King of Epirus to undertake the war and had overcome him to it if the Father had not prevented his Son-in-law by the collocation of his daughter to him With these provocations of jealousie and anger it is believed that both of them did incite Pausanias to the commission of so desperare an Act. Sure it is that Olympias had horses ready for Pausanias if it had been his fortune to have escaped and she her self the death of the King being understood when under the pretence of the duty she came in great haste that night to attend his Hearse she did impose on the very same night a Crown of Gold on the head of Pausanias then hanging on the Cross which none but she would have been so bold to have adventured the Son of Philip being alive Some few daies after she caused his body to be taken off from the Cross and burn'd and in the same place she did erect him a Monument and struck such a superstition into the people that she provided that for the honor of his memory here should be yeerly made a parentation to him After this she caused Cleopatra for whose sake she was divorced from Philip having first in her own lap killed her daughter to end her life by hanging and satisfied her revenge by beholding her in that lamentable posture swinging on the Tree Last of all she consecrated that sword with which the King was slain to Apollo under the name of Myrtalis for so Olympias was called when she was a little one All which was done so opnely that it may be seared least the fact committed by her were not approved by others Philip deceased about the seven and fourtieth yeer of his age after he had reigned five and twenty yeers He begat on Larissaea the Danceress Aridaeus who reigned after Alexander He had also many other Sons from divers other marriages it being the custom of Kings to take them into Marriage as many as they pleased but they all dyed some by natural deaths and some by the sword He was a King more studious of the preparations of Arms then Feasts his greatest riches were the utensils of war and yet he was more cunning to get riches then to perserve them which made them alwaies poor though he was alwaies plundering Mercy and Treachery were in him equally beloved No way whatsoever to overcome his Enemies did appear sordid to him In his discourse he was both pleasing and deceitful and one who would alwaies promise more then he would perform he was master of his Arts both in jeast and in earnest He observed his friendships not by faithfulness but by profit To dissemble love in hatred to plant sedition amongst friends and to insinuate himself both with friends and foes was his daily Custome Excellent he was in Eloquence and in the acuteness of a fine flourish in his words full of delicate composures that neither facility was wanting to the ornament nor the ornament of invention to the facility Alexander did succeed him greater then his Father both in vertues and in vices Their way was different in the Conquests they obtained The Son mannaged his wars by apparent valour the Father by deceits The Father joyned his Enemies being surprized the Son being openly overcome The Father more subtle in Counsel the Son more magnificent in minde The Father would commonly dissemble his passions and overcome them The Son inflam'd with rage knew neither how to delay not moderate his revenge Both of them were too greedy of wine but their vices in the excess were different It was the custome of the Father from the Banket to advance against the Enemy to encounter him and unadvisedly to expose himself unto all dangers Alexander was more furious against his own friends then against his Enemies wherefore the battels have oftentimes sent back Philip wounded and his Son hath often come from the Banquet the killer of his Friends This would not reign over his friends the other would usurp and grow upon them Tbe Father did choose rather to be beloved the Son to be feared The love to Learning was equal to them both The Father was more full of Policy the Son of Fidelity The Father more moderate in his speech the Son in his actions for he had alwayes a more ready and a more honest minde to be merciful to those whom he overcame The Father was addicted to thrift but the Son to excess By these Arts the Father layd the foundation for the Conquest of the World and the Son accomplished the glory of the work THE TENTH BOOK OF IVSTINE ARtaxerxes King of the Persians had fifteen Sons by a hundred Concubines but he had onely three begotten in lawful marriage Darius Ariarctos and Occhus Of these against the Lawes of the Persians amongst whom the Kingdom suffered no change but by death Artaxerxes being alive did out of his Fatherly indulgence make Darius King thinking that there was nothing taken from the Father which was conferr'd upon the Son and that he should take a sincerer joy in his paternal Interest if he alive did behold the Ensign of his Majesty in his Son But Darius after these unaccustom'd examples of indulgence took counsel to kill his Father He had been wicked enough if he onely had conceived the parricide in his minde but so much the more wicked that into the society of the villany he took his fifty brothers to be partakers of it Prodigious it was that in so great a number the parricide could not onely be contracted but concealed and that amongst fifty of his children there was not one found whom neither the Majesty of the King nor the reverence of an ancient man nor the indulgence of a Father could recal from so horrible an act What was the name of a Father so vile amongst so great a number of his Sons that he who should be safe even against his Enemies by their defence being circumvented by their Treason should now be safer amongst his Enemies then amongst his own children The cause of the Parricide was far more wicked then the Parricide it self for Cyrus being slain in the brothers war as mention above is made Artaxerxes the King took his Concubine Aspasia into marriage Darius did demand that his Father should give her unto him as he had delivered up his Kingdom who being too indulgent to his children did promise at first that he would do it and not long after repenting himsâ—lâ— and honestly denying what rashly he had promised he made her a Prioress in the Temple of the Sun whereby a perpetual abstinence from all men was religiously imposed on her The young man being much incensed at it did first quarrel with his Father and not long after having made a conspiracy with his brothers whiles he sought to betray his Father being discovered and apprehended with his Associates they expiated with their blood the designed Parricide and did punishment to the Gods the Revengers of paternal Majesty The Wives also
people did cut her off by reason of her cruelty did enjoy the Kingdom alone Mithridates also being taken away by a sudden death did leave his Kingdom to his son who was also called Mithridates whose Greatness afterwards was such that he excelled in Majesty not only all the Kings of his time but of the former age and with various victory held war with the Romans for the space of six and forty years whom the most famous Generals Sylla Lucullus and others at the first and Cneius Pompeius at the last did so overcome that he arose alwaies more great and famous in renewing of the war and became more terrible by his losses and at last being overcome by no hostile force he died a voluntarie death in his own Kingdom being a very old man and leaving a Son to succeed him many signs from Heaven did presage his greatness to come for both on that day in which he was born and on that in which he began his Reign at both times there did appear a Comet which for seventie nights did shine so brightly as all Heaven did seem to be in a flame for by the greatness of it it took up the fourth part of Heaven and by its splendor it overcame the light of the Sun and when it did either rise or set it took up the space of four hours Being in his minoritie he laie open to and did endure the treacherie of his tutors for they did put him upon a wild and an unmanaged horse and did command him not onely to ride him but to exercise his horsmanship and to throw darts from him but Mithridates deluding their design by governing the horse beyond the expectation of his age they conspired against him by poyson which he suspecting did oftentimes drink Antidotes and with such exquisite remedies did so prepare his bodie against it that being an old man he could not die by poyson though attempting it Fearing afterwards that his enemies would perform with the sword what they could not dispatch with poyson he pretended he would solace himself with the recreation of hunting wherefore for the space of four years he neither entred into Citie nor came in the Countrie within the roof of any house but wandred in the woods and took up his lodging on the tops of severall hills no man knowing in what place he was being accustomed by his swiftness of foot either to pursue wild beasts or to flie from them and sometimes by main force to grapple with them By which means he both eschewed all treason that was designed against him and hardned his bodie to all indurance of virtue When afterwards he came to the management of the Kingdom he immediately contrived not so much how to rule it as how to enlarge it and by an incomparable felicitie overcame the Scythians who were before invincible for they had overthrown Zopyro the Lieutenant of Alexander the great with thirtie thousand armed men and killed Cyrus King of the Persians with two hundred thousand Souldiers and routed Philip King of the Macedons Being increased in his power he possessed himself of Pontus and not long afterwards of Cappadocia and going privately out of his Kingdom he sojourned over all Asia with a few friends and thereby gained a perfect knowledge of all the Countrie and of the situation of every Citie After that he travailed higher over all Bithynia and being already as it were Lord of Asia he contrived where to laie his best opportunities for his following victories After this he returned into his Kingdom where it being generally noysed abroad that he was dead he found a young childe which in his absence Laodice who was both his sister and his wife had brought forth But after his long travels amidst the gratulations both of his safe arrival and of the birth of his son he was in danger of being poysoned for his sister Laod ce believing he had been dead did fall into an incontinent life and attempting to conceal one sin by committing a greater did resolve to welcome him with poyson which when Mithridates understood by her maid he revenged the treason which was plotted on the author of it And winter drawing on he spent his time not at the banquet but in the field not in sloth but in exercise not amongst his companions but with Kings equal to him either in the horse-race or the foot-race or by trying the strength of bodie He also by daily exercise hardned his Armie to the same patience of labour and being unconquered himself he by these acts made his Armie invincible Having afterwards made a league with Nicomedes he invaded Paphlagonia and having overcome it he did share it with his companion Nicomedes The Senate being informed that Paphlagonia was again in the possession of Kings they sent Embassadors to them both to command them to restore the Nation to her former condition Mithridates when he believed that he was equall to the Roman Greatness did return a proud answer which was that he received his Kingdom by inheritance and did much wonder that they should trouble themselves with a Controversie which did not belong unto them and being nothing terrified with their threatnings he seized upon Galatia Nicomedes because he could not defend himself by right made answer that he would restore his part to a lawful King and having changed his Name he called his own Son Philomenos after the name of the Kings of Paphlagonia and in a false name and title enjoied the Kingdom as if he had restored it to the true Roial Progenie And thus the Embassadors being deluded did return to Rome THE Eight and thirtyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE MIthridates having begun his parricides by the murder of his own wife determined with himself to put to death the Sons of his other sister Laodice whose husband Ariarathes King of Cappadocia he had treacherously murdered by Gordius thinking he had done nothing in murdering of the father if the young men still enjoyed their fathers Kingdom with a desire whereof he was violently transported Whiles he was busie on his design Nicomedes King of Bithynia did invade Cappadocia destitute of a King which when Mithridates understood in a counterfeit pietie he sent assistance to his sister to drive Nicomedes out of the Kingdom but in the mean time a contract being made Laodice had espoused her self to Nicomedes At which Mithridates being much troubled he drove the Garrison-Souldiers and others of the Armie of Nicomedes out of Bithynia and restored the Kingdom to his sisters son which was an honorable act indeed if it had not been attended by deceit for not long after he pretended that he would call back Gordius from banishment whom he used as his minister in the murder of Ariarathes and restore him to his Countrie hoping if the young man should not give waie to it there would arise from thence a sufficient cause of the war or if he should permit it that the Son might be destroyed by thesame man who
at once with all the Forces of Darius being afraid before that the wars would be delayed if the Persians should have divided their Army Before the battel did begin both the Armies made a stand and did look on one another The Macedons did wonder at the multitudes of their Enemies at the greatness of their bodies and the beauty of their Armor The Persians were amazed that so many thousand of their Souldiers had so often by so few been overcome The two Kings did ride round abâ—ut their Armies Darius assured his that if the division were made throughout his Army he had ten men in arms to fight against but one of his Enemies Alexander admonished the Macedonians not to be troubled with the multitudes of their Enemies nor with the greatness of their bodies or the novelty of the complexion of their Arms he commanded them onely to remember that this is the third time they fought with them and so consider that they were become never the better men by their so often flying away but carryed alwayes with them the sad remembrance of their former overthrows of so much blood they had lost before in the two other battels He assured them that as Darius did exceed in men so did he in strength He perswaded them to despise that Army shining with gold and silver in which there was more booty then danger the Victory being not to be purchased by the glittering of ornaments but by the edge of the sword After this both Armies were joyned in battel The Macedons in contempt of the Enemy so often overcome did throw themselves upon the swords of the Persians And the Persians desired rather manfully to die then to be overcome seldom more blood in any fight was shed Darius when he saw his Army overthrown would willingly have dyed himself But those who stood next unto him did compel him to flie Some perswading him to break down the Bridge of the River of Cydnus to stop the passage of his Enemies he made answer That he would not so dishonourably provide for his own safety by exposing so many thousands of his Souldiers to the fury of their Enemies and that the same way of flight was to he open to others which lay open to himself Alexander in his own person was alwayes present in the greatest difficulties and where he saw his Enemies on their thickest squadrons to fight most bravely he clapped in upon them and would have all the dangers to be wholy his own and not his Souldiers In this battel hâ— gained unto himself the whole Empire of Asia in the fifth yeer of his reign and so great was his felicity that after this no man durst to rebel and the Persians after the Empire which continued so many yeers did patiently endure the yoak of servitude His Souldiers being rewarded and refreshed so great was the booty that it took up forty daies to receive the full account of it he found hid in the City eleven thousand Talents After this he took Persepolis the chief Seat of the Persian Empire a City renowned for many yeers and full of the spoyls of the World which first appeared at the destruction of it As those things thus passed eight hundred Greeks did come unto him who with dismembred bodâ—es did endure the punishment of their Captivity beseeching him that as he had delivered Greece so he would deliver them also from the cruelty of their Enemies The King having granted them leave to return to their own Country they made choyce to be seated rather in a plantation abroad least in the stead of joy they should present unto their Parents the lamentable and loathed spectacle of themselves In the mean time Darius to purchase favour of the Conqueror was bound by his knismen in golden chains in a Town of the Parthians called Tancas I believe the immortal gods so ordained it that the Empire of the Persians should have its end in their Land who were afterwards to succeed in the Government Alexander pursuing the chase in a full gallop came to the same Town on the next day He there understood that Darius in a close waggon was carryed away by night his Army therefore being commanded to follow he pursued him with onely seven thousand horse and in the way had many and dangerous encounters And having in the chase numbred many miles when he could not receive the least notice of Darius he respited a little to breathe and bait his horses As one of his Souldies did go unto the next spring he found Darius bleeding through many wounds but yet alive whereupon he made use of his Captive to be his Interpreter whom when Darius found by his voyce to be a Persian he said that this brought some comfort to him in his present misfortunes that he should speak to one who understood him and should not in vain breathe forth his last words He desired that it might be represented to Alexander that he dyed much in his debt being obliged to him for many favours having never the happiness to return any he was much to thank him that he deported himself towards his Mother and his children not like an Enemy but a King and was more happy in his Adversary then in his own kindred for the lives of his Mother and his children were given to them he said by his Ennemy but his life was taken away by his kinsmen to whom he had given both life and Kingdoms for which he should receive that recompence which he being a Conqueror should be pleased himself to take All the thankfulness which he being a dying man could return unto him was to beseech the powers above and the powers below and the gods that dispose of Scepters that they would grant him the Empire of all the World For himself he desired to have rather a solemn then a sumptuous Funeral As for what pertained to the Revenger of his death it ought he said to be made Exemplar it being not onely Alexanders but the common cause of all Kings which to neglect would be as dishonourable as it were dangerous for as in one the Example of his justice so in the other the cause of his futuâ—e safety would be declared for the performance of which he gave his right hand the onely pledge of the Faith of a King Having spoken these wordâ— and stretched forth his hands he dyed which when it was reported unto Alexander having beheld him he with tears prosecuted his death so unworthy of that height wherein he lived and commanded that his body should be buried after the manner of their Kings and be carryed to the Tombs of his Predecessors THE TVVELFTH BOOK OF IVSTINE ALexander after this with great Funeral expences did honour those Souldiers whom he lost in the pursute of Darius and divided fifteen thousand Talents amongst their fellows who did accompany him in that Expedition The greatest part of their horses were lost by the excessive heat and those which remained alive made
of Sychaeus would come along unto him But Eliza in the dusk of the evening did put into the ships not onely the goods but the servants of the King who were sent by him to attend her in his removal to the Court and being carryed into the main she commanded them to throw into the Sea some great bags and sacks of sand which she said were all bags of gold and so made up and corded that by their handling they could not discover what the heavie burden was Then she melting into tears did implore Sichaeus with a mournful voyce that favourably he would receive his own wealth which he left and take those as sacrifices to his grave which were the cause of his death After this she sent for the servants of the King and declared to them that for her part she wished for death many yeers ago but grievous and dismal torments did hang over their own heads who had taken to satisfie the avarice of the Tyrant the wealth of Sychaeus for the hope of which the King had murdered him These words having shot a general fear into them she took them along with her as the companions of her flight and on that night also a prepared company of Senators did unite themselves unto her and under pretence of renewing the Sacrifices in the honour of Hercules whose Priest Sichaeus was they sought new habitations by a wilful banishment Sayling along the Coast they were first driven into the I le of Cyprus where the Priest of Jupiter by the admonition of the god did offer himself a companion to Eliza with his wife and children to be a partaker of her fortune having agreed with her to have for himself and his posterity the perpetual honor of the Priesthood The condition was taken for a manifest token of a good fortune to come It was the custom of the Cyprians to send their Virgins on set days before their marriage to the Sea-shore to provide themselves a Dowry by the use of their bodies and to offer sacrifice afterwards to Venus for the rest of their chastity Eliza commanded that fourscore of the youngest of them should be taken away and carryed to her ships that so both the young men she took with her might enjoy wives and her City grew numerous by Posterity In the mean time Pygmalion having understood the flight of her sister and resolving to prosecute her with an impious war he was with much difficulty restrained by the entreaties of his Mother and by the threatnings of the gods the Prophets by inspirations presaging to him that he should not go unpunished if he hindred the beginnings of a City which promised to be the most flourishing one in the World by this means Eliza and those who fled with her had leave to breathe therefore being brought into the Coasts of Africa she sollicited the Inhabitants rejoycing at the arrival of Strangers and the Commerce of Traffick with them to make friendship with her Having then bought a place no larger then what might be incompassed with the Hide of an Ox in which she might refresh her Associates weary with their long travel until she advanced further she divided and did cut the Hide into long and thin thongs by which artifice she gained a far larger extent of ground then she seemed to desire by reason whereof the place was afterwards call'd The Burss The Neighbors out of every Country in a short time did in great numbers resort thither and in hope of gain brought many things to be bought by their new Guests and making Booths to vent their Commodities it appeared by the frequency of the people like a new City The Ambassadors also of the Vticensians did bring presents to them as to their kindred and did exhort them to build a City where they had made their mansion The Africans also had a great desire to entertain these new Inhabitants therefore Carthage was builded by the general consent of all the Tyrians paying a yeerly Tribute for the ground on which the City was builded In the first foundations of the City there was found the head of a Bullock which was the token indeed of a fruitful Earth but of a labourious and a servile City wherefore they translated the City into another place There the head of an horse portending that they should be a waâ—like and powerful people did give a happy auspication to the original of their City The Nations coming in throngs to give their judgement on this new City in a short time both the people and the City were greatly enlarged The affairs of the Carthaginians flourishing thus in continual success Hiarbas King of the Mauritanians having sent ten of his Princes to them he demanded Eliza for wife and threatned to make war upon them if they should deny him The Ambassadors fearing to declare their Message to the Queen they dealed with her according to the capritiousness of the Punick apprehension and expressed to her that the King desired to have one who should teach the Africans more refined Arts and manners but none of their own consanguinity could be found who would come unto them living like Barbarians and not to be distinguished from the manners of beasts Being then reproved by the Queen if they themselves would refuse any difficulty or travel for the improvement of their Country to which if necessity did require they did owe their lives they delivered to the Queen the mandats of the King alledging that if she intended well to her own City she must do that her self which she prescribed unto others Being circumvented by this deceit having with many tears and great lamentation invoked the name of Sichaeus she at last made answer That she would go whether her own stubborn fortunes and the destinies of her City did call her For which having taken the space of three Monthes she at the end thereof erected a huge pile of wood in the Suburbs of her City and as she would appease the ghost of her Husband she slew many sacrifices and having a drawn sword in her had she did ascend the funeral pile and looking back on her people she told them that she would go to her Husband accordingly as he had enjoined her and ended her life with the sword As long as Carthage was unconquered she was afterwards honoured for a Goddess This City was builded before Rome threescore and twelve yeers and as it was famous for war so the state thereof at home was troubled with much contention When amongst many other calamities they were afflicted also with the plague they used the Religion of a most bloody devotion an abhomination for their remedy for they offered men in Sacrifice and laid their children on their bloody Altars whose Infancy would have provoked their Enemies to compassion and with their blood they desired peace of the gods for whose life the gods were accustomed by other Nations to be devoutly importuned The gods therefore being averse to so horrid an impiety when
