some cantons of the Allemanni, was building a fortress near Basle, which the natives of the country call Robur, when a report was brought to him from the prefect Probus with an account of the disasters which had taken place in Illyricum. 2. He read them with a very careful examination, as became a prudent general; and then being filled with anxious thoughts, he sent his secretary, Paternianus, to that country, to inquire minutely into the whole details of the |
