Travel

144. Well, this clown of ours not only took possession of the men’s apartments in the palaces but having wormed his way into the imperial gynaeconitis (women’s quarters) as well, he won the favour...

The clown put his arms round the emperor’s neck and kissed him, over and over again, on the face ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘he has been found — the horse that I lost! It is...

140. At first the emperor treated the man with indifference. In fact, he only appeared at court every now and then after the ceremony of ablution. It was typical of the emperor though, that...

He put him in chains at once, and on the next day he himself sat as judge at the trial — a very stern judge too. The man was cross-examined about the attempted assassination....

135. There was a fellow in my time, a filthy barbarian scoundrel who far outdid the Romans in arrogance and was so brazen that he took advantage of his exalted position and physically maltreated...

If one took the liberty of rebuking him for this laxity, Constantine was not vexed about it, but he dismissed the reproach as unnecessary. It was due, he said, to wrong ideas about God....

130. Even while I write this history I am still absolutely amazed to think how the man was able to bear the excruciating pain of those attacks during that period. Paralysis followed paralysis in...

128. The symptoms of disease were not all immediately apparent. The humours first flowed into his feet, and at once he was compelled to take to his bed. If he had to walk at...

126. His beauty, we are told, was that of Achilles or Nireus.**126 But whereas, in the case of these heroes, the poet’s language, having in imagination endowed them with a body compounded of all...

Without a moment’s hesitation, with no thought for reason, he condemned them to blinding on the spot. At that the pretender emitted a cry of anguish and basely lamented his fate; his comrade merely...