fear into a fury hoping that the threatnings and the anger of the gods could be expiated by the slaughter of their Families they killed their wives and children beginning the auspications of the war with such a detestable Parricide So great was the barbarousness of their savage minds that they did not forbear their Infants and the tenderness of that age which even their Enemies would have spared but made a naâ—alitious and an intrinsick war with their own bowels their children and with the mothers of their children for whom others are accustomed to undertake wars Therefore as if they had redeemed the Victory and their lives by the barbarous cruelty bloody as they were from the streaming murthers of their wives and children they joyned in battel with their Enemies with no better event then the auspication promised for fighting the furies of their own consciences did surround them before their Enemies and the Ghosts of those whom they had murdered ptesenting themselves alwayes before their eyes they fell upon a final desolation So great was the slaughter that the gods did seem to have combined with men for their utter destruction After the event of this battel Ptolomy and the Lacedemonians declining the conquering Army of Antigonus did retreat into more safe places Antigonus when he perceived that they were departed the courage of his Souldiers being flushed with the former Victory did make war upon the Athenians In which when he was engaged Alexander King of Epirus desiring to revenge his Fathers death did plunder the borders of Macedonia against whom when Antigonus marched being returned out of Greece he was forsaken by his Souldiers who revolted from him and did lose with his Army the Kingdom of Macedonia His Son Demetrius being in his minority having leavied a new Army in his Fathers absence did not only recover Macedonia that was lost but dis-invested Alexander of his Kingdom of Epirus So great was the inconstancy of the Souldiers or the variety of Fortune that Kings were even now but banished men and by and by they were Kings again Alexander when he fled as a banished man into Arcadia was not long after restored into his Kingdoms with as great an applause of the Epirots as with the help of their Confederats At that time Agas King of the Cyrenians dyed who before his sickness to compose all strifes with his brother Ptolomy had espoused his onely daughter Beronioe to his Son But after the death of King Antigonus Arsinoe the Mother of the young Lady that she might dissolve the marriage contracted without her consent did send for Demetrius the brother of King Antigonus from Macedonia not onely to the marriage of Beronice but to the Kingdom of Cyrene Demetrius being born himself of the daughter of Ptolomy made not the least delay but having a fore-wind to his own desires arrived suddenly at Cyrene and by the confidence of the comeliness of his personage endevouring to endeer himself to his Mother-in-law Arsinoe he began to deport himself very proudly to the royal Family and to domineer over the Souldiery and to translate his affections and his Courtship from the daughter to the mother which was first discovered by the daughter and afterwards abominated both by the people and the Souldiers Therefore all of them having changed their affections a plot was laid for Demetrius to whom Executioners were sent being in bed with his Mother-in-law But Arsinoe having heard the voyce of her daughter standing at the door and giving order to spare her Mother did for a while with her own body protect the adulterer who being slain Beronice with the preservation of her piety revenged the incontinency of her Mother and in the choyce of her husband did follow the judgement of her Father THE Seven and twentieth BOOK OF IVSTINE ANtiochus King of Syria being dead when Seleucus his Son succeeded in his place he began his raign with Parricide his mother perswading him to it who ought to have deterred him from it for he killed his Stepmother Beronice with his little brother begotten on her Which horrible crime being committed he was not onely tainted with Infamy but withall he involved himself in a war with Ptolomy Moreover Beronice when she understood that Executioners were sent to take away her life she shut up her self in her Fathers Daphne where when it was reported to the Cities of Asia that she was besieged with her little child they calling to their minds the dignity of her Father and of her Ancestors and prompted to compassion at the indignity of her Fortune they all sent ayd unto her Her brother Ptolomy being also startled at the danger of his sister having left his own Kingdom did advance to her relief with all the speed that could be But before the arrival of any ayd Beronice when she could not be taken by force was killed by treachery It was conceived by all to be a subject most worthy of lamentation Therefore when all the Cities who had revolted from her had provided a very great Fleet being amazed at this example of horrid cruelty they did offer themselves and their ships to Ptolomy who if he had not been called back into Aegypt by some intestine sedition had possessed himself of all the Kingdom of Seleucus This parricidial guilt had brought upon him so much hatred or the unworthy death of his sister had purchased to Ptolomyes much affection After the death of Ptolomy when Seleucus had set forth a great Navie against the Cities which revolted immediately a great tempest arising as if the gods themselves would revenge this parâ—icide he lost them all by Tempest neither had he any thing left of so great a preparation but his naked body some few Companions of his shipwrack whom Fortune had preserved alive A lamentable thing it was and yet acceptable to him for the Cities which in hatred of him had revolted to Seleucus as if the gods were satisfied in his punishment themselves being the Arbitrators by a sudden change of their minde being touched with compassion for his shipwrack they did restore themselves unto the Authority of his command Rejoycing therefore in his calamity and made more rich by loss he made war upon Ptolomy conceiving himself now equal in strength unto him But as if he was born to be the sport of fortune and had onely received his Kingdom again but to lose it again being various in battel and not much more accompanied then after his shipwrark he sled in great fear to Antiochia from whence he sent Letters to his Brother Antiochus in which he did implore his ayd and in recompence thereof did offer to him all that part of Asia which lyeth on the bounds of the Hill Taurus Antiochus being but fourteen years of age and greedy of Soveraignty above his years took hold of the occasion but not with that pious minde as it was offered but desiring like an Oppressor to force all from his brother he armed himself being but a boy
complaints of the Lacedemonians whose Fields in mutual hatred the Achaians had laid wast The Senare answered the Lacedemonians that they would send Ambassadors into Greece to look upon the affairs of their Associates and to take away the suspitions of all injury but instructions were privily given to the Ambassadors that they should dissolve this intire Body of the Achaians and make every City to subsist by her own priviledges that so they might more easily be inforced to obedience and if any appeared to be stubborn that they should be broken The Princes therefore of all the Cities being called to Corinth the Ambassadors did recite the Decree of the Senate and declared what was the Counsel which was given to them They declared that it was expedient for all that every City should have her own Laws and her own priviledges which the Achaians no sooner understood but in a fury they presently killed all that were strangers and had violated the Romane Ambassadors themselves if upon notice of the tumult they had not fled away in a great fear When this was declared at Rome the Senate did immediately Decree that the Achaian war should be undertaken by Mummius the Consul who not long after having transported his Army into Greece and all things with great care being provided for did provoke his Enemies to battel But the Achaians as if it had been no trouble at all to conquer the Romanes had nothing in a readiness for War but thinking more of the booty then the fight they brought their Carriages into the Field to draw from thence the spoyls of their Enemies and placed their Wives and Children on the adjacent Hills to behold the pleasure of the Battel which was no sooner begun but being slain before the eyes of their Wives and Children they became a sad spectacle to them for the present and left them a grievous remembrance of it for the future and their Wives and Children being made Captives of Spectators were an easie prey unto their Enemies The City of Corinth it self was pull'd down and all the people sold in the most ignominious manner that in those times was practised that this Example might strike a fear into the other Cities to take â—eed of Innovations for the time to come Whiles these things were in action Antiochus King of Syria made War upon Ptolomy King of Egypt the Son of his elder Sister but â— slow man and so consumed with daily luxury that he not onely neglected the Offices of Regal Majesty but was deprived also of the sense of an ordinary man Being therefore beaten out of his Kingdom he fled to Alexandria to his younger brother Ptolomy and having made him a partaker in his Kingdom they joyntly sent Ambassadors to the Senate at Rome by whom they desired their help and implored the Faith of their Society The supplications of the Brothers did move the Senate Therefore Publius Popilius was sent Ambassador to Antiochus to command him not to invade Egypt or if he was already in it to withdraw from it The Ambassador having found him in Egypt the King kissed him for Antiochus above the rest did respect Popilius when he was a Hostage at Rome Popilius desired him to forbear all private friendship when the Mandates and the Interests of his Country intervened and having produced the Decree of the Senate he delivered it to the King when he found the King to demur upon it and to say that he would refer it to the Consultation of his friends Popilius with a rod which he had in his hand having inclosed him in a spacious Circle that it might contain his friends with him did require him to counsel with them in the Precinct of that Round and not to move out of it before he had given an Answer to the Senate Whether he would have peace or War with the Romanes This sharp proposition did so blunt the minde of the King that he answered that he would obey the Senate After this Antiochus returning to his Kingdom dyed having left behind him a son very young to whom when Guardians were assigned by the people his Uncle Demetrius who was then a Hostage at Rome having understood of the death of his brother Antiochus addressed himself unto the Senate and alledged that his brother being alive he came to Rome as a Hostage for him but being dead he did not now know whose Hostage he might be therefore he pleaded that it was just he should be dismissed from Rome to be invested in his Kingdom which as it was due by the law of Nations to his elder brother so it was now due unto himself who must have the precedency of the Pupil by the priviledge of Age When he observed that the Senate silently presuming that the Kingdom would be more safe unto them under the Pupil then under him were un willing to grant him leave to depart Having secretly departed to Hostia under the pretence of hunting he there took shipping with the Companions of his flight and being brought into Syria he was received with the applause of all men and the young Prince being put to death the Kingdom by his Guardians was delivered unto him Much about the same time Prusias King of Bithinia contrived how to put to death his son Nicomedes endeavouring to provide for his younger sons whom he had by Nicomede's Step-mother and who were then at Rome But the plot was betrayed by those who undertook to perform it they exhorted the young man being provoked by the cruelty of his Father to prevent the deceit and return the wicked act upon the Author of it nor was it hard to perswade him to it therefore being sent for when he came into the Kingdom of his Father he was saluted as King and Prusias his Father being dis-invested of his Kingdom became as a private man and was forsaken of his own servants When he concealed himself in corners he was discovered and commanded to be killed by his son with no less wickedness then he commanded his son to be killed THE Five and thirtyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE DEmetrius having possessed himself of the Kingdom of Syria conceiving that the common hatred by this Innovation would prove ruinous to himself he determined to inlarge the bounds of his Soveraignty and to encrease his Revenues by making War upon his Neighbours Therefore being become an Enemy to Ariathes King of Cappadocia because he refused to marry his Sister he received his suppliant Brother Holofernes injustly driven from the Kingdom and rejoycing that he had offered to him an honest Title of the War he determined to restore to him his Kingdom But Holofernes having ungratefully made a League with the Antiochians and growing into enmity with Demetrius he took counsel to expel him from the Kingdom by whom he was restored to it which although Demetrius understood yet he spared his life that Ariathes might not be freed from the War which his brother Demetrius threatned to bring upon him howsoever having
killed his father which when young Ariarathes did understand to be attempted by Mithridates taking it deeply to heart that the murderer of his father should be called from banishment by his Uncle he imbodied a mightie Armie Mithridates brought into the field four score thousand foot and ten thousand horse and six hundred Chariots armed with hooks of steel and Ariarathes was altogether as powerful the neighbouring Kings assisting him Mithridates fearing the uncertain chance of the war did alter his counsels by causing them to degenerate into treachery having by his Agents courted the young man into a conference and hid a naked sword in the plates of his garment the Searcher being sent to do his office according to the manner then of Kings with great curiositie examined about the bottom of his belly whereupon he desired him to take heed lest he found another weapon then that he sought for the treachery being thus protected by the jeast Mithridates having called him aside from his friends as if he would confer in private with him did kill him both the armies being the spectators of it This being done he delivered the Kingdom of Cappadocia to Ariarathes his Son being but eight years of age having made Gordius Tutor over him and calling him by the name of Ariarathes But the Cappadocians being incensed at the crueltie and the lust of Mithridates his Lieutenants revolted from him and called back the brother of the slaughtered King from Asia where he was bred up and whose name was Ariarathes also with whom Mithridates renewed the war and having overcome him did expell him the Kingdom of Cappadocia and not long after the young man having contracted an infirmitie by his melancholy died after his death Nicomedes fearing least by the addition of Cappadocia Mithridates should also invade Bithynia that bordered on it did suborn a boy as remarkable for his stature as his countenance to demand of the Senate of Rome his fathers Kingdom as if old Ariarathes had three and not two Sons born unto him He also sent his wife Laodice to Rome to be a witness of the three Sons begotten by Ariarathes Which when Mithridates understood he with the like impudence sent Gordius to Rome to assure unto the Senate that the Boy to whom he delivered Cappadocia was begotten of that Ariarathes who died in the war of Aristonicus bringing his Auxiliaries to the Roman Armie But the Senate being prepossessed with the designs of the Kings would not give to false Names the Kingdoms of others but took Cappadocia from Mithridates and that he should not be alone in discontent they took away also Paphlagonia from Nicomedes And that it should not be any contumely to the Kings that the Kingdoms which were taken from them should be given unto others both people received the Donation of their libertie But the Cappadocians refused their gift of freedom affirming that their Nation could not subsist without a King Therefore the Senate did constitute Ariobarzenes to be their King At that time Tigranes was King of Armenia not long before given as a pledge to the Parthians and now lately dismissed and sent by them home to his Fathers Kingdom Mithridates had a great desire to joyn him with him in the war against the Romans which he had before determined with himself Tigranes thinking nothing what an offence it would be against the Romans was by Gordius excited to make war against Ariobarzenes a man of a heavy temper not able to oppose him and that there should be no suspition of any injury to be contrived by deceit Mithridates did give him his Daughter Cleopatra into mariage Therefore on the first approach of Tigranes Ariobarzenes having taken all things with him that he could call his own did repair to Rome and thus by the means of Tigranes Cappadocia became again under the power of Mithridates At the same time Nicomedes being deceased his son who was also called Nicomedes was by the force of Arms beaten by Mithridates from his fathers Kingdom who when he came a suppliant to Rome it was decreed in the Senate that they should both be restored into their Kingdoms to the effecting of which Aquilius Manlius and Malthinius were sent Ambassadors This being made known in Asia Mithridates being to make war against the Romans did enter into a league with Tigranes and articled with him that the Cities and the fields should be the part of Mithridates but the Captives and all the movables should be the portion of Tigranes And Mithridates having pondered with himself how great a war he had raised sent some Ambassadors to the Cymbrians and others to the Gallogrecians to the Sarmatians and Bastarnians to desire assistance of them For heretofore when he had determined with himself to make war against the Romans he obliged to him all these Nations with variety of gifts and benefits He also sent for an Army out of Scythia and armed all the East against the Romans therefore with no great difficulty he overthrew Aquilius and Malthinius who commanded the Asiatick Army who being routed and driven out of the field with Nicomedes he wasreceived with an extraordinary great applause of the Cities In those he found great store both of Gold laid up by the thrifty providence of the former Kings he found also great store of Arms and Provision for the war with which being furnished he remitted to the Cities their publick and private debts and for five years did free them from all Impositions After this having called his soldiers to a general Assembly with several exhortations he did excite them to the Roman or rather the Asiatick Wars The Copy of his Speech I have thought worthy to insert into the narrow compass of this work which Pompeius Trogus did interpret to be indirect and reprehended both Livy and Salust that inserting set speeches into their writings as the orations of the parties interested they did exceed the bounds of History Mithridates said that it was to be wished that he might have leave to take Counsel whether war or peace were to be had with the Romans since we are bound to resist those who do oppose us and those are not to be in doubt what to determine on who are without hope of Victory For against thieves though we cannot for our safety yet we all do draw our sword for revenge but because that is not in question whether we ought to set down being lookt upon not only with hostile minds but assaulted also with hostile arms the present Counsel to be demanded is upon what hope and account we may maintain the wars begun For his own part he affirmed he had a confidence of the Victory if they had a generous Resolution to fight and it was known as much to his soldiers as to himself that the Romans that were to be overcome were they who overthrew Aquilius in Bithynia and Malthinus in Cappadocia But if other examples would perswade more then his own Experience he had
in the absence of Pacorus did overthrow the Parthian Armie but Ventidius having dissembled a fear did a long time contain himself within the Camp and permitted the Parthians for a while to insult who being insolent and secure he at the last did send forth one part of the legions against them who charging upon them with great courage did utterly rout them Pacorus conceiving that his flying men had drawn along after them the Roman legions to pursue them did set upon the Camp of Ventidius supposing it to be destitute of defenders whereupon Ventidius sallying forth with the other part of the legions did cut off the whole Armie of the Parthians with the King Pacorus himself neither did the Parthians in any war receive a greater wound then in that battail When these things were reported in Parthia Horodes the father of Pacorus who not long before had understood that all Syria was plundred and Asia seized upon by the Parthians and who did glorie that his Son Pacorus was a Conqueror of the Romans being on a suddain informed both of the death of his Son and the total destruction of the Armie his grief was heightned into furie For the space of many daies he would not speak to any nor take any sustenance nor utter any words at all insomuch that he seemed to be a dumb man After many days when grief had opened the passage of his voice he called upon nothing but Pacorus he seemed as if he both heard and saw Pacorus and would stand still and speak as if he discoursed with him and somtimes would lamentably condole him being slain After a long time of sorrow another affliction did invade the miserable old man which was to determine with himself which of his thirtie Sons he should make King in the place of Pacorus He had many Concubines on whom so great a number of children were begotten and every one of them was importunate with him to make choice of her own Son but the fate of Parthia did so ordain it being there a solemn custom to have Kings to be parricides rhat the most wicked of them all Phrahartes by name should be elected King who no sooâ—ner was invested in his royaltie but as if he would not die a natural death and when he would have him did kill his father and afterwards put to death his thirtie Brothers neither did his guilt cease here for perceiving that the Peers of the Kingdom were much incensed against him for his daily cruelties he commanded his own Son being almost of age to be killed that there should not one remain who might bear the name of a King Marke Antony made war upon him with sixteen gallant Legions because he brought aide to Pompey and his partie against Caesar and himself but his Armie being sorely weakned by many encounters he retreated from Parthia by which victorie Phrahartes being grown more insolent when he determined many things cruelly against the people he was driven into banishment by them and having with repeated importunities for a long time wearied the neighboring Cities and last of all the Scythians he was by their great assistance restored unto his Kingdom In his absence the Parthians had constituted one Tyridates to be their King who understanding of the advance of the Scythians did flie with a great number of his friends to Caesar making war at the same time in Spain carrying with him as a pledge to Caesar the youngest Son of Phrahartes whom he took away by force being too negligently guarded Which being understood Phrahartes sent presently Embassadors to Caesar demanding that his servant Tyridates and his Son should be restored to him Caesar having understood the Embassie of Phrahartes and the desires of Tyridates for he desired also to be restored to the Kingdom affirming that the Romans would have a Right to Parthia if the Kingdom thereof should be at his disposing did make answer That he would neither deliver Tyridates to the Parthians neither would he aide Tyridates against them And that it might appear that Caesar was not of that sullen temper that they could prevail nothing at all upon him he sent Phrahartes his Son without ransom and allowed Tyridates a large exhibition as long as he would continue with the Romans After this the war in Spain being ended when he came into Syria to compose the State of the East Phrahartes was possessed with a great fear that he would make war against him Therefore the Captains over all Parthia that were taken Prisoners in the Armies of Crassus or of Antony were recollected and the Ensigns that were taken were also sent back to Augustus with them the Sons and Nephews also of Phrahartes were given as pledges to Augustus and Caesar prevailed more with the greatness of his Name then another Emperor could have done by Arms. THE Three fortyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE THe affairs of Parthia and the East and almost of all the world being described Trogus as after a long pilgrimage doth return home thinking it the part of an ungrateful Citizen if having illustrated the actions of all Nations he should conceal the affairs only of his own Countrie He briefly therefore toucheth upon the beginning of the Roman Empire that he might not exceed the measure of his propounded work and not in silence to pass by the original of that Citie which is the head of the whole World The Inhabitants of Italie were first the Aborigines whose King Saturn was reported to be of so great Justice that no man served under him neither had he any thing private to himself but all things were undivided and common unto all as one patrimonie to them In the memorie of which example it was provided that in the Saturnalia the Interests of every one being made equal the servants did everywhere in their banquets lie down along with their masters Therefore Italie was called Saturnia after the Name of their King and the Hill where Saturn did inhabite being by Jupiter driven from his own Seat is called the Capitol The third King who Reigned in Italie after him was Faunus in whose time Evander came into Italie from Pallantheum a Citie of Arcadia with a small Retinue to whom Faunus did bountifully assign certain fields and a Hill which he afterwards called the Hill Palatine At the foot of this Hill he errected a Temple to Lycaeus whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus The Effigies of the god is cloathed with the skin of a Goat in which habit they rnn up and down in Rome at the Lupercals Faunus had a wife whose name was Fatua who being daily filled with a divine Spirit did as it were in a furie presage of things to come from whence those that to this daie are inspired are said to fatuate or to foretell the events of Fates to come Latinus conceived in whoredom was the son of the daughter of Faunus and of Hercules who at that time having killed Geryon did drive his Cattle through Italie
minde and body taking upon him the Government of the Empire it is incredible how much he excelled those who were before him especially in clemency liberality magnificene and in the contempt of money all which graces were so much the more esteemed in him because many thought that being discended of a private man he would be more cruel to private men himself and be given to avarice and to riot For having gotton the office of the Praetor in the raign of his Father he oppressed many of his opposites having his Emissaries in the Theaters and in the Army who did cast forth envious and railing accusations against them and as if they had been convicted of the crimes of which they were accused he did demand them unto punishment amongst whom he commanded that Cecinna a Consulary man whom he had invited to supper should be put to death upon suspition that he had defiled his wife Berenice and all men took very grievously the quarrels which he revenged in the time of his Father alledging that he was greedy of spoyls and that he would be another Nero when he had got the Empire into his hands But these things falling out better did procure him such immortal Glory that he was called The Delight and the Love of mankinde As soon as he was invested with the Government of the Empire he sent Berenice home and commanded the Companies of the Eunuches to depart which was a good sign that he had changed his intemperate life And the succeeding Emperours being accustomed to confirm the Donations and Grants made by the former Emperours he as soon as he took upon him the Government in the first place of his own accord did ratifie them One day calling to minde in the Evening that he had performed no good office to any man that day in a reverend and celestial Speech he thus expressed himself O my friends we have lost a day of such a magnificent liberality he was He so famous made his Clemency that when two men of great Honour had conspired against him and could not deny the intended Treason he first admonished them and afterwards having brought them into the publick Spectacles he did place them on each side of himself and having sent for a sword from the Fencers being present whose exercises were that day to be seen he did give it first to the one and afterwards to the other who being amazed at it and wondring at his constancy See you not said he that power is given by Providence and that it is in vain to attempt a villany either in hope to commit it or through fear to be disappointed of it He also with tears in his eyes did oftentimes request his brother Domitian who sollicited the Souldiers against him that he would not seek to obtain that by parricide which would come unto him in course and with his own consent nay which he had already since he was his partner in the Empire In his time the Mountain of Vesuvius in Campania did begin to burn and there was a great fire in Rome which burned night and day for three dayes together there was also one of the greatest plagues that was ever known with which calamity many being afflicted with his own money he provided all kinde of remedies and in his own person would visit and relieve the sick and comfort those who mourned for the death of their friends He lived one and forty years and dyed of a feaver in the same place amongst the Sabines where his Father dyed It can hardly be believed how great a lamentation there was for his death both in the City and the Provinces who calling him Their publick Delight did so bewaile him as if the whole world had been deprived of a perpetual preserver Domitian DOmitian the Son of Domicilla a free woman the Brother of Titus raigned fifteen years he at the first pretended clemency and seemed to be more tolerable both at home and abroad and not to be so cowardly as indeed he was He overcame the Câ—ttuns and the Germans and administred the Law most justly He builded many houses in Rome either begun before or also anew from the foundation He restored the Library consumed with the fire Copies everywhere being sent for but especially from Alexandria He was so skilful an Archer that standing far off he would shoot Arrows betwixt the fingers of a mans hand stretched forth Afterwards growing cruel and out-ragious he exacted unjust punishments by the murders of good men and after the manners of Caligula he commanded men to call him Lord and God and sending off his Attendants he ridiculously would pursue swarms of flies He raged with that lust the filthy exercise whereof the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from his pursuing the flies it came to pass that a certain man asking who was in the Palace Answer was made Not so much as a flie with those cruelties of his and especially with the injury of words by which an aspersion of lust was laid upon him Anthony being incensed did invade the Empire having at that time the command of the Upper Germany but he being slain in a battel by Normanus Appius Domitian growing more furious against all kinde of men did prosecute even his own friends with the utmost cruelty Therefore many in fear of his unbounded rage did conspire against him Parthenius the Groom of his Chamber and Stephanus inciting them to whom was added one Clodian fearing to be punished for the sums of money he had intercepted Domitia also the wife of the tyrant fearing to be tormented by him for the love she did bear to Paris the Stage-Player was one of the Conspiracy Domitian by their instigation having his Body printed full of wounds dyed in the five and fortieth yeer of his life The Senate decreed that there should be no more honor done unto him at his funeral then was allowed to a common Ruffian and that his name should be razed out of the Registers of Honour In his time the secular Playes were celebrated Cocceius Nerva HItherto such as were born in Rome or in Italy did govern the Empire Strangers afterwards were advanced to the Goverment of it by whose vertue the City was much strengthned For who was there more wise or more moderate then Nerva who more divine then Trajan who more excellent then Adrian Cocceius Nerva was born in the Town of Narnia he raigned thirteen Moneths and ten dayes Having taken upon him the Empire a rumor being raised that Domitian was still a live approaching he was surprised with so great a fear that his countenance being changed and his voyce lost he was hardly able to stand upon his legs but being afterwards assured to the contrary by Parthenius he returned to his former temper Being joyfully received by the whole Senate Arrius Antonius a Gentlemen of a high spirit and his greatest friend wisely observing the estate of those who did bear rule before him did embrace him saying That he
Greece upon himself if he had determined any thing too cruelly against Croesus In the process of time Cyrus being imployed in other wars the Lydians again rebelled who being again overcome their horses and arms were taken from them and they were commanded to exercise voluptuous and effeminate arts and employments by which means that industrious heretofore powerful and warlike Nation being weakned by sloth and riot did lose their antient vertue and whom before Cyrus no wars could master being fallen into luxury ease and excess did overcome The Lydians had many Kings before Croesus famous for many adventures but the fortune of Candaules is to be compared unto none who when he made his wife the subject of all his discourse whom he too much loved for the excellence of her beauty and as if silence were the enemy of beauty being not content with the tacit conscience of his pleasures unless he revealed the secrets of wedlock to add at last a proof to his asseveration shewed her naked to his companion Gyges by which fact he made both his friend his enemy being allured to commit adultery with his wife and her love being thus betrayed to another he estranged his wife from himself for not long after the murder of Candaules was the reward of the marriage The wife being â—ndowred with the blood of her husband delivered both her self and the Kingdom of her Husband to her adulterer Cyrus Asia being overcome and all the East brought into his power did make war upon the Scythians In that time Thomyris was Queen of the Scythians who being not like a woman affrighted at the approach of her enemies she suffered them to pass over the river of Araxes when she might have hindred them conceiving that the event of the battell would prove more successful to her within the bounds of her own Kingdom and that the flight would be more difficult to her enemies by reason of the interposition of the river Cyrus therefore when he had passed over his forces having advanced a little further into Scythia did there pitch his tents on the next day dissembling a fear as if he flying back had forsaken his Camp he left behind him great store of wine and of those things which were necessary for a Banquet which when it was declared to the Queen she sent her young son to pursue him with the third part of the Army When he came to Cyrus Camp the young man being unexperienced in the affairs of war forgetting his enemies and as if he came to feast and not to fight did permit the Barbarians unaccustomed to wine to overburthen themselves with it and the Scythians were overcome with wine before they were overcome in war for this being discovered Cyrus returning by night did oppress them not thinking of him and put all the Scythians to the sword and the son of their Queen Thomyris so great an Army being lost and which is more to be lamented her only son did not pour forth her grief into tears that she was childless but did reserve it into the comfort of revenge and with the like policy of deceit circumvented her enemies insulting at their late victory for counterfeiting a distrust of her strength and retiring in some disorder by reason of the loss received she brought Cyrus into a straight betwixt two hills where her Ambuscado being lodged she killed two hundred thousand of the Persians with the King himself In which victory this also was memorable That there remained not a messenger of so great an overthrow The head of Cyrus being cut off the Queen commanded it to be cast into a tub filled with the blood of men with this exprobration of his cruelty Satisfie thy self she said with blood which thou thirstedst after and of which thou hast always been insatiable Cyrus did reign thirty yeers being admirably remarkable not only in the beginning of hâ—s reign but by a continual success through all his life His son Cambyses did succeed him who addâ—d Aegypt to his Fathers Empire but being offended with the superstitions of the Aegyptians he commanded the Temples of Apis and of others of their Gods to be demolished He sent also his Army to destroy the most famous Temple of Ammon which Army was lost being overwhelmed with tempests and with hills of sands After this he saw in his sleep that his brother Mergides should reign being affrighted at which vision he delayed not to commit parricide after sacriledge for it was not easie for him to spare his own who had committed violence against the Gods To this so cruell an execution he selected one of his friends a Magician called Comaris In the mean time he himself being grievously wounded in the thigh with his own sword dropping by chance out of his scabberd died of that wound and endured the punishment either of parricide commanded or of sacriledge committed This being made known by a Mesenger Magus committed the villany before the death of the King was reported and Mergides being killed to whom the Kingdom was due he subâ—lituâ—ed his own brother Oropastes in his room for he was like unto him in the favor of face and in the lineaments of body and no man suspecting the deceit Oropastes was made King in the stead of Mergides which was reserved the more private because amongst the Persians the person of the King under the awful pretext of Majesâ—ie is always concealed Therefore the Magi to win unto them the favor of the people did forbear the Tributes and granted a vacation from wars for three yeers that they might confirm the Government to them by favours and largesses which they had obtained by deceit which was first suspected by Orthanes one of the Nobility a man of a most sharp apprehension therefore by his Agents he enquires of his daughter who was one of the Kings Concubines whether the Son of Cyrus were King or no who returned answer that she did not know it her self nor could learn it of another because every one of them were shut up by themselves He then commanded her to feel his head being asleep for Cambyses had cut off both the ears of Magus Being then assured by his daughter that the King was without ears he declaâ—ed it to the Nobility and by the Religion of an Oath did oblige them to the slaughter of this counterfeit King There were only seven that were conscious of this confederacy who immediately that they might not have the leisure to repent and disclose the plot with swords under their garments did repair to the Court. There those being killed whom they met with in the way they came unto the Magi who wanted not courage to defend themselves for with drawn swords they killed two of the Conspirators howsoever they were apprehended by the greater number one of whom being fast in the arms of Gobrias his companions doubting lest they should kill him in the stead of Magus because it was acted in a dark place he commanded them to
by a voluntary death redeem himself from Captivity But Nicias who would not be admonished by the counsel of Demosthenes to provide for himself did encrease his overthrow with the dishonour of Captivity THE FIFTH BOOK OF IVSTINE WHiles the Athenians for two years together did make war in Sicily more eagerly then happily one of their Generals and a contriver of that War Alcibiades by name being absent was accused at Athens for having divulged the mysteries of Ceres which were solemnized by nothing more then silence and being called back from the war to his tryal either not enduring the consciousness or the indignity of the Charge conveyed himself privately away into banishment at Elis where he perswaded the King of the Lacedemonians the State of the Athenians being sorely shaken by the adverse war in Sicily to invade their Territories at home whereupon all the Cities of Greece did come of their own accord to his assistance as to put out a common fire so general a hatred the Athenians had contracted by their cruelty through the immoderate desire of Soveraignty Darius also King of the Persians being not unmindful of the ancient enmity of this City to them a league being made with the Lacedemonians by Tissafernes Governor of Lydia did promise to assist the Grecians in all the charges of the war This was his pretence to comply with the Grecians but he feared in earnest lest the Athenians being overthrown the Lacedemonians should transfer the war on him Who would therefore wonder that so flourishing an Estate as was this of Athens should fall to the ground when to oppose it alone all the Powers of the East did unite themselves together but they fell not in a sluggish or an unbloody war but fought to the last man and being sometimes Conquerors they were not overcome but rather worn out by the variety of their fortune In the beginning of the war all their Consederates revolted from them as commonly it is seen that where fortune thither also the favour of men does incline Alcibiades also did help on the war made against his Country not with the industry of a common Souldier but with the power of a Commander For having received a squadron of five ships he sailed into Asia and by the authority of his name compelled the Cities which paid tribute there to Athens to rebel against them For they knew that he was famous at home and saw him not made less by banishment and he being a Captain not so much taken from the Athenians as offered to the Lacedemonians they weighed the Government he had goâ—ten with that which he had lost But his vertue contracted amongst the Lacedemonians more envâ—e then favour Therefore when the Rulers had commanded that by treachery he should be slain being one thaâ— did emulate their glory it being made known to Alcibiades by the wife of King Agis with whom he was too familiar he sled to Tissafernes the Lieutenant of King Darius into whom he quickly did insinua e himself by the officiousness of his Courtship and his eloquence For he was in the flower of his youth beauty and famous also amongst the Athenians for his Oratory more happy in procuring friendships then in preserving them for the vices of his manners did lie hid under the shadow of his Eloquence he perswaded Tissafernes that he should not contribute so much in money to the Fleet of the Lacedemonians alledging that the Ionians were to pay part of it for whose liberty being tributary to Athens the war was undertaken neither were the Lacedemonians he said too prodigally to be seconded with Auxiliaries for he ought to consider that he provided a Victory for another not for himselfe and so far onely the war was to be relieved that it might not for want be abandoned For in this discord of the Greeks the King of Persia might stand as an Arbitrator bâ—th of Peace and War and overcome them by their mutual Arms whom he could not by his own And the war being ended it may come to his turn afterwards to fight with the Conquerors Greece therefore he said was to be over-run with Domestick wars that they might not have the leisure to look abroad and the powers of the Parties were to kept equal and the weaker to be relieved with ayd for he may be sure that the Lacedemonians who profess themselves to be the Defenders of the liberty of Greece will not be quiet after this Victory This Speech was agreeable to Tissafernes therefore the promâ—sed provisions for the war were 〈◊〉 but slowly in he sent also but part of the Râ—yal Navy lest he should compleat the Victory and lay a necessity on the other side to lay down their Arms. Alcibiades in the mean time did make this known to the Citizens of Athens unto whom when their Ambassadors did arrive he promised them the friendship of the King if the command of the Common-wealth were translated from the people to the Senate hoping that either by the agreement of the City he should be chosen General by all or a difference being made betwixt the people and Senate he should be called by one of the parties to their assistance But by reason of the imminent danger of the war the Athenians had a greater care of their safety then their dignity Therefore the people giving way unto it the Government was transla ed to the Senate whom when they mannaged themselves with great cruelty to the people according to the pride inherent to that Nation every one by himselfe exercising the power of a Tyrant Alcibiades was called from his banishment by the Army and cho en Admiral of the Navie He immediately sent to Athens that he would make haste unto them with an Army and if they would not restore it he would by force take from the f ur hundred the privâ—ledges of the people The Peers affrightâ—d with this Remâ—nstrance did attempt in the first place to betray the City to the Laâ—edâ—monians which when by the vigilance of the Army it could not be effected they undertook a wilful banishment In the mean time Alcibiades his Country beâ—ng delivered from the intestine trouble with great care and industry equipped his Fleet and lanched forth against the Lacedemonians and being expected by Mindarus and Pharnabasus the two Admirals of the Lacedemonians the battel being begun the Athenians had the Victory In this battel the greatest part of the Army and almost all the Commanders and Officers of the Lacedemonians were slain Not long after when they brought the War from Sea to Land they were overcome again being discouraged with those losses they desired a peace which that it might not be obtained was procured by their policy who knew which way to make a mercenary advantage of it In the mean time the Carthaginians having made war in Sicily the Auxiliaries sent to the Lacedemonians from the Syracusians were called back and the Lacedemonians being left destitute Alcibiades with his conquering Navie
between both the Phrygias which City he desired to be master of not so much for the booty as for that he understood that in that City in the Temple of Jupiter there was consecrated the plough of Gordius the knots of whose cord if any could unlose the Oracle did persage of old that he should raign over all Asia The cause and original was from this When Gardius was ploughing in this Country with his Oxen great flights of birds of all sorts did flie round about him and repairing to the Augurs of the next City to know the reason of it he met in the Gate of the City a Virgin of an excellent beauty and having demanded of her to what Augur he should more particularly address himself she having understood the occasion and having some knowledge herself in the Art by the instructions of her Parents did make answer that the Kingdom was presaged to him and did offer her self the companion of his hope and to be his companion in marriage So â—air a condition did seem to be the first felicity of the Kingdom After the marriage there did arise a sedition amongst the Phrygians and counsel being asked what a period should be put unto the differences and when the Oracles did answer That to end the discord there was need of a King and it being demanded again who should be the King They were commanded to make him King whom they should finde with a Plough entring into the Temple of Jupiter Gordius was the man whom presently they saluted as their King He consecrated to Regal Majesty in the Temple of Jupiter the Plough by which the Kingdom was conferr'd on him After him there reigned his Son Midas who being instructed by Orpheus with the solemnities belonging to the worship of their gods did fill all Phrygia with Religion and Ceremonies by which during the whole course of his life he was safer then by his Arms. Alexander therefore the City being taken when he came into the Temple of Jupiter he demanded where the Plough was which being shewed unto him when he could not discover the ends of the cord lying hid among the multiplicity of the foldings he gave a violent interpretation to the sense of the Oracle and cutting the cords asunder with his sword he found the ends lying undiscovered in the mysterie of the twists Whiles he was doing this he was informed that Darius was approaching to give him battel with a formidable Army Therefore fearing the danger of the streights he in a swift march did lead his Army over the Mountain of Taurus in which expedition his foot without any respite did run five hundred furlongs When he came unto Tarsus being taken with pleasantness of the River Cydnus running through the midst of the City having unbuckled his Armor and being covered with sweat and dust he threw himself into the River which was extreamly cold On an sudden so great and so chilling a benumnedness did posses every joynt that being speechless the danger could be neither deferred nor any hope oâ— remedy admitted There was one of his Physitians Philip by Name who promised to give a redress unto his evil but some letters sent the day before by Parmenio from Cappodocia did render him suspected to the King who not knowing of Alexander's sickness did write unto him to have a careful eye on Philip his Physitian because he was corrupted by Darius with a great sum of money howsoever thinking it safer to doubt the trust of his Physitian then his undoubted disease having received the Cup he delivered the letters to him sted fastly did behold him as he drank the physick Having observed hâ—m to be not moved at the sense of the letter he became more cheerful on the fourth day afterwards was recovered In the mean time Darius advanced towards him with an Army of three hundred thousand foot one hundred thousand horse The multitude of his numbers did trouble Alexander in the respect of the fewness of his Souldiers but computing with himself what great atchievements he had performed by that paucity and how many Nations he had overthrown his hope did overcome his fear and thinking it dangerous to delay the Battel least some desperation should grow upon the minds of his Souldiers being mounted on horse-back he did ride about his Army and by several exhortations did enflame the courage of the several Nations he stirr'd up the Illyrians and the Thracians with the ostentation of the wealth of the Persians the Grecians with the memory of their former wars with their perpetual hatred against the Persians He put the Macedonians in mind of Europe overcome and of Asia desired by them and that the world had not any Souldiers that were comparable unto them This battel he said would put an end to their labors but no end unto their glory As he delivered these words he did once and again command his Army to stand that by that delay they might the better observe and sustain the unweâ—ldy numbers of their Enemies neither was Darius less industrious in the marshalling of his Army for omitting no office of a General he in his own person did ride about the Army and did exhort every one and admonish them of the ancient glory of the Persian Empire and of their everlasting possession which was given of it by the immortal Gods After this the battel was fought with great resolution in which both Kings were wounded and the fight was doubtful until Darius fled whereupon there followed a great slaughter of the Persians there were slain of their foot threescore and ten thousand and ten thousand of their horse and forty thousand were taken Prisoners Of the Macedons there were slain one hundred and thirty foot and one hundred and fifty horse In the Camp of the Persians there was found much gold and other rich movables Amongst the Captives there were the Mother and the Wife who was also the sister of Darius and his two daughters to visit and to comfort who when Alexander came in person with some men in Arms they imbracing one another as if immediately they were to die did make a skrieking lamentation then humbling themselves to the knees of Alexander they desired not life but onely a respite from death so long until they had buried the body of Darius Alexander beimg moved at their so great a piety did both give them an assurance of the life of Darius and withal took from them the fear of death and did command that they should be esteemed and saluted as Queens and commanded the daughters of Darius to look for husbands suitable to the dignity of their Father After this taking into his observation the riches and precious Furniture of Darius he was possessed with admiration at it he then first began to delight himself with luxurious Banquets and the magnificence of Feasts and to be tempted by the beauties of Barsine his Capive on whom having afterwards begot a Son he did call him
unpeopled City on the other side of Euphrates He was there importuned by Anaxarchus the Philosopher to despise again the presages of the Magicians as things false and uncertain and unknown to men if proceeding from the Fates or if from Nature not to be prevented Being returned therefore to Babylon after the leisures of many days he again prepared a solemn Feast which sometimes before he had intermitted where having devoted himself altogether to mirth in the excess of drinking he added night unto the day Thessalius Medius afterwards to a new Bower did invite both him and his Companions having taken the Cup into his hand in the middle of his draught he groaned as if he had been struck through with a sword and being carryed half dead from the Banquet he was tormented with so great a pain that to free himself of it he demanded for a sword and his body became so extreamly tender that he complained at the touches of his friends as if he had received so many wounds His friends divulged the cause of his disease to be a distemper by the excess of wine when indeed it was treason the infamy whereof the powerfulness of his Successors did suppress The Authour of the Treason was Antipater who when he beheld the dearest of his friends commanded to death his Son-in-law Alexander Lycestos slain and himself having done considerable service in Greece not respected only but also made distastful to the King and morever accused by his Mother Olympias for divers insolencies when he considered also some few daies before what were the punishments which the Lieutenants of the conquered Nations too cruelly indured and conjectured that he himself was called out of Macedonia not to the society of the war but to be a partaker of their punishment therefore to make sure work with the King he with poyson suborn'd his Son Cassander who with his brother Philip and Jolla were accustomed to minister unto him So great was the strength of this poyson that it could not be contained either in Iron or in Brass or in any shell and could no way be carryed but in the hoof of an horse Cassander was instructed that he should not commit the trust of it unto any but to Thessalus and his brothers For this cause therefore the Feast was prepared and renewed in the house of Thessalus Philip and Jollas who were accustomed to take an assay of the Kings Cup had the poyson ready in cold water and having tasted of the wine they put the poyson afterwards into it Four days afterwards Alexander finding that death undoubtedly was approaching he said that he acknowledged the fate of the Family of his Ancestors most of the Aeacidans dying about the thirtieth yeer of their age After this he pacified the Souldiers growing into tumults and suspecting that he perished by treason and being brought into the highest and the most conspicuous place of the City he did admit them all into his presence and gave them his right hand to kiss When they all wept he was seen to be not onely without tears himself but without the least show of a troubled minde and comforted some who impatiently did lament he gave to others his instructions to deliver from him to their Parents so invincible was his courage now against death as it was before against his Enemies The Souldiers being dismissed he demanded of his friends who stood round about him if they thought they should finde another King that was like unto him they all holding their peace he said that as he himself was ignorant of that so he was confident of this and did presage it and did almost with his eyes behold how much blood Macedonia should lose in this contention and with how many slaughters she would parentate to him being dead At the last he commanded his body to be burryed in the Temple of Hammon When his friends beheld him to faint away they demanded whom he would make heir of his Empire he made answer The most worthy So great was the magnitude of his minde that when he had left behind him his Son Hercules his brother Aridaeus and his wife Roxane great with child forgetting those obligations he did nominate the most worthy to be his heir as if it were a sin that any but a valiant man should succeed a valiant man or the wealth of so great an Empire should be left to any but to approved resolutions With these words as if he had sounded into his friends ears a charge unto the battel or had sent the evil spirit of discord amongst them they all grew immediatly jealous of one another and in a popular ambition did all tacitely seek the favour of the Souldiers On the sixth day being speechless having taken his Ring from his finger he delivered it to Perdicas which for the present did pacifie a little the growing dissention of his friends for although he was not named Heir by voyce yet by choyce he seemed to be elected Alexander deceased being three and thirty yeers of age and one month a man endued with a mightiness of spirit above the capacity of men On that night when his Mother Olympias did conceive him she seemed in her sleep to have commerce with a great Serpent neither was she deceived in her dream which by God was presented to her for undoubtedly she had in her womb a burden above the condition of mortality and although the generation of the Aeacidans from the first memory of Ages and the Kingdoms of her Father brother and husband and of her Ancestors before them did render his mother most illustrious yet she was not more famous by any Title then by the name of her Son There appeared also many presages of his greatness on the day of his birth for two Eagles flying all that day round about the place did pearch at last upon the Battlements of his Fathers Court prognosticating unto him the two Empires of Europe and Asia and on the same day his Father received the glad tidings of two Victories the one in Illyria and the other in the Olympick race to which places he sent some Chariots drawn all with four horses which portented to the Infant the victory of the whole World He was of an admirable apprehension in the study of letters and having passed his minority he for the space of five yeers had his education under Aristotle the most excellent of all the Philosophers Being invested in his Fathers Kingdom he commanded that in his Title he should be called King of all Lands and Lord of the World So great a confidence had his Souldiers in him that he being present they feared not though unarmed the arms of any Enemy He therefore never encountred any Enemy whom he did not overcome nor besieged any City which he did not take nor invaded any Nation over whom he did not triumph At the last he was overcome not by any prowess of the Enemy but by Treason and the Civil fraud of his own Subjects
and to see them with their own blood to parentate to the ghosts of their Enemies whom they had slain When Perdiccas had spoken this according to that excellent eloquence which was natural in him he so prevailed upon the Footmen that his Counsels being approved he was chosen General by them all The Horse at the same time being reduced into concord with the Footmen did chose Aridaeus for their King But a portion of the Empire was reserved for the Son of Alexander if a Son were born unto him When this was done the dead body of Alexander was placed in the midst of them that the Majesty of it should be a witness to their Decrees These things being composed Antipater was made Governor of Macedonia and of Greece The custody of the Treasure was committed to Craterus The care of the Army and of all Military affairs was assigned to Meleager and Perdiccas And Aridaeus was commanded to convey the body of Alexander unto the Temple of Ammon Perdiccas being incensed against the Authors of the sedition did on a sudden his Colleague being ignorant of it command that there should be a lustratiâ—n of the Army for the death of the King and having brought the Army into the Field all men agreeing to it he privately commanded that the seditious persons should be called out of every Band and delivered to punishment Being returned the Provinces were by him divided amongst the Princes that at once he might remove the Emulators and make the allotments in the Empire the benefit of his bounty Aegypt in the first place and a part of Africa and Arabia did come by lot to Ptolomy whom Alexander from an ordinary Souldier had advanced for his Chivalry Cleomenes who builded Alexandria was commanded to deliver that Province to him Laomedon the Mitylaenean received Syria which bounded on it Philotas with his Son received Cilicia and Illyria Acropatus was Governor of Media the greater and Alcetes the brother of Perdiccas was set over Media the less Susia and the Nat on thereabouts was assigned to Synus and Phrygia the greater was assigned to Antigonus the Son of Philip Learchus obtained Lycia and Pamphilia Cassander was to command Caria and Menander Lydia Thracia and the Countries nâ—er to the Pontick Sea were given to Lysimachus and Cappadocia and Paphlagonia to Eumenes The chief Tribunalship of the Camp was given to Seleuchus the Son of Antiochus Cassander the Son of Antipater was set over the Life-guard of the King The former Lieutenants were retained in the further Bactria and the Kingdoms of India but Taxiles commanded all betwixt the two Rivers Hydaspes and Indus Phiton the Son of Agâ—nor was sent into the Colonies planted amongst the Indians Axiarches was to command the Parapomeni and bounds of the Mounâ—aâ—n Caucasus Statanor was set over the Dracans and Argaeans and Amyntas the Bractrians Sythaeus obtained the Sogdians Nicanor the Parthians Philip the Hyrcanians Phratafarnes the Armenians Neoptolemus the Persians Peucestes the Babylonians Arthous the Pelasgians and Archeâ—ilaus the Mesopotamians This division of the Empire which was as a fatal gift to every one did prove unto many a subject of great additions for not long after as if they had divided Kingdoms and not Lieutenantships being made Kings of Lieutenants they purchased great wealth for themselves and dying left it to their posterity When this was done in the East the Athenians and Aetolians with all their power did proceed in the war which they undertook Alexander being alive The occasion of the war was That Alexander returning out of India did send letters into Greece by which the banished of all Cities were restored those onely excepted who were guilty of murther These Letters being read all Greece being present at the Olympick Fair a great combustion did arise because many of the banished men were driven from their Country not by the Laws but by the faction of the Princes who feared that being called back they might grow more powerful then themselves in the Common-wealth Many Cities dâ—d therefore openly murmur and declared that their liberty was to be vindicated by war The Athenians and Aetolians were the chief sticklers in it Which when it was reported to Alexander he commanded that a Fleet of one thousand ships should be in readiness with which he would prosecute war in the West resolving with a strong power to level Athens to the ground The Athenians therefore having drawn an Army together of thirty thousand Souldiers and two hundred ships did make war against Antipater who by lot was Governor of Greece and delaying the battel and protecting himself within the Walls of Heraclea the Athenians did close besiege him At the same time Demosthenes the Athenian Orator who was driven from his Country being condemned for bribery having received a sum of gold from Harpalus and who fled from the cruelty of Alexander having perswaded the City to war against him did lead a banished life at Megarae who when he understood that the Athenians had sent Hyperides their Ambassador to sollicite the Pelopennensians to joyn in war with them having followed him to Syceon he by his Eloquence joyned Arges Corinth and other Cities to the Athenians For which he was called back from banishment the Athenians having sent a ship to meet him in the way In the mean time Antipater being besieged in Heraclea Leosthenes the Captain of the Athenians was slain with a dart from the Wall as he came to give some directions in the Leaguer which so encouraged Antipater that he sallyed forth and possessed himself of some of the works of the Enemies After that he by his Ambassadors desired help of Leonatus who when he marched to his assistance the Athenians meeting him with a gallant Army and having given him battel on horse-back he received a grievous wound of which he dyed Antipater although he beheld his Auxiliaries were overcome yet he in wardly rejoyced at the death of Leonatus for he gratulated himself that his emulator was taken from him and that the remainder of his fortes was come unto him Therefore with this addition to his Army when he appeared to be equal to his Enemy in strength having raised the siege he marched into Macedonia Whereupon the Forces of the Grecians the Enemy being driven from their Confines did steal away into their own Cities In the mean time Perdiccas having made an unjust war on Ariarathes the King of the Cappadocians and being Conqueror in the battel did bring nothing from him but wounds danger for the Cappadocians flying from the fight into the City having slain their own wives and children did set their own houses on fire with all the Forces which they had and having brought thither all their wealth they threw both it and themselves into the flame so that their Enemies the Conquerors of them their Possessions did enjoy nothing but only the spectacle of the fire After this that by his power he might arrive to royal Authority he pretended to the
the King of Epirus omitted it being of great concernment to what party he became a friend who desiring himself to master them all did labour to have an interest in every party Therefore having promised to assist the Tarentines against the Romans he desired ships of Antigonus to transport his Army he desired moneys of Antiochus who was more considerable both in men and money he desired of Ptolomy the ayd of the Macedonian Souldiers Ptolomy who made no delay to gratifie him having a numerous Army did lend unto him for the space of two yeers and no longer five thousand foot four thousand horse and fifty Elephants for which Pyrrhus having taken to marriage the daughter of Ptolomy did leave him invested in the Kingdom But because we are come to the mention of Epirus we must deliver a few things concerning the Original of that Kingdom In that Countrey was first of all the Kingdom of the Molossians Afterwards Pyrrhus the Son of Achilles having lost his Fathers Kingdom by his long absence in the Trojan wars did plant himself in this Country the people being first called Pyrrhide afterwards Epirotae But Pyrrhus when he came to ask counsel in the Temple of Jupiter of Dodona he there saw and by force took unto him Anassa the Niece of Hercules by whom he had eight children He marryed those who were Maids to the neighboring Kings and purchased to himself great Possessions by the ayd of affinity and gave unto Helenus the Son of King Priamus for his singular knowledge in Prophecy the Kingdom of Chaonia and Andromache the relict of Hector to wife whom in the division of the Trojan booty he took unto his own bed Not long after he was slain at Delphos between the Altars of the god by the teachery of Orestes the Son of Agamemnon Piales his Son succeeded him and by order of succession the Kingdom was devolved to Arymbas who being of a tenderage and the onely child that remayned of that Regal Family had Guardians assigned him with great care both for his preservation his education And being sent to Athens to be instructed there he was so much the more acceptable to the people as he was more learned then all his Predecessors He first made Laws and ordained a Senate and yearly Magistrats and the form of a Commonwealth and as the Country became more famous by Pyrrhus so it was reduced to more humanity under the Government of Arymbas His Son was named Neoptolomus from whom Olympias was immediately discended who was the Mother of Alexander the Great and Alexander who after him enjoyed the Kingdom of Epirus and having made war in Italy he was slain amongst the Brutians After his death his brother Aeacides succeeded in the Kingdom who by his daily wars against the Macedonians having too much wearyed and exhausted the people did contract the hatred of the Citizens and being forced into banishment by them he left his Son Pyrrhus a young child of two yeers of age to succeed him in the Kingdom who when he was fought for by the people to be put to death by reason of the hatred which they did bear unto Father he was privately conveyed to the Illyrians and delivered to Beroe the daughter of King Glaucias to be nursed by her who was himself of the Family of the Aeacidans The King either in the compassion of his fortune or delighted with his sportfulness did not onely protect him a long time against Cassander King of Macedonia although he threatned to make war against him for detaining of him but also did adopt him into the succession of the Kingdom with which the Epirots were so overcome that turning their Hatred into Pity they called him back at eleven yeers of age having set Guardians over him who were to govern the Kingdom until he arrived to maturity of age Being a young man he made many wat 's and began to be so great in the success thereof that he seemed alone to be able to defend the Tarentines against the Romans THE Eighteenth BOOK OF IVSTINE PYrrhus therefore King of Epirus being again wearyed by a new Embassie of the Tarentines and by the Petitions of the Lucanians and Samnites who also needed ayd against the Romans was not much induced by the Petitions of the Suppliants as by the hope of invading the Empire of Italy and did promise that he would assist them with his Army The E◠amples of his Ancestors did carry him on med violently to it being well enclined to it of himself that he might not seem to be inferior to his Uncle Alexander whom the same Tarantines used as their Protector against the Brutians or to have less resolution then Alexander the Great who in a war so remote from his own Country had subdued the East Therefore having left his Son Ptolomy about the fifteenth yeer of his age to be the Keeper of his Kingdom he landed his Army in the Haven of Tarentum having taken with him his two young Sons Alexander and Helenus to be some solace to him in so remote an Expedition Valerius Levinus the Roman Consul having heard of his arrival did march towards him with all speed with a resolution to give him battel before his Auxiliaries could be drawn together And having put his Army in array the King though inferiour in the number of Souldiers made no delay to encounter him The Romans being Conquerors at first were amazed and enforced to forsake the battel at the unusal sight and charge of the Elephants these strange monsters of the Macedonians did on a sudden conquer the Conquerors neither had their Enemies an unbloody victory For Pyrrhus himself was grievously wounded and 〈◊〉 great part of his Souldiers being slain he 〈◊〉 a greater glory then a joy of the Victory Many of the Cities of Italy following the event of this battel did deliver themselves to Pyrrhus Amongst the rest the Locri having betrayed the Roman Garrison did submit to Pyrrhus Pyrrhus out of the booty which he took sent back to Rome two hundred Souldiers whom he had taken Prisoners without any ransom that the Romans might take notice as well of his liberality as of his valour Some time being passed when the Army of the Associates were drawn altogether he joyned in battel again with the Romans in which his fortune was the same as in the former In the mean time Mago the General of the Carthaginians being sent with one hundred and twenty ships to bring Auxiliaries to the Romans did address himself to the Senate affirming that the Carthaginians did deeply resent that in Italy they should suffer the calamity of war from a forraign King For which cause he was sent that the Romans being enfested by a forraign Enemy they should also be relieved by a forraign Enemy The Senate having returned their hearty thanks to the Carthaginians did send back their Auxiliaries But Mago after the fine subtilty of the Punick wit after a few days did repair privately to Pyrrhus as
a long time they had fought unfortunately in Sicily the war being translated into Sardina they were overthrown in a great battel having lost the best part of their Army for which they commanded Macheus under whose conduct they had subdued a part of Sicily and performed great atchievements against the Africans to be banished with the part of the Army which remained Which the Souldiers took so heavily that they sent Ambassadors to Carthage who in the first place were to desire the liberty to return into their Country and a pardon for their unhappy warfare and if not to declare unto them That if they could not obtain it by entreaties they would command it by arms When the threatnings as well as the Petitions of the Ambassadors were despised they not long after having embarked themselves did advance in arms unto the City There having called both the gods and men to witness that they came not to ruine but to be restored to their Country and to manifest to the Citizens that in the managing of the former war they wanted not valour but fortune having besieged the City and cut off all provisions from coming to it they brought the Carthaginians to the lowest desperation In the mean time Cartalo the Son of the banished Machaeus when he was sent for by his Father as he passed by the Leaguer in his return from Tyre to which place he was sent by the Carthaginians to carry the Tenths to Hercules out of the Sicilian prey which his Father took he returned answer That he would first discharge the obligations of publick Religion before the duties of private piety This answer although it much troubled his Father yet he durst not offer any violence to Religion Not long after the people having made Cartalo their Agent to desire that Machaeus would suffer provisions to be brought with safety to the City when he came unto his Father being cloathed in purple and the fillets of the Priesthood hanging down from his Miter his Father calling him aside did speak unto him And how darest thou wretch as thou art to approach into the presence of so many miserable Citizens cloathed in that purple glistering with gold How darest thou as it were in triumph to enter into our sad mournful Tents in such a slowing habit and ornaments of quiet felicity Couldst thou finde none else to whom to vaunt thy self was there no place so fit for thee as this Camp where is nothing to be represented but the sordid condition of thy Father and the reproaches of his unhappy banishment Not many daies since being sent for by me thou didst not onely proudly despise I will not say thy Father but I am confident the General of thy own Citizens And what shewest thou more in that purple and those Crowns then the titles of my Victories Since therefore thou wilt acknowledge nothing of a Father but the title onely of a banished man I am resolved to shew my self not like a Father but a Souldier and I will make thee an Example that none hereafter shall be so bold as to scorn the unhappy miseries of his Father having said this he commanded him to be fastned to a most high Cross in his gorgeous habiliments in the sight of the whole City Some few days afterwards he surprized Carthage and having called forth the people to an Assembly he complained of the injury of his banishment he excused the necessity of the war he forgave the contempt of his former Victories having punished the chief Authors of the injurious banishment of the miserable Citizens he pardoned all the rest And having put to death ten of the Senators he restored the City to her former Laws And not long after being accused to have affected the Kingdom he suffered double punishment both for the murder of his Son and for the violation of the liberties of his Country In his place Mago was chosen General by whose industry and courage the wealth of the Carthaginians and the limits of their Empire and their glory in the affairs of war increased THE Nineteenth BOOK OF IVSTINE MAgo the General of the Carthaginians having established their government by an orderly course of military Discipline and confirmed the strength of that City as well by the art of war as by his policy deceased having left behind him two Sons Asdrubal and Amilcar who treading in the pathes of their Fathers vertue did succeed as well in the greatness as in the genealogy of their Father Under their conduct war made against the Illyrians They fought also against the Africans demanding the Tribute for the ground of their City the payment whereof for many yeers was neglected But as the cause of the Africans was more just so their fortune was better And the war was concluded with them not by Arms but with the payment of the moneys And Asdrubal being grievously wounded dyed in Sardinia having delivered up the Government to his brother Amilcar The general lamentation in the City and his eleven Dictatorships and four Triumphs did make his death the more remarkable The courage also of the Enemy did encrease as if the Carthaginians had lost their Army with their Captain The people therefore of Sicilia having addressed themselves to Leonidas brother of the King of the Spartans by reason of the daily injuries committed by the Carthanigians the war between them continued long with various success Whiles these things were in action Ambassadors came to Carthage from Darius King of the Persians bringing an Edict with them in which the Carthaginians were forbidden to sacrifice men upon their Altars as also to eat the flesh of dogs they were also commanded to burn and not to bury in the ground the bodies of the dead they desired also ayd of the Carthaginians against the Grecians on whom Darius was resolved to make war But the Carthaginians refusing to send Auxiliaries by reason of the daily wars with their Neighbors did readily obey him in the rest lest that they might seem to be obstinate altogether Amilcar in the mean time was killed in the Sicilian war having left behind him three Sons Hamilco Hanno and Gisco Asdrubal also had the same number of Sons Annibal Asdrubal and Sapho by whom the affairs of the Carthaginians were governed in those times they invaded the Mauritanians and fought against the Numidians and the Africans were compelled to remit the Tribute which was demanded for their City Afterwards when so a great a Family of the chief Commanders began to be heavie to the City because they did act and determine all things of themselves the City made choyce of one hundred of the Senators unto whom the Generals returning from the war were to give an account of what they had done for the publick service that being under the power of this supream Court they might so in war dispose of their Commands that they might have a regard to Justice and to the Laws at home Amilco succeeded General in Sicily in the
commanded him to be brought into the Theater that they might all have a full view of him whom every one conceived to be impossible to be taken Being brought afterwards unto the Dungeon in the respect to his greatness they gave him poyson which he took as cheerfully as if he had conquered death as he had heretofore his Enemies He demanded afterwards if his Lieutenant Generall Lycortal whom he knew to be second to him in the affairs of war had escaped and having understood that he was alive and in safety he said Then it goes not altogether so ill with the Achaians and speaking those words he died Not long after the war being renewed the Messenians were overcome and they endured the punishment for the death of Philopemenes In the mean time Antiochus King of Syria when he was oppressed by the Romans with too great a Tribute and groaned under the burden of it either enforced by the want of money or sollicited by avarice by which under the pretence of a necessitated Tribute he hoped that he more excusedly should commit Sacriledge having drawn an Army together did by night assault the Temple of Dindymaean Jove Which being discovered he was slain with all his Army by a concourse of the Inhabitants When many Cities of Greece â—ame to Rome to complain of the Injuries of Philip King of the Macedons And there was a great dispute in the Senate between Demetrius the Son of Philip whom his father had sent to satisfie the Senate and the Ambassadors of the Cities the young man being confused with the multitude of complaints made against his Father did on a suddain hold his peace The Senate being moved with his shamefastness by which in a private condition he before endeered himself to all when he was an Hostage at Rome did give him the cause and thus Demetrius by his modesty obtained pardon for his Father not by the right or plea of defence but by the patronage of his modesty which was signified by the Decree of the Senate that it might appear that the King was not absolved but the Father rather was given to the Son Which procured to Demetrius not the grace of an Ambassador but the hatred of obtrectation It pulled upon him the emulation and envy of his brother Philip and the cause of the pardon being known to his Father who was pardoned it became an offence Philip disdayning that the person of his Son was of more moment with the Senate then the Authority of the Father or the dignity of regall Majesty Perseus therefore having observed the sickness of his Father did bring daily complaint unto him against Demetrius being absent and at first did cause him to be hated and afterwards to be suspected by him sometimes he did object against him the freindship of the Romans and sometimes treason against his Father At the last he counterfeited that treacheries were prepared by him against his person to be put suddenly in Execution to the trial and proof whereof the Judges were sent for the suborned witnesses examined and the Charge was proved which was objected against him By those unjust proceedings the Father being compelled to parricide did make sad all the Court with the execution of his Son Demetrius being slain Perseus grew not more dutifull but more contumatious against his Father and carried himself not as an heir of the Kingdom but as the King himself with which Philip being offended did daily more impatiently lament the death of Demetrius and suspecting that he was circumvented by the Treachery of Perseus he caused the witnesses and the Judges to be tormented And having by this means discovered the deceit he was no less afflicted with the wickedness of Perseus then with the innocent death of Demetrius which he was resolved to have revenged if he had not been prevented by death For not long after his disease encreasing by the Melancholy and perplexedness of his spirit he deceased having left great preparations of war against the Romans which Perseus afterwards employed For he enforced the Gaules called Scordisci to joyn in league with him and he had made a great war against the Romans if he had not died For the Gaules the war against the Delphians being unfortunately mannaged in which they found the power of God to be more great and present then the power of their Enemies having lost Brennus their Generall some part of them did fly into Asia and some part did wander up and down in Thracia From whence in the same path in which they marched forth they returned to their antient Country Of these a considerable number did sit down in the Confluent of the River Danubius and called themselves by the name of Scordisci But the Tectosagi when they arrived at their antient Country of Tholouse were there visited by the Pestilence and recovered not their health untill being admonished by the answers of the Diviners they had drowned all their Gold and Silver which they had got by Sacriledge in the Lake of Tholouse all which Coepio the Roman Consul did a long time afterwards take away There was in all one hundred and twenty thousand weight of Gold and five millions of Silver which Sacriledge was the cause afterwards of the destruction of Coepio and all his Army The tumult also of the Cambrian war did follow the Romans as the revenge of the violation of the consecrated money Not a small number of the Nation of the Tectosagi did seat themselves in Illyricum being delighted with the sweetness of the Air and the Prey and having spoyled the Istrians they did inhabite Pannonia Fame reports that the Nation of the Istrians do derive their Originall from Colchos being sent by King Aetus to the Argonauts to pursue the ravisher of his daughter who as soon as they entered into Ister out of Pontus having sailed far into the Channel of the River Sais following the steps of the Argonauts they carried their ships on their shoulders over the cliffes of the hills untill they came to the shore of the Adriatick Sea having understood that the Argonauts by reason of the length of their Ship had done the same before them whom when the Colchians did not receive they either through fear of their King or the tediousness of their long Navigation did sit down at last neer to Aquileia and were called Istrians after the Name of the River into the which from the Sea they sayled The Dacians also are a Generation of the Getes who when they fought unfortunately under Olor their King against the Bastarnians were commanded that when they were in bed they should to expiate their sloth lay their feet where they should rest their heads and perform those houshold offices and services to their wives which their wives before were accustomed to do to them Neither was this custome changed untill by their courage they had wiped away the old Ignominy which they had received in the war Perseus when he succeeded in the Kingdom of Philip his
Father did excite all these Nations to joyn in assistance with him against the Romans In the mean time there did arise a war betwixt King Prusias to whom Annibal fled after the peace granted to Antiochus by the Romans and Eumenes Which war Prusias first began having broken the League through the confidence he had in Annibal For Annibal when amongst other of the Articles of the Treaty the Romans did demand of Antiochus that he should deliver him up unto them being advertised by Antiochus of it did fly to Crete Where having lived for many years a quiet life and found himself envied by reason of his excessive wealth he deposed in the Temple of Diana pitchers filled with Lead as the safegard of his fortune and the City being no wayes jealous of him because they had his fortunes with them as his he repaired to King Prusias his Gold which he carried with him being melted and poured into hollow Statues least his riches being discovered should be a hinderance to his life Prusias being overcome by King Eumenes by land and intending to try the fortune of a Battel by Sea Annibal by a new invention was the Author of the Victory For he commanded that all kinds of Serpents stored into earthen Vessels in the middle of the Battel should be thrown into the Ships of their Enemies It seemed ridiculous to the Enemies at first that they should Arm themselves and fight with earthen Pots who could not encounter their Enemies with swords But when their Ships began to be filled with the Serpents they were circumvented with a doubtfull and double danger and yeilded the Victory to their Enemies When these things were declared at Rome Ambassadors were sent by the Senate to make a reconciliation betwixt both Kings and to demand the person of Annibal but Annibal having notice of it did take poyson and prevented the Embassy by death This year was remarkable by the death of three of the most famous Generals in the world Annibal Philopemenes and Scipio Africanus Most certain it is that Annibal when Italy trembled at the thunder of his Arms did never sit down when he did eat nor did ever drink more at once then one pint of wine and so great was his chastity amongst so many Captives that who would deny that he was born in Africa It was undoubtedly a great Argument of his moderation that when he commanded an Army of divers Nations he was never set upon by any treachery of his own men nor betrayed by the deceit of others when his Enemies had oftentimes attempted both against him THE Three and Thirtieth BOOK OF IVSTINE THe Romans mannaged the Macedonian war with less noise and trouble then they did the Carhaginian But with so much the more honour as the Macedons in fame did exceed the Carthaginians For the Macedonians were not onely encouraged with the glory of the conquered East but assisted with the Auxiliaries of all Kings Therefore the Romans sent more Embassies to their Associates and received Auxiliaries from Messanissa King of the Numidians and from others of their Confederates And amessage was sent to Eumenes King of the Bithynians to contribute to the war with all his powers And besides the opinion that the Army of the Macedons was invincible Perseus had provision for ten years war laid up byhis Father both in his Exchequer and his Granaries with which being growng insolent forgetful of his Fathers fortune he commanded his Soldiers to call to mind the Ancient glory of Alexander The first encounter was of the horse onely in which Perseus being Conqueror made all men begin to doubt and to incline to his side Howsoever he sent Ambassadors to the Consul to desire that peace which the Romans had given to his Father being overcome offering to defray the charges of the war as if he had been overcome himself But Sulpitius the Consul did give him no other conditions then what the conquered were accustomed to receive In the mean time through the fear of so dangerous a war the Romans made Aemylius Paulus Consul and decreed unto him contrary to custome the Macedonian war who when he came unto the Army did make no long delay of the battail On the night before there was an Ecclipse of the Moon All men judged that it was a sad portent for Perseus and that the end of the Macedonian Empire was thereby presaged In that Battel Marcus Cato the Son of Cato the Orator when amongst the thickest of his Enemies he gave admirable Demonstrations of his valor having fallen from his horse did fight on foot For a band of the Enemies with a horrid cry did stand round about him falling on him as if they would have killed him lying on the ground Bur he having suddenly recollected himself did get upon his feet and made a great slaughter of his Enemies the Macedons did surround him on every side and did throw themselves upon him to take away his life but he striking at one of the Commanders his sword flying from his hand did fall into the midst of a cohort of his Enemies to recover which protecting himself with his Buckler both Armies looking on he was covered with the swords of his Enemies having gained his sword and received many wounds he returned with a general acclamation to the Army his fellows imitating his valor obtained the Victory Perseus the King fled to Samothracia carrying with him ten thousand talents And Cneus Octavius being sent by the Consul to pursue him did take him prisoner with his two Sons Alexander and Philip and brought them to the Consul Macedonia had from her first King Caranus to Perseus thirty Kings But she was not famous for Soveraignty above one hundred and ninty three years when she came into the power of the Romans she was made free Magistrates being constituted through the several Cities and she received those Laws from Aemylius Paulus which to this day she doth observe The Senates of all the Cities of the Aetolians because they were uncertain in their fidelity were sent with their wives and children unto Rome and were a long time detained there that they might make no innovation in their Countries but the City being wearyed with the importunities of many Ambassadors they were hardly after many years suffered to return into their Countries THE Four and thirtyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE THe Carthaginians and Macedonians being subdued and the strength of thâ— Aetolians being weakned by the Captivity of their Princes the Achaians onely of all Greece did seem at that time most powerful to the Romans not by the excessive wealth of every one of their particular Cities but by the combination of them all for although the Achaians be divided by their Cities as by so many members yet they have one Body and one Command they beat off the dangers which threaten particular Cities with their mutual strength The Romans therefore seeking out an occasion of the war fortune did luckily present them with the
apprehended him he commanded him to be kept bound at Seleucia nevertheless the Antiochians being no ways terrified at it did continue in their rebellion against him Therefore Ptolomy King of Egypt Attalus King of Asia and Ariathes King of Cappadocia being all provoked by him to war they suborned one Prompalus a young man but of a most sordid birth and condition to challenge the Kingdom of Syria as if derived to him from his Father and if denied to recover it by force of Arms And that nothing should be wanting to the pretence he was called by the name of Alexander and reported to be the Son of Antiochus So general a hatred they did bear to Demetrius that not onely Kingly powers but the Nobility of birth also by the consent of all was bestowed on this counterfeit Alexander therefore forgetting the baseness of his former condition through the wonderful variety of events being attended with the Forces of all the East did make war upon Demetrius and having overcome him did deprive him at once both of his life and Kingdom Howsoever Demetrius wanted neither care nor courage to provide for the War for in the first encounter he routed his Adversary and the King again renewing the War he killed afterwards in battel many thousands of his Enemies At last with an invincible courage he fell fighting most gallantly amongst the thickest of his Enemies In the beginning of the War Demetrius commended both his Sons with a vast sum of Gold to his Guest Gnidius both that they should be exempted from the dangers of the War and if fortune so ordained it that they should be preserved to revenge their Fathers death The eldest of these Demetrius by name being about the sixteenth year of his age having heard of the luxury of Alexander whom such unlooked for possessions and the royal ornaments belonging to another did keep a Prisoner in his own Court amongst throngs of Concubines the Cretians helping him did set upon him secure and fearing no Enemy at all The Antiochians also recompencing their old offence committed against his Father with new deservings did surrender themselves unto him and his Fathers old Souldiers in favor of the young man preferring the Religion of their old oath of fidelity above the pride of this new King did translate both themselves and their Ensigns to Demetrius And thus Alexander being forsaken by no less impetuousness of fortune then he was advanced was overcome and killed in the first encounter and by his punishment satisfied the Ghost both of Demetrius whom he killed and of Antiochus whose original he did counterfeit THE Six and thirtyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE DEmetrius having recovered his Fathers Kingdom and by the success of affairs being corrupted himself did fall through the vice of his youth into sloth and riot and contracted as much contempt by his sloth as his Father had hatred by his pride Therefore when the Cities did everywhere revolt from his Command to wipe away the blemish of his idleness he made War upon the Parthians The Eastern Nations did not unwillingly behold his approach both for the cruelty of Arsacidas King of the Parthians and for that being accustomed to the ancient Command of the Macedonians they did with indignation endure the arrogance of this new people Therefore being assisted with the Auxiliaries of the Persians Elamites and the Brastrians he overthrew the Parthians in many battels At last being circumvented by the pretence of a peace he was taken and being led in triumph through the Cities he was shewed as a mock of their favour to the people that revolted and being afterwards sent into Hyrcania he was honourably intreated according to the dignity of his former Fortune Whiles those things thus passed Trifo who laboured in Syria to be constituted by the people to be the Guardian of Antiochus the privign of Demetrius having slain the young Prince did invade the Kingdom of Syria which having a long time enjoyed the favour of his new Command growing out of date at last he was overcome by Antiochus the Brother of Demetrius a very young man who was bred up in the Wars of Asia and thus the Kingdom of Syria was again devolved to the Issue of Demetrius This Antiochus being mindful that both his Father was hated for his pride and his Brother made contemptible by his sloth that he might not fall into the same vices having first married Cleopatra his Brothers wife he followed the War with great resolution against the Cities which revolted in the beginning of his Brothers raign which being subdued he added them to the bounds of his Empire He also overcame the Jews who under his Father Demetrius in the Macedonian Empire had by their arms redeemed themselves into liberty So great was their power that after him they would not endure any King of the Macedons and using their own Governours they infested Syria with great Wars The Jews derive their Original from Damascus which is the most noble of the Cities of Syria and the Syrian Kings do boast their discent in a direct line from Queen Semiramis The name of Damascus was given to the City by Damascus who was King of it in the honour of whom the Syrians have worshipped the Sepulcher of his wife Arathes as a Temple and esteemed her a Goddess in the height of their most Religious devotions After Damascus Abraham Moses and Israel were Kings But the happy Issue of ten children made Israel more famous then the rest of his Ancestors he delivered to his Sons the people divided into ten Tribes or Kingdoms and commanded that they should be all called Jewes after the name Judah who dyed not long after the division of the Kingdoms whose memory he commanded should be reverenced by them His portion was distributed amongst them all and Joseph was the youngest of the brethren who fearing his excellent wit having privately intercepted him they sold him to forraign Merchants by whom being brought into Egypt when by the sharpness of his apprehension he had learned there the Magick Arts he became in a short time most gracious with the King for he was most sagacious in the discovery of wonderful events and was the first of all who found out the understanding of dreams and there seemed nothing unknown unto him which belonged to the Laws either of God or men insomuch that many years before it came to pass he foresaw the barrenness of the Fields and Egypt had been destroyed by Famine if the King by his admonition had not given command that the fruits of the Earth should for many years together be preserved And so great was his Experience that his Answers seemed to be given not from a man but God Moses was his Son whom besides his hereditary knowledge the excellency of his beauty did commend But when the Egyptians were plagued with itch and scabs they were admonished by the Oracle to expel him with the sick from the bounds of Egypt least the contagion of the disease should
spread over all Being therefore made Captain of the banished persons he took away by stealth the sacred things of the Egyptians which they attempting to recover by arms were enforced to return back by Tempests Moses therefore on his return to his ancient Country of Damascus did possess himself of Mount Sinai where he and his people being afflicted with seven dayes continued fast in the Desarts of Arabia when he arrived to his journeys end he by a fast consecrated the seventh day to all Posterity and according to the language of his Nation did call it the Sabbath because that day did put a period both to their fasting and their travel And in remembrance that they were driven from Egypt for fear of the contagion least for the same cause they might be hated by the Inhabitants they provided by a Law that they should not communicate with strangers which beginning first from Policy was by degrees turned afterwards into Discipline and Religion After the death of Moses his Son Arvas who was a Priest also in the Egyptians Religion was created King and it was always afterwards a Custom amongst the Jews that they had the same men both for Kings and Priests whose justice being mixt with Religion it is incredible how greatly they did prosper The weath of the Nation did arise from the profits of the Opobalsamum which doth only grow in those Countries for it is a Valley like a Garden which is invironed with continual Hils and aâ— it were inclosed with a Wall The space of the Valley containeth two hundred thousand Acres and it is called Jericho In that Valley there is a Wood as admirable for its fruitfulness as for its delight for it is intermingled with Palm-Trees and Opobalsamum The Trees of the Opobalsamum have a resemblance like to Firr-Trees but that they are lower and are planted and husbanded after the manner of Vines On a set season of the year they do sweat Balsom The darkness of of the place is besides as wonderful as the fruitfulness of it For although the Sun shines nowhere hotter in the World there is naturally a moderate and a perpetual darkness of the Ayr There is a Lake also in that Country which by reason of its greatness and unmoveableness of the water is calld the dead Sea fot it is neither stirred with the Winds the glutinous substance with which all the water is covered resisting their violence neither is it patient of Navigation for all things wanting life do presently sink into the bottom neither doth it sustain any matter unless it be washed over with Roch-Allum dissolved Xerxes King of the Persians did first overcome the Jews they came afterwards with the Persians themselves into the power of Alexander the great and a long time they continued in subjection to the Macedonian Empire when they revolted from Demetrius and desired the friendship of the Romans they first of all the East did receive their liberty the Romans at that time giving freely out of other mens possessions In the same time in which the change of Government in Syria was alternately managed by the new Kings Attalus King of Asia polluted that most flourishing Kingdom received from his Uncle Eumenes with the slaughters of his friends and the punishments of his neerest kinred feigning sometimes that the old woman his Mother sometimes that his wife Beronice were slain by their treasonable practices After the fury of this most wicked violence he did put on ragged clothes and made short his beard and the hair of his head after the manner of the guilty he would not be seen in publick nor shew himself to the people he would have no feasts of mirth at home or any appearance of a sober man as if he would altogether by taking punishment on himself give satisfaction to the Ghosts of the slain At the last having forborn the administration of his Kingdom he digged in gardens sowed seeds and mingled the good with the hurtful and having steeped them all in the juyce of poyson he sent them as a peculiar gift unto his friends From this study he gave himself to the Art of making of brass and in the invention of tools and things belonging to it and much delighted himself with the melting and the minting of pieces in Brass After this he bent all his endeavours and design to make a Tomb for his Mother at which work being too intent he contracted a disease by the immoderate heat of the Sun and died the seventh day afterwards By his Testament the People of Rome were made Heirs But there was one Aristonicus descended from Eumenes not by lawful marriage but born of an Ephesian Strumpet the Daughter of a Fidler who after the death of Attalus did invade Asia as his Fathers Kingdom And having made many happy encounters against the Cities which for fear of the Romans would not deliver themselves unto him he seemed now to be a King in earnest wherefore Asia was decreed to Licinus Crassus the Consul who being more intent to the Attalick booty then to the war when in the end of the year he entred into Battail with the Enemy with a disordered Army being overcome he with his own blood suffered for his inconsiderate avarice The Consul Perpenna being sent to supply his place at the first encounter did overcome Aristonicus and brought him under subjection and carried with him unto Rome the hereditary treasures of Attalus which his successor the Consul Marcus Aquilius repining at did make all possible haste to snatch away Aristonicus from Perpenna to become the gift and honor of his Triumph But the death of Perpenna did end the difference of the Consuls and thus Asia being made the Romans she sent also with her wealth her vices unto Rome THE Seven and thirtieth BOOK OF IVSTINE ARistonicus being taken the Massilians sent Ambassadors to Rome humbly intreating for the Phocensians their Founders whose City and the memory of whose Name because they were alwayes implacable Enemies to the people of Rome both at that time and before in the war of Antiochus the Senate commanded should be utterly extinguished but a pardon was granted by the importunity of the Ambassadors After this the rewards were given to those Kings who brought in their Auxiliary forces against Aristonicus Syria the less was bestowed on Mithridates of Pontus Lycaonia and Cilicia were given to the sons of Ariarathes who fell himself in that war and the people of Rome were more faithful to the sons of their Confederate Ariarathes then the Mother was to her own children for they encreased the Dominions of his son in his nonage and she took away his life from him For Laodice having in number six sons by King Ariarathes fearing that they growing into years she should no longer enjoy the administration of the Kingdom did destroy five of them by poyson The care of his Kindred did preserve the yongest from the violence of the Mother who after the death of Laodice for the
of the Conqueror but to plead for her besides the Laws of war there was also the contiguitie of blood she being her own sister against whom so bloodily she raged and his own cosen German and the mother of children betwixt them to this neer relation of consanguinitie he added the superstition of the Temple to which she fled to protect her self and that the gods were so much the more religiously to be worshipped as they were more propitious and favourable to him in his conquest besides she being slain nothing was diminished of the strength and power of Cyricaenus But by how much Gryphus was the more unwilling by so much her sister was inflamed with a female pertinatiousness conceiving those words of his proceeded from love and not from pittie Therefore having called the Souldiers to her she sent them her self to kill her sister who entering into the Temple when they could not drag her out of it they cut off her hands holding fast on the Image of the goddess and in her last words having cursed the Author of the Parricide the gods besides being violated she died but to revenge her self for not long after another battaile being fought and Cyricaenus Conquerour he took Gryphina the wife of Gryphus prisoner who killed her sister and by her death did parentate to the Ghosts of his wife But Cleopatra in Egypt when she was offended that her Son Ptolomy was her companion in the Kingdom she excited the people against him and having taken from him his Wife Seleuce and so much the more unworthily because he had two children by her she compelled him to live a banished life having sent for her younger Son Alexander and crowned him King in the place of his Brother and being not content to have banished him out of the Kingdom she prosecuted a War against him in Cyprus and having driven him from thence also she killed the General of her own Army because he permitted him to escape alive out of his hands although Ptolomy being no wayes inferior to him in strength did willingly depart out of the Iland that he might not be engaged in a War against his own Mother Alexander being terrified with this cruelty of his Mother did also himself forsake her preferring a safe and quiet life above a dangerous Kingdom But Cleopatra fearing that her eldest Son Ptolomy should be assisted by Cyricaenus to be by him restored into Egypt did send great Ayds to Gryphus and Seleuce to be his wife who must now be espoused to the Enemy of her former husband and by Ambassadors called back Alexander her Son into the Kingdom whose life when by treachery she contrived to take away being prevented by him she was killed herself and yielded up her spirit not by fate but parricide Worthy she was of this infamy of death who drove her own Mother from the bed of her husband and possessed her room in it and successively made her two Daughters Widows after their alternate marriage with their own Brothers who banished one of them afterwards made war against him and having taken the Kingdom also from the other did endeavor to put him to death by treachery But Alexander had the leisure to repent of this horrible act for when ever it was known that the Mother was slain by the violence of the Son he was forced into banishment by the people and Ptolomy being called back the Kingdom was restored to him who would neither make War with his Mother nor take away by Arms from his brother what he himself did first possess Whiles these things were thus carryed his brother begotten on a Concubine to whom his Father in his Will did leave the Kingdom of Cyrene did decease having made the people of Rome his Heir for now the fortune of Rome being not content with the bounds of Italy did begin to extend it self to the Kingdoms of the East Therefore that part of Lybia was made a Province and afterwards Crete and Cilicia being subdued in the Piratick War were reduced into the form of a Province by which meanes the Kingdoms of Syria and Egypt being streightned by the Roman neighbourhood and accustomed heretofore to raise advantages to themselves by Wars with those who were next unto them the power of wandring abroad being taken away they turned their own strength into their own bowels insomuch that consuming themselves with daily encounters they grew into contempt with their neighbors and became a prey to the Nation of the Arabians but weak and contemptible before whose King Herotimus in the confidence of six hundred Sons begotten on divers Concubines with divided Armies did sometimes invade and plunder Egypt and sometimes Syria and advanced the name of the Arabians making it great by the weakness of the neighbouring Princes THE Fortyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE THe mutual hatreds of the Brothers and not long afterwards the enmity of the Sons succeeding the hatred of their Parents when both the Kings and Kingdom of Syria was consumed by an inexpiable War the people were enforced to seek forraign Ayd and began to look upon the Kings that were strangers to them Therefore when one part of them were of opinion that Mithridates should be sent for out of Pontus and another part thought that Ptolomy should be sent for out of Egypt it being advertised that Mithridates was involved in the Roman War and that Ptolomy was an Enemy unto Syria they all agreed upon Tigranes King of Armenia who was supplyed besides his own strength with the Society of the Parthians and the affinity of Mithridates Tigranes being therefore sent for into the Kingdom of Syria for the space of eighteen years most peaceably enjoyed the Kingdom neither did he provoke any by War neither being provoked did he conceive it necessary to make war against any other But as Syria was safe from the in vasion of Enemies so it was made desolate by an Earthquake in which one hundred and seventy thousand persons and many Cities were destroyed The South-sayers being consulted did make answer that this Prodigie did portend the change of affairs in the Kingdoms of the East Tigranes therefore being overcome by Lucullus Antiochus the Son of Cyricaenus was made King of Syria by him But what Lucullus gave Pompey afterwards did take away for he demanding the Kingdom of him he made answer That he would not make him King of Syria either desiring or refusing it having for the space of eighteen years during which Tigranes possessed Syria dishonourably concealed himself in a corner of Cilicia but Tigranes being overcome he now desired of the Romans the reward of another mans labour Therefore as he did not dispossess him of the Kingdom when he had it so because he gave way to Tigranes he would not grant him that which he could not defend least he should render Syria again obnoxious to the robberies of the Arabians and the Jewes He therefore reduced it into the form of a Province and thus by the discord of the
commanded himself to be called King whose Example all the people of the East following there was a general revolt from the Macedons There was in those times a man called Arsaces of an uncertain birth but of an undoubted courage who being accustomed to live by theft and upon the spoyl having understood that Seleucus was overcome by the Gauls being delivered from the fear the danger of him having invaded the Parthians with a company of Thieves he suppressed Andragores their Lieutenant and not long after having killed him he usurped the Empire of that Nation After that he possessed himself of the Kingdom of the Hyrcanians and having thus invested himself with the command of two Cities he prepared a great Army for the fear of Seleucus and Theodotus King of the Bactrians but being quickly delivered from his fear by the death of Theodotus he entred into a League and Covenant with his Son whose name was Theodotus also and not long after he encountring with King Seleucus who advanced with his Army to make War against the Revolters he overcame him the day of which Conquest the Parthians observe in their Almanacks as an Holiday it being the beginning of their liberty Seleucus being called back and some intermission of time being given to the new troubles in Asia he founded and formed the Parthian Kingdom and made choyce of a Militia he fortified the Castles and confimed the Cities and erected the City Clara on the Mount of Thabor such is the condition of that place that there is nothing more secure or more delightful for it is so invironed with Rocks and Clifts that the safety of the place needs no Defeâ—ders and so great is the fruitfulness of the adjacent plains that it is almost oppressed with its own abundance Such a variety there is also both of Fountains and Forrests that copiously it is wa ered and attracteth the neighbouring people with the delight of hunting Arsaces in this manner having both attempted and obtained a Kingdom became no less famous amongst the Parthians then Cyrus amongst the Persians or Alexander amongst the Macedons or Romulus amongst the Romans and deceased in a ripe old Age. To whose memory the Parthians have ascribed this honour that they have ever since called all their succeeding Kings by the name of Arsaces His Son and Successor was also himself called Arsaces who commanding an Army of one hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse did with admirable prowess fight against Antiochus the Son of Seleucus with one hundred thousand foot twenty thousand horse and at last he entred into a Confederary with him Pampatius was the third King of the P rthians and he also was called Arsaces for as I have mentioned heretofore the Parthians by that name called all their Kings as the Romans do call every Emperour Caesar and Augustus He having raigned twelve years deceased having left behind him two Sons Mithridates and Pharnaces Pharnaces being the elder did inherit the Kingdom after the Custom of the Nation and having overcome the valiant Nation of the Mardi he not long after dyed having left behind him many Sons who being all rejected by him he left the Kingdom to his brother Mithridates a man admirable for his Vertue thinking that he owed more to his Kingdom then to the name of a Father and was more obliged to provide for his Country then his children At the same time almost as Mithridates began his Raign in Parthia Eucratides was invested in the Kingdom of Bactria being both of them men of excellent Spirits But the fortune of the Parthians being more happy that Nation was advanced under the raign of Mithridates to the height of all their glory but the Bactrians being distressed by several Wars did at the last not onely lose their Kingdom but their liberty For being wearyed with the Wars of the Sogdians the Dranganits and the Indians they were at last as men without spirit or blood suppressed by an inconsiderable number of the Parthians Howsoever Eucratides mannaged many Wars with great resolution being much wasted with which when he was at last beleaguered by Demetirus King of the Indians he by daily sallies with three thousand men did overcome threescore thousand of his Enemies and having raised the siege in the fifth Moneth after it was begun he made India stoop in obedience to him from whence when he withdrew his Army he was killed in the march homewards by his own Son whom he made partner with him in the Kingdom who not dissembling the murder of his Father as if he had killed an Enemy rather then a Father caused his Chariot to be hurried over the place where his blood was spilt and commanded that his body should be thrown away as unworthy to be buryed Whiles these things thus passed amongst the Bactrians a new War did arise amongst the Parthians and the Medes and the fortune of both Nations being a long time various the Bactrians were at last overcome by the Parthians Mithridates being more formidable by this access of new power did make Bacasus his Lieutenant in the Kingdom of Media and marched himself into Hyrcania From whence being returned he waged War with the King of the Elamits who being overcome he also added that Nation to his Kingdom and many Nations being subdued he extended the Empire of the Parthians from Mount Caucasus to the River of Euphrates and being at last visited with sickness he dyed in an old age no less glorious then Arsaces his Grandfather THE Two and fortyeth BOOK OF IVSTINE AFter the death of Mithridates King of the Parthians Phrahartes his Son was made King who when he determined to make War on Syria to be revenged on Antiochus who attempted the Parthians Kingdom he was called back by the commotion of the Scythians to defend his own possessions for the Scythians being sollicited with the promise of great rewards to help the Parthians against King Antiochus they came with their Auxiliaries just when the War was ended when they were denyed their pay to reproach them for their assistance which came so late the Scythians grieving that they had made so great a march to so little purpose when they desired that either their pay should be given them for their travel or an Enemy with whom they might encounter they had a proud answer returned them whereat being incensed they began to plunder the Borders of the Parthians Phrahartes therefore advancing against the Scythians did leave one Hymerus for the defence of his Kingdom having obliged him by his love from the flower of his youth who unmindful of the courtesies received and whose substitute he was did afflict the Babylonians and many other Cities with tyrannical cruelty Phrahartes himself in this War did proudly and insolently deport himself towards the Army of the Grecians whom he had then with him having taken them prisoners in the War which he made against Antiochus being altogether unmindful that no Captivity could abate their spirits and that
of the Sows did nourish him with their milk whereupon at the last he commanded that he should be cast into the Ocean Then by the present power of Providence as if he was carryed rather in a Ship then on the waves by a gentle tide he was brought to the land safe betwixt the raging sands and the reciprocating Billowes And not long after there did appear a Hinde who did offer her strutting dugs unto the little one who by his daily conversation with his nurse became of a wonderful swiftness of body and a long time wandred on the Mountains and the Valleys amongst the herds of the Dear being no ways inferior in his swiftness to them At the last he was taken in a snare and given as a great present to the King and being discovered to be his Nephew by the similitude of his lineaments and by the marks of his body which presently after his birth were burned on it in the admiration of the deliverances from so many chances and dangers he was ordained by the King to be his Successor in the Kingdom his name was called Habis and no sooner was he invested in the Kingdom but he shewed such proofs of nobility and greatness that it appeared he was not in vain delivered from so many dangers by the Majesty of God for by Laws he did unite the barbarous people and taught them how to yoak the Oxen and to plough and sow the ground and enforced them to feed on better nourishment then what the trees or Plants provided belike in the hate of those things which he himself had endured The education of this Prince would seem fabulous but that it is recorded that the Builders of Rome were nourished by a Woolf and that a Bitch did give suck unto Cyrus King of Persia The people were by him forbidden to exercise any servile labour and they were distributed by him into seven Cities Habis being dead the Kingdom for many Generations continued amongst his Successors But in another part of Spain which consisteth most of Ilands the Kingdom was in the power of Geryon In this place there is such abundance of grass and withall so pleasant that if by the providence of the herdsmen the Cattel were not enforced to discontinue feeding their bodies would break by the excess From hence the Droves of Geryon in those times accounted the onely wealth of the world were of that fame amongst the Nations that by the greatness of the booty they allured Hercules out of Asia It is recorded in Story that Geryon was not a Gyant of three bodies as the Fables do make mention but that there were three brothers of so fast a concord that all three seemed to be governed by one minde and that Hercules did not of his own accord make War upon them but having observed that his own droves of Cattle were forced from him he regained of them what he had lost by the sword After the Succession of many Kings in Spain the Carthaginians first of all possessed themselves of it for when the Inhabitants of the Gades being obedient to the vision had translated into Spain the holy things of Hercules from Tyre from which place the Carthaginians also do derive their Original and had builded them there a City the neighbouring people of Spain envying the growing happiness of the new City and upon that account provoking them to War the Carthaginians being of the same kindred did send relief unto them and by a happy Expedition they both vindicated the Gaditans from injury and added the greatest part of Spain to the Empire of their command And afterwards being incited by the fortune of their first Expedition they sent Amilcar their General with a great Army to make themselves masters of all the Province who having performed great atchievements whiles he followed his fortune too inconsiderately he was betrayed in an Ambush and slain Asdrubal his Son-in-law was sent to supply his plae who was slain himself by the servant of a Spaniard in the revenge of the unjust death of his Master Annibal the Son of Amilcar did succeed him and was a greater General then them both for having excelled them in his atchievements he subdued all Spain and having afterwards made war on the Romans he afflicted Italy with several losses and overthrows for the space of 16 years The Romans in the mean time having sent the Scipioes into Spain did first of all drive the Carthaginians out of that Province afterwards they had great Wars with the Spaniards themselves neither could they be conquered to an absolute obedience untill Augustus Caesar having subdued all the world did carry thither his conquering swords and having by Laws brought the barbarous and rude people into a more civil course of life he reduced all Spain into the form of a Province The End of the Books of JVSTINE the HISTORIAN Collections taken from the Books of Sextus Aurelius Victor on the lives and manners of the Roman Emperors from the time of Caesar Augustus to the Emperor Theodosius Octavianus Augustus Caesar IN the seven hundred and two and twentyeth year after the City of Rome was built but in the four hundred and eightieth year after the expulsion of the Kings the custome was renewed at Rome to obey onely one person not entituled a King but an Emperor or by a more reverend Name Augustus Octavianus was the Son of Octavius a Senator by the Mothers side he derived his discent from Aeneas by the Julian Family and by the adoption of Caius Caesar his great Uncle he was called Caius Caesar and by reason of his victories sirnamed Augustus Being established in the Empire he exercised the Tribunitian power of himself He reduced the Country of Egypt being before unpassable by reason of the Marshes and the inundation of Nilus into the form of a Province which that he might make serviceable to the City by the transportation of Corn he caused with the great labour of his Souldiers all the deep ditches to be opened which the negligence of Antiquity had covered with mud In his time four hundred Millions of measures of Corn were brought yearly out of Egypt unto Rome To the number of the Provinces of the people of Rome he added the Cantabrians and Aquanians the Rhoetians Vindelicans Vandals and Dalmatians he overthrew the Swedes and the Cattans and translated the Sycambrians into France and enforced the Pannonians to be tributary to Rome and compelled the people of the Gothes and Bastarnians to a peace having first provoked them to feel his power by War The Persians presented their Hostages unto him and granted him the permission to chuse them a King The Indians moreover and the Scythians the Garamants and Ethiopians did send their Ambassadors with Presents to him He so much abhorred all Wars troubles or division that he would never denounce War upon any Nation unless for great and just causes alledging that it shewed a vain-glorious and most unconstant minde either in the immoderate desire
of triumph and for a few unfruitful leaves in a Laurel Garland rashly to throw the safety of the Citizens into the danger of doubtful war He affirmed that nothing was more incongruous to a good Emperor then precipitation and that every thing is done soon enough that is well done and that Arms are never to be undertaken unless for some necessary cause lest the Victory being obtained by a great loss and accompanied but with small advantage it may resemble those who do fish with a golden hook the which being lost or broken off the loss cannot be recompensed with any gain of fish that can be taken In his time the Roman Army that was beyond the Rhine was destroyed and the Tribunes and the Propraetor slain which he so deeply resented that in the height of lamentation he would beat his head against the wall and did put on mourning apparel and was known by all the Liveries of sorrow and deformity he much reproved the practise of his Uncle who too much flattering the common Souldiers and calling them his companions whiles he sought to become dearer to them he lessned the Authority of a Prince he deported himself with great clemency towards the Citizens he was most faithful to his friends the chiefest whereof was Mecaenas whom he loved for his secrecy as he did Agrippa for his modesty and patience in enduring of labour he also loved Virgil he was very careful whom he entertained into his friendship but having once acknowledged them he was most constant to preserve them he applyed himself much to the study of the liberal Arts but most of all to Eloquence so that no day did pass in which he did not write read and declaim he made some new Laws and others he corrected and inserted his own name to them he encreased and adorned Rome with many Structures glorying with these words I found the City made with Brick but I leave it made of Marble he was milde grateful of a civil and a pleasant nature beautiful over all his body but most in the lustre of his eyes which did dart forth their beams after the manner of the brightest Stars and therefore he gladly did give way that those who looked sâ—edâ—asâ—ly upon him should draw off their eyes as being dazzled with the glory of his own A certain Souldier having turned himself from beholding his face and being demanded wherefore he did so He made Answer because I cannot endure the lightning flying from your eyes Howsoever so great a man was not without his faults for he was angry but not immoderately privately envious and openly ambitious and beyond all measure desirous of Soveraignty a great player at dice and although much given to wine and high food he did sleep but little he was inclined to lust even to the reproach of common Fame for he was accustomed to lie betwixt twelve prostitute Boyes and as many maids being divorced from his wife Scribonia he fell in love with Livia the wife of another man and marryed her her husband giving way unto it she had at that time two Sons Tiberius and Drusus Augustus although he was a slave unto his lust yet he was a great punisher of it in others after the manner of men who are severe in chastising those crimes which they themselves with greediness commit For he condemned Ovid to banishment because he composed three Books of the Art of Love he was much taken with all manner of spectacles especially with the strange shapes and the numbers of wilde beasts having lived seventy and seven years he dyed of a sickness at Nola although some do write that he was poysoned by the treachery of Livia who because in a Step-mothers hatred she had caused Agrippa to be condemned into an Iland and found he was to be recalled did fear that when he was constituted Emperour he would call her to strict account for it what she had made him to endure but howsoever it was whether he fell by the treachery of Livia or dyed a natural death the Senate decreed to prosecute him being dead with many and new honours For having before given him the litle of the Father of his Country they now consecrated semples unto him not only in Rome but in all the most famous Cities of the Empire all men commonly saying I would he had never been born or had never dyed The Government of the whole World in the hands of one man being of a dangerous beginning was of an excellent ending For in obtaining the Empire he was accounted an Oppressor of the liberty and yet in the management thereof he so loved the Citizens that but three dayes provision of Corn being found in the Granaries of Rome he had resolved to die himself by poyson it in the mean time the Fleet laden with Corn had not returned from the Provinces which being arrived the safety of his Country was imputed to his Felicity he raigned six and fifty years twelve with Mark Anthony and four and forty alone certainly he could never have contracted to himself the whole power of the Commonwealth nor so long have enjoyed it had he not abounded with most excellent gifts both of Art and Nature Claudius Tiberius CLaudius Tiberius the Son of Livia and Step-son to Augustus Caesar did raign four and twenty years He was called Claudius Tiberius Nero and by the wits of Rome by reason of his great love to Wine Caldiu Biberius Mero He was expert enough in all the Arts of War and fortunate withall under Augustus before he was made Emperor so that the Government of the Commonwealth did not seem unworthily to be committed to him He had the knowledge of good Letters and was more excellent in his elocution then candid in his apprehension for he was of a cruel covetous and treacherous disposition pretending to do those things to which he had not the least inclination he seemed to be offended with those whose counsel he did follow and to bear good will to those whom he most hated he was better in sudden Answers then those that were deliberated he fainedly refused the Government of the Empire which was offered him by the Senate and found out thereby what every man did say or think of him which was the occasion of the death of many excellent men who conceiving that according to the sence of his long Speeches he did decline the burden of the Empire whiles they delivered their opinions therein and as they thought according to his own desires they incurred the greatest danger and met with a certain ruine He reduced the Cappadocians into the form of a Province and deposed their King Archelaus he suppressed the great Robberies of the Getulians and finely cajoled Marabodunus King of the Switzers having with incredible fury lived in the height of cruelty and injustice punishing both the guiltless and the guilty and as well his friends as strangers all discipline of War being neglected Armenia was spoyled by the Parthians Moesia by the Dacians
for him But all the Provinces and the Citie of Rome so much rejoyced at his death that the people having on their heads the Caps of manumission did triumph as if they had been delivered from a cruel master Sergius Galba GAlba derived of the noble Family of the Sulpitii Reigned seven moneths and as many daies He being infamous in his youth was intemperate in his diet and ordered all things according to the counsel of his three friends Junius Cornelius and Caelius insomuch that as well amongst the common people as the Courtiers they were called his School-masters Before he did take upon him the Government of the Empire he ruled many Provinces excellently well and was so severe unto Souldiers that as soon as he came into the Camp it was in all the mouths of the Souldiers Souldiers stand to your Arms Galba is here and not Getulicus Being seventie three years of age whiles in his coislet he endeavored to appease the Legions stirred up by the sedition of Otho he was slain at the Lake of Curtius Otho Salvius SAlvius Otho derived of noble parentage in the Citie of Terentinum Reigned four moneths he was dishonest in all his life but especially in his youth Being overcome by Vitellius first at Placontia and afterwards at Bebriacum he did run himself through with his own sword in the seven and thirtieth year of his age He was so beloved by his own Souldiers that many of them having seen his dead bodie did with their own hands become their own Executioners Aulus Vitellius VItellius was born of a noble Family and Reigned but eight moneths his father was Lucius Vitellius who was the third time Consul he was cruel of minde extreamly covetous and extreamly prodigal In his time Vespasian did possess himself of the Government in the East by whose Souldiers Vitellius being overcome in a battaâ—l under the Walls of the Citie of Rome and plucked out of his Palace where he had hid himself he was dragged about the Citie with his hands bound behinde him as a spectacle for all to look upon And lest the impudent man in the consciousness of the evils he had committed should for shame hold down his head a sword was put under his chin and being half naked many casting dirt and others more filthie excrements in his face he was drawn to the Gemonian Ladders where he caused Sabinus the Brother of Vespasian to be slain and falling by many wounds which he received from several swords he there died himself He lived seven and fiftie years All those of whom I have here spoken especially those of the Cesarian race were of such learning and eloquence insomuch that abounding with all manner of vices Augustus onely excepted they had nothing else to commend them Vespasian VEspasian Reigned ten years Amongst other vertues of this man this was the most remarkable that he would forget all enmities insomuch that he married to a most honorable man the daughter of Vitellius having a very great dowrie He patiently endured the insurrections of his friends answering their reproaches as he was the most wittie man in the world with sharp and innocent conceits of mirth He so prevailed upon Licinius Mutianus presuming too much upon his own merit because by his assistance he obtained the Empire that a third friend being called in and familliar to them both he did pacifie him with these few words You know me to be a man But what shall we speak of friends since he despised also the tauntings of the Lawyers and the reproaches of the Philosophers In a short time he refreshed the world wearied and exhausted with war for he had rather overcome by perswasions then by torment or to put to death the ministers of tyranny unless it were those who had been found to be too bloody instruments thinking most wisely that wicked deeds are in many restrained onely by fear Moreover he abolished many vices in admonishing the offenders by most just Laws and which is more effectual by the Example of his own life Nevertheless there are some who do accuse him of covetousness when it is manifest enough that through the want of money and the re-edification of so many ruined Cities he was enforced to impose those Taxes which were not known before his time nor after it He re-edified Rome wasted with former fires and gave free leave to any to build the houses again if the old masters of them were not to be found he repaired the Capitol the House of Peace and the Monuments of Claudius and builded many new Cities in all Lands which were under the Romane jurisdiction the Cities were renewed with excellent Art and Elegance and the Avenues unto them fortified with great industry The Flaminian Mountains were made hollow and cut down on both sides and a way made to pass through them which way is how commonly called The Rock Pertuse he new formed and established a thousand Nations who hardly before were reckoned to be two hundred the greatest part of them being extinguished by the cruelty of Tyrants Vologese King of the Parthians was through fear constrained to seek peace of him By his vertue Syria which is also called Palestine Curaminia Tracheta and Comagine which at this day we call Augustophratensis were reduced to the Roman Provinces Judaea also was added to them his friends advising him to beware of Mutius Pomposianus who aspired to the Empire he made him Consul with this allusion That the time might come he would be mindful of so great a benefit he governed the Empire with great uniformity he watched much in the night and the great affairs of the Commonwealth being over he permitted his friends to come unto him putting on his Princely habiliments whiles he was saluted The first thing that he did was to exercise his body afterwards he rested and having washed he fell to his meat with a better stomack The love unto this good Emperor hath caused me to speak so much of him whom the Romane Commonwealth for the space of 56 years after the death of Augustus being almost breathless and spent by the cruelty of Tyrants by Providence enjoyed that it might not altogether fall into decay he lived threescore and ten years wanting but one and dyed with his most serious studies he always mingled jests with which he was much delighted I finde that a blazing Star appearing formidable by his fiery train This saith he pertains to the King of the Parthians who doth wear a long bush of hair At the last being tormented with the repletion of the belly he rising from his bed did say That it becomes an Emperour standing on his feet to depart out of the world Titus TItus called Vespasian after his Fathers name born of Domicilla a Free-woman raigned two years two moneths and twenty dayes He from a childe most diligently applyed himself to the excellent studies of Vertue and Military Discipline and above all to learning which he afterwards shewed by the gifts both of his
be an Arbitrator betwixt Vice and Vertue He governed his affections with great Artifice and cunningly covered his insolent envious sullen and wanton disposition In the ostentation of himself he counterfeited chastity clemency and attraction and closely carryed his Ambition with which he wholly was enflamed He was most ingenious either at Questions or at Answers whither it were in earnest or in jest he would ex tempore give you verse for verse sentence for sentence insomuch that you would think he used premeditation in whatsoever he did speak His wife Sabina being used by him more like a slave then a wife was compelled with her own hands to be her own Executioner she reported what an inhumane disposition of her husband she indured and endevoured she said that she might not prove with childe by him to the ruine of mankinde Being overcome with the pain of a dropsie which a long time he patiently endured he caused many of the Senators to be slain Divers Kings having sent rich presents to him to purchase their Peace he boasted openly That he had gained more by ease then others had obtained by Arms. He established the Palatine and publick Offices and reduced them and the Militia into that form in which it continues unto this day some few things since being changed by Constantine He lived threescore and two years and dyed most miserably being so tormented in all the members of his body that he desired the most faithful of his servants to dispatch him but was kept by the care of his dearest friends from doing violence on himself Antonius Pius ANtonius called Fulvius or Bonnonius was afterwards sirnamed Pius he raigned three and twenty years He was adopted by Adrian being his Son-in-Law he shewed so much goodness in his raign that he lived above all Example although that Age in which he lived did compare him unto Numa Without making any war at all he ruled the World three and twenty years by his own Authority insomuch that all Kings Nations and people did stand in awe of him and loving him withall they rather esteemed him to be their Father and Patron then their Lord and Emperor and with one consent they all desired his determination of all their Controversies looking on him as if he had slid down from Heaven The Indians Bactrians and Hyrcanians did send their Ambassadors to him being moved with the justice of so great an Emperor which he adorned with a fair and pleasant countenance being tall in stature and strong of limbs Before he did go out of his chamber to salute any man his manner was to eat a morsel of bread least by the cooling of the blood about his heart he might loose his strength and be rendred unable in the performance of Publick Affairs which he executed with incredible diligence like a good Master of a Family without any appearance of vain glory or ostentation He was so meek that when the Senators did earnestly perswade him to punish them with death who had conspired against him he made Answer That it was not necessary too strictly to search them out who had a hand in it for if they should be found to be many in number he well understood how much hatred he might contract unto himself thereby Having raigned three and twenty years he dyed of a feaver twelve miles from Rome at a Town of his own called Lorium Temples Priests and infinite other things were decreed in the Honour of him His meekness was such that when on a time the people of Rome would have stoned him for want of bread he did chuse rather to satisfie them by giving them the reason of it then to revenge the sedition Marcus Antonius MArcus Antonius raigned eighteen years he was a man of a Celestial spiritâ— a sincere maintainer of vertue and a protector of Rome in the publick calamities and truly if he had not been born for that time all the glory of the Empire had fallen at once There was no respite at all from Wars which most of all raged in the East through Illyria Italy and France Many Cities were buried in the ruines which the Earthquakes made there were great inundations of waters and much pestilence and swarms of Locusts that devoured the grass of the fields insomuch that there was almost no judgement by which men can be said or thought to be afflicted which in his raign did not exercise its greatest vengeance I do believe it was ordained by Providence that when Nature produceth such evils as are unknown to men the counsels of such righteous Princes should be present to asswage and redress the calamity In a new way of Benevolence he made Antoninus Verus his kinsman partaker with him in the Empire who afterwards in the eleventh year of his raign travelling betwixt Altinum and Concordia did die by a percussion of blood in the head which Disease the Greeks call the Apoplexy this Verus was of a sharp but a wanton wit a great lover of Verses especially those which are called Tragical Marcus Antoninus AFter his decease Marcus Antoninus raigned alone being from his Infancy a man of a quiet spirit It is observable that neither joy nor sorrow did ever make any change in his countenance he was much addicted to the study of Philosophy and was exactly learned in the Greek Tongue He permitted the more apparent of the Nobility to Feast in the same manner and to have such Attendants as he himself was accustomed unto When his treasury was exhausted and money was wanting to give the Souldiers their promised largesses being unwilling to impose any Taxes upon the Senate or the Provinces he in the open Market of Trajanus for the space of two Moneths together did set to sale all the Princely Furniture the vessels of Gold and Cups of Chrystal and of Myrrh his Wives Wardrob and his own in which were many Garments of Silk of Gold and many Ornaments of Pearls and Precious Stones whereby he gathered together a great mass of Gold The War being ended and the Victory obtained he restored the money again to so many of the Merchants as would return their bargains and troubled not any of them who refused to part with that which they had bought In his raign Cassius endeavouring to play the Tyrant was put to death in the nine and fiftieth year of his age he dyed of a disease at Bendobona When the news thereof was brought to Rome the City made a great lamentation for him and the Senators weeping and clad all in mourning did meet in the Senate House and what was hardly believed of Romulus was with one consent confidently presumed of Marcus Antoninus that he was received into Heaven and in the Honour of him they erected Temples Columns and many other Monuments Commodus AVrelius Commodus the Son of Antoninus called also Antoninus raigned thirteen years At his first inauguration it was suspected what an Emperour he would prove for being counselled by his Father on his death bed
was slain in a tumult by the Souldiers His body was drawn by a Souldier through all the streets of Rome like the carkass of a dog in a military Irony calling him The Whelp of a ravening and an untamed lust At the last the bulk of his body being so great that it would not enter into the hollow seat of a Privie they did drag it unto Tiber and fastning a great weight unto it that it might not rise again they did cast it into the River He lived sixteen years and for these things which happened to him was called Tiberinus and Tractisius Severus Alexander SEverus Alexander raigned thirteen years he was destructive to the good of the Common-wealth In his time Taurinus was made Augustus who for fear did cast himself into the River Euphrates At that time Mauritius did take upon him the Empire having corrupted many of the Souldiers but when Alexander did observe himself forsaken of the Souldiers he cryed out upon his Mother alleaging that she was the occasion of his death and the Executioner coming to him he covering his head did with great confidence offer his neck unto him to be struck off His Mother Mammea did carry so closs a hand over him that if any thing at Dinner or at Supper was left were it never so little it was reserved for his next meale Julius Maximinus IVlius Maximinus a Souldier born in Thrace governed three years who while he prosecuted the rich men as well innocent as guilty was torn in pieces at Aquileia and his Son with him by the sedition of the Souldiers the Souldiers in derision crying out Of a bad Sire they must not keep a whelp Under his Government Gordianus the Father and Gordianus the Son one after another did take upon them the Government and one of them after another came to confusion In the like manner Pupianus and Balbinus affecting the Principality were both put to death Gordianus GOrdianus the Grandchild of Gordianus by his Mother was born at Rome he was the Son of a noble Father and ruled six years he was slain at Ctesiphon by Philip a Praetorian Commander the Souldiers being stirred up into sedition this was done in the twentyeth year of his life His body being interred in the Confines of the Roman and Persian Empire did afterwards give a name unto the place which was called The Sepulcher of Gordian Philip. MArcus Julius Philippus ruled five years he was slain by the Souldiers at Verona his head being cleaved a sunder in the middle a little above the upper row of his teeth his Son Gallus Julius Saturninus being about twelve years of age was slain at Rome being of so melancholy a disposition that after he was five years of age he could by no sport or invention be moved to laughter and in the secular Games seeing his Father to laugh profusely although he was but a childe in dislike of it he turned his face from him This Philip was born but of mean Parentage his Father being a Captain or Leader of Robbers Decius DEcius born in Pannonia Bubalia raigned thirty Moneths and made his Son a Caesar he was a man well learned in all the Arts addicted entirely unto vertue pleasant and familiar at home and a brave man at Arms. In a great tumult he was drowned amongst many others in a place so full of Bogs and Fens that his body could never afterwards be found His Son also was slain in War He lived fifty years In his time Valens Lucinianus was made Emperour Virius Gallus VIrius Gallus with his Son Volusio raigned two years In their time the Senate created Hostilianus Perpenna Emperor who not long afterwards dyed of the Pestilence In their time also Aemilianus was created Emperour in Maesia against whom both the Father and the Son marched with an Army and were slain by their own Souldiers at Interamnis the Father being seven and forty years of Age they were created Emperors in the Iland of Meningis now called Girba Aemilian in the fourth year of his Government was slain at Spoletum or Pontes which by reason of his death was afterwards called Sanguinarius being a place in equal distance betwixt Ociculum Narnia and the City of Rome He was by his birth a Moor a man of a daring spirit but not too rash he lived seven and forty years Licinius Valerianus LIcinius Valerianus sirnamed Colobius raigned 15 years he was descended of noble Parentage but of a slow and stupid disposition and not fit for any publick place either in Counsel or of action He made his Son Galienus Augustus and his Grandson Cornelius Valerianus a Caesar In their times Religianus in Moesia Cassius Labienus Posthumus in France the Son of Galienus being slain were made Emperors In the same manner Aelianus at Mentz Aemilianus in Egypt Valerius in Macedonia and Aurelius at Millain assumed the Imperial Title But Valerianus making war in Mesopotamia he was overcome by Sapores King of the Persians and not long afterwards being taken grew old amongst the Parthians in an ignoble servitude for as long as he lived the King did set his foot upon his neck when he mounted on horsback Galienus GAlienus in the place of his Son Cornelius did substitute his other Son Salonianus he was addicted to the uncertain love of Concubines Salonina and Pipa but he coloured his love to Salonina with the pretence of marriage and her Father the King of the Marcomans did grant him thereupon by covenant one part of the upper Pannonia At the last he marched against Aureolus whom he besiged at Pontus and obtained it which place afterwards was for that cause called Aureolus he also besieged Millain but by the contrivement of Aureolus he was slain by his own Souldiers after he had raigned fifteen years seven with his Father and eight by himself he lived fifty years Claudius CLaudius raigned two years some are of opinion that he was the Son of Gordianus others say of the woman Licensa by whom he was taught how to deport himself towards a wife he was appointed Emperor by the last Will and Testament of Galienus who sent unto him to Ticinum the Imperial Robes by Gallonins Basilius Aureolus being slain by his own Souldiers he received the Government of those Countryes and fighting against the Almains not far from the Lake of Benacum he cut in pieces such a multitude of them that of their infinite numbers scarce a half part remained In those daies Victorius was made Emperor And when Claudius understood by the Book of the Destinies which he commanded to be looked into that a principal man of the Senate must die Pomponius Bassus who was then present did offer himself to be a sacrifice for the publick but he not suffering the Oracles to be frustrated did give his own life a free gift to the Common-wealth having first expressed himself that no man of that order could be intepreted to be the principal man but the Emperor onely This was so acceptable to every
he was to fight with Constantine having made a Bridge with Boats a little above the Bridge Milvius making haste on horse-back to secure the Bridge did fall with his horse into the River and there perished and through the weight of his Armor did sink so deep into the mud that his body could hardly be found again Maximianus dyed a natural death at Tarsus Valens was put to death by Licinius Having thus acquainted you with the manner of their deaths I will now give you a Character of their dispositions Herculeus Maximianus was by nature cruel vehemently addicted to lust and foolish in Counsel of ordinary Parentage being born in the wilde parts of Pannonia There is a place not far from Syrmius where now standeth a Palace wherein the Parents of Herculeus did follow mercenary labour He dyed in the sixtyeth year of his age having governed the Empire twenty year He begot upon Eutropia the Syrian woman Maxentius and Fausta the wife of Constantine to whose Father Constantius he gave his Step-daughter Theodora But some affirm that Maxentius by the imposture of the wife of Maximianus was brought from another place because she knew that it would be most acceptable to her Husband to have a Son whereas indeed he was not the Son of Maximianus Howsoevet it was Maximianus himself was never beloved of any neither of his own Father nor of his Father-in-Law Galerius Galerius Armentarius GAlerius although rude and unexperienced in the way of Justice was a man otherwise commendable enough he was well made of body an excellent and a successful Souldier His parents were Country people and keepers of Heards from whence he had his name Armentarius He was born in Ducia and there buryed the place where he was buryed he called Romulus after the name of his Mother Romula He would insolently affirm that his Mother mingled with a Dragon when she conceived him as did Olympias the Mother of Alexander the Great Galerius Maximinus GAlerius Maximinus was the Son of the Sister of Armentarius and before he was made Emperor he was called Daza He was Caesar four years and called Augustus three years in the East By his birth and education he was a Pastoral man but a great lover of wise and learned men of a quiet disposition but much inclined to wine in the excess whereof he commanded many unlawful things of which afterwards he repented and gave a charge to all his followers that they should not execute his desires except he was sober or gave them a commandment in the morning Alexander ALexander was by birth a Phrygian fearful in his disposition and by reason of his old Age not fit to endure labour so that all these whom last of all I have named being destroyed some one way and some another the Imperial Rights descended to Constantinus and Licinius Constantinus COnstantinus the Son of the Emperor Constantius of Helena raigned thirty years He being but a youth the more religiously to observe the agreement made was a pledge to Galerius in the City of Rome from whence he made an escape and to save himself from those who did pursue him he killed all the horses and the beasts he did meet with to block up the way and came safe to his Father in Brittany who at that time was a dying man After his death by the consent of all his friends that were present and especially of Erocus King of the Alemans who with Auxiliarie Souldiers did assist his Father Constantius and accompany him in his wars he did possess himself of the Empire at Millain and married his Sister Constantia to Licinius and made his Sons Crispus born of his Concubine Minervina and his Son Constantius born much at the same time and Licinius the Son of Licinius being but twenty Moneths of age Caesars But as Empires do hardly continue in concord so there arose dissentions betwixt Constantine and Licinius and first of all Constantine did fall upon the Army of Licinius at Cibalae near to the Lake Hiulca taking the advantage of the time of night whereupon Licinius did flie unto Bizantium where he created Martianus Caesar Constantine having reinforced his Army constrained Licinius at Bythinia to surrender to him by the hands of his wife the Imperial Robes upon condition to have only his own life saved Not long afterwards he was sent to Thessalonica where both he and Martinianus were strangled Licinius was threescoce years of Age and raigned fourteen years he was extreamly covetous much addicted unto lust sharp of apprehension and not a little impatient he was a great Enemy to learning especially to the pleadings at the Bar calling learning through his ignorance a poyson and a publick plague he was well affected to husbandry and to the silly people in the Country because among such he had his Education he was a great observer of Martial Discipline and most supestitious in the Institution of former Ages A great suppressor he was of Eunuchs and Courtiers calling them the Moths and Rats of the Palace Constantine having possessed himself of the whole Empire being as successful in his Government at home as in he wars abroad did as it is thought by the â—nstigation of his wife Fausta put his Son Crispus to death And afterwards being much condemned for it by his Mother he caused his wife Fausta to be thrown into a Bath of scalding water where she miserably dyed He was himself most immoderately desirous of prayse and finding the name of Trajan to be written upon the Walls of many of the Palaces he called him a Wall-flower he builded a Bridge over the River of Danubius He adorned the Imperial Robes with Pearls and pretious Stones and perpetually did wear a Diadem on his head he was qualified and enabled for many things as to suppress calumniations and tumults and to nourish all good Arts especially Learning he himself would reade write meditate hear the Ambassies and the Complaints of the Provinces He made his own Son and Dalmatius his Brothers Son Caesars he lived threescore and three years and governed the Empire almost half of them alone He dyed of a disease being addicted more in his life time to derision then affability whereupon he commonly was called Tracalla In his first ten years of his Government he was called Excellent In his next twelve years a Robber and in his ten last an ungoverned Pupil by reason of his immoderate Expences his body was buryed in Byzantium which after his name was called Constantinople after his death the Souldiers did kill Dalmatius and the Roman Empire was divided into three parts betwixt his three Sons Constans Constantius and Constantinus Constans ruled over all Italy Illyricum Africa Dalmatia Thracia Macedonia and Achaia the command of Constantius did begin at the Propontick Sea and reached over all Asia and the East And Constantinus did govern all beyond the Alpes Annibalianus Constantius and Constans ANnibalianus the kinsman of Dalmatius Caesar did govern Armenia and the Nations adjoyning
to it In the mean time Constantius and Constans fell at variance about the Dominions of Italy and Africa Constantius a rash man and living like a Plunderer being filthily drunk whiles he endeavoured to intrench upon his Brothers possessions did lose his own and being taken was killed and thrown into the River of Alsa not far from Aquileia Constans given much to hunting whiles he followed the game in the Forrest Chrestius Marcellinus and Magnentius with some others of the Souldiery did conspire his death and having agreed upon the day Marcellinus amongst many others did invite him to Supper in pretence of celebrating the birth day of his Son The Feast continuing late in the night Magnentius arising as he said to ease his belly did put on the venerable habit of the Emperor which when Constans understood he made means to flie away but was over-taken and slain by Gaiso who with a select band of the Cavalry was sent after him This was done at Helena a Town not far from Peirene in the thirteenth year of his Raign he was made Caesar three years before and he lived seven and twenty years He was lame in his feet and had the Gout also in the joynts of his fingers In the Division of his Dominion he was fortunate in the temperature of the Ayr in the abundance of fruits and for not being annoyed by the Barbarians which benefits had indeed been greater if he had advanced his Lieutenants into the Government of the Provinces not by money but by merit His death being understood Vetranius the General of the Army did take upon him the Empire in Pannonia of which he was not long afterwards dispossed by Constantius he lived to a great age and in a voluptuous life being foolish almost to Idotism it self Constantius COnstantius made Gallus his Uncles son Caesar and marryed him to his Sister Constantina Magnentius also at that time beyond the Alpes did create his kinsman Decentius Caesar And Nepotianus the Son of Eutrophia who was Constantines sister did assume the Government of the Empire at Rome whom Magnentius in the eight and twentyeth day afterwards did suppress In his time there was a great Battel fought at Marsia in which Constantius overcame Magnentius The strength of Rome did never more suffer then in this War and the Fortunes of the whole Empire were desperately shaken Magnentius after this having retreated into Italy did kill at Thicanum many of his pursuing Enemies who too improvidently did follow the chase as it oftentimes falls out in Victories Not long afterwards being shut up in Lions with a prepared sword the pommel of it being set to the Wall level to his breast with all his strength and the whole weight of his body he received the point which running through him being a man of a great bulk pouring forth his blood not onely at his wound but as his mouth and his nose also he expired in the thirteenth Moneth of his Government and the fiftyeth year of his Age His Parents were of Gallia he was a great Reader acute in his Discourse of a proud spirit and yet immoderately fearful but a great Artist to conceal his fear under bold pretences Decentius no sooner heard of his death but strangling himself with his own Garter he ended his life Much about this time Gallus Caesar was slain by Constantius he ruled four years Silvanus SIlvanus being made Emperor was slain in the eight and twentyeth day of his Government he was of a most pleasing and courtly wit although begotten by a barbarous Father he was sufficiently instructed in and prone enough to learn the Roman civilities Constantius COnstantius did honour Claudius Julianus the Brother of Gallus with the name of Caesar being about three and twenty years of Age. He in the Feilds of Argentoratum in France did slay an innumerable company of his Enemies The bodies of the slain being piled up did seem like so many Hills and the blood that flowed from them did seem like so many Rivers Their famous King Nodonarius was taken all the Nobility were utterly overthrown and the limits of the Roman Power were restored At the last fighting with the Almains he took their most puissant King Badomarius Prisoner By the Souldiers of Gallia he was proclaimed Augustus but Constantius did urge him by his Ambassadors to abandon that honour and to discend into his former name and condition Julianus IVlian by softer Mandates did make Answer that he more officiously would obey if the injunction laid upon him were confirmed by the Authority of the high Empire whereat Constantius being greatly offended being more and more inflamed with grief and choler did contract a violent Feaver at Mopsocrene being situated at the foot of the Mountain Taurus His indignation and want of sleep did increase the malignancy of his disease so that he dyed in the four fortyeth years of his age and the nine thirtyeth of his Raign having been Augustus four and twenty years and raigned with Magnentius and his own brothers sixteen years and eight years alone He was fortunate in all his Civil Wars but most unhappy in Forraign Wars He was admirably expert in Archery and much given to meat wine and to sleep very patient of labour and desirous of eloquence which not being able to obtain he envyed others He was much given to the love of his Attendants and Eunuchs and to the love of his Wives with whom he lived very contented not turning his lawful affections to any unnatural or filthy lusts Amongst all his wives he loved Eusâ—lia best who indeed was very beautiful but by her Amantiae and Gordoniae and other importunate services she much blemished the Emperors reputation contrary to the custome of modest Ladies whose saving Counsels do oftentimes much assist their Husbands To omit other Examples it is almost incredible how much Pompeia Plotina encreased the glory of Trajan whose procurators did so oppress the Provinces that one of them is said in these words to salute every rich man he did meet with What hast thou on thy Table From whence hast thou it Deliver what thou hast She understanding of it did reprove her Husband that he was so unmindful of his Honour and caused him so much to detest such exactions that he afterwards called his Exchequer the Milt because that the Milt swelling too much all the rest of the members do consume Julianus having invested himself in the Government of the Roman Empire being desirous of glory did make War upon the Persians where being deceived by a Fugitive sent by the Parthians for that purpose who had round about inclosed him and begun to fall upon his Camp he armed onely with his shield did run out of his Tent and in too rash valour leading forth his Forces to the battel he was run through with a Spear by one of his Enemies rising from the ground being mortally wounded he was carried into his Tent and coming forth again to encourage his Souldiers to
the fight his blood so issued forth that he dyed about midnight having first said that he would not as the custom then was give any order for the succession in the Empire least in the multitude of his friends present who with different Counsels did seek that dignity the envy or emulation of any of them through civil discord should procure any danger to the Army There was in him a vaste knowledge of Letters and of great affairs which made him to give such a countetenance to Philosophers and the wisest men of Greece He was but short of stature and not strong yet able through exercise There were in him some things which did diminish the glory of his vertues as his immoderate desire of praise his superstitious worship of the gods and a valor more rash and daring then became an Emperour whose safety being the common good of all men is diligently to be provided at all times but especially in War The ardent desire of glory did so much overcome him that he could not be disswaded by an Earthquake nor many other presages from his Expedition into Persia no nor by seeing in the night a great Globe to fall down as if Heaven fell with it could he be induced to appoint a more happy time for that War Jovinian IOvinian the Son of Varronianus in the I le of Singidona in the Province of Pannonia did raign eight Moneths His Father having lost many children was admonished in a dream to call that childe of which his Mother was ready to be delivered Jovinian he was a man of a most gallant personage pleasant of wit and studious of Letters In the midst of a sharp winter travelling from Persia to Constantinople he fell into a crudity of his stomack and being oppressed by the management of new his dignity he dyed suddenly being almost forty years of age Valentinian VAlentinian ruled twelve years and about nine moneths His Father Gratianus was meanly born and among the Cibalae was called Funarius because that carying Câ—rds up and down to be sold five Souldiers could not take one of them from him for this he was called to be a Souldier where by degrees he did ascend to the power of a Praetor The Souldiers for his sake did bestow the Empire upon Valentinian his Son who at the first did refuse to accept it He made his cousin Valens Companion with him in the Empire and afterwards his Son Gratianus whom by the perswasions of his Mother-in-law and his wife being but a childe he created Augustus This Valentinian was of a comely presence of a sharp apprehension and most eloquent in Speech although he was not forward to express himself He was severe vehement and an enemy to vices especially to covetousness of which he was a great punisher and in all things which I have spoken of him he was most like to Adrian He was well versed in Antiquities and invented new Arms and Utensils of War He could draw the figures of men exactly in Earth or Clay He wisely knew how to make use of place time and words To conclude he had been an absolute Prince if he had not given too much credence unto Flatterers or had followed the advice of his most approved learned Counsellors In his time Firmius was slain attempting the Empire in Mauritania At the last giving Audience to an Embassie of the Guardians at Bergentium by a disease in the blood he was struck speechless in the five and fiftieth year of his Age and being of perfect sense and memory he expired Some affirm that this disease fell upon him through intemperance of diet his sinews being over-stretched by too much saturity He being dead Valentinian his Son being but four years of Age was with his Mother brought to Rome and created Emperor by the procurement of Aequitius and Merobaudus Valens VAlens with his young Cousin Valentian raigned ten years and five moneths Valens making an unfortunate War with the Gothes was wounded with arrows and being brought into a most sordid Cottage the Gothes following the pursute set fire on it where he perished in the Flame He was to be commended for these things He was a good Counseller just in altering of judgements trusty to his friends not angry to any mans prejudice and fearful enough when he saw cause for it In his time Procopius the Tyrant was put to death Gratianus GRatianus was born at Syrmium and raigned with his Father Valentinian eight years with his Uncle and his brother three years with the same Brother and Theodosius four years and with them all Arcadius also being inserted six moneths He overthrew thirty thousand Alemans at Argentoratum in Gallia Having understood that the Gothes and Triballians and the Huns and Alans Nations more ruinous then destruction it self had possessed Thrace and Dacia as if those Countreys had been theirs by Inheritance finding that the Roman Name and State were in great danger to be utterly extinct did send for Theodosius out of Spain and in the three and thirtieth year of his Age he did resign the Government of the Empire to him This Gratian was not meanely Learned he could make a Verse speak eloquently and lay open a Cause like a perfect Orator Night and day he made it his business to meditate on Archery and the hurling of Darts thinking it a faculty of the greatest pleasure and which carryed in it some divinity with it in it with a stedfast dexterity to hit the mark assigned him he was a conqueror of his lusts wine and luxury And he had been good to all if he had addicted his minde to manage the Government of the Commonwealth in which he was defective both in knowledge to rule and in inclination to learn for having neglected the Army and preferred the Alani whom with a vast sum of money he had drawn unto him and being become such a friend and companion of the Barbarians that he would be seen in publick with them and walk in their habit he drew upon him the hatred of the Roman Souldiery In his time Maximius who rebelled in Britanie came into France and being received by those Legions who were discontented with Gratian they did put him to flight and immediately afterwards he dyed having lived eight and twenty years Theodosius THeodosius was the Son of Honorius his Mothers name was Thâ—rmantia he was a Spaniard by his birth but deriving his original from the Emperor Trajan He was made Emperor by Gratian at Syrmium and ruled seven and twenty years It is reported that his Parents were admonished in a dream to give him this Name whereby we might understand in Latin that he was given us by God There was an Oracle also famous over all Asia that one should succeed Valens in the Empire whose name should begin with the Greek letters θ ε and ο with a presumption whereof Theodorus being deceived he was justly put to death for his ambitious and immoderate desire of Soveraignty Theodosius was an illustrious Defender
the war affirming that with their swords they would cut in pieces the Decrees of the Macedons Being advanced with his Army into Aetolia he commanded the Cities to pay him contribution and violently forced it from those who refused it Afterwards he marched unto Sardis to Cleopatra the sister of Alexander the Great that by her voyce the chief Officers and Centurions might be confirmed concieving that regal Majesty would turn all to that side for which she stood Such was the veneration of the greatness of Alexander that even by the addresses of women the favor of his sacred name was implored On his return Letters were found dispersed over all the Camp in which great rewards were promised to those who should bring the Head of Eumenes to Antigonus Eumenes having understood it and called the Souldiers to an Assembly did in the first place give thanks that there was not any found amongst them who preferr'd the hope of a bloody reward above the Oath of his fidelity and craftily concluded that these Letters were contrived and scattered by his directions thereby to make a trial of their resolutions He declared that his safety consisted in the power of them all and that none of the Generals would so overcome as to decree that such a most wicked act should be determined against him By this means he confirmed the staggering resolutions of his Souldiers for the present and provided for the future that if any such thing should happen again his Souldiers might believe that it was no corruption of their Enemy but the temptation of their General They therefore all by throngs did offer themselves and their endevours for the preservation of his person In the mean time Antigonus came upon them with his Army and having encamped close unto him did on the next day set his Army in Array to give him battel Eumenes also with great care marshalled the Field and made no delay of the encounter but being overcome he fled into a Castle that was fortified where when he saw that he must undergo the fortune of a siege he disbanded the greater part of his Army lest he should be delivered to the enemy by the consent of the multitude or the siege should be oppressed by their numbers After this in a most humble manner he sent Ambassadors to Antipater who only was equal in power to Antigonus who when he found that considerable ayds were sent unto him by Antipater he raysed the siege Eumenes was now delivered from the fear of death but not from the fear of danger having before disbanded a great part of his Army Therefore looking round about him to provide for his safety it seemed most expedient to him to have recourse to the Argyraspides of Alexander the Great an invincible Army and shining with the glory of so great and so many Victories But Alexander being deceased the Argyraspides disdained to be commanded by any conceiving that the Militia under others would be but disgraceful after the memory of so great a King Eumenes therefore did court them with alluring words and full of submissive respects did complement with every one of them sometimes calling them his fellow-Souldiers sometimes his Patrons sometimes the Companions of his dangers in the great labours of the East sometimes his Supporters and the onely Refuges of his safety they he said were the onely men by whose valour the East was overcome the onely men who exceeded the wars of Bacchus and the Monuments of Hercules by whom Alexander was made great by whom he obtained divine honours and immortal glory He besought them to receive him not as their General but as their fellow-Souldier and to be admitted as a member of their body Being on this condition entertained he not long after by admonishing all of them and by gently correcting what was done amiss amongst them did by degrees usurp the Soveraignty of Command nothing was done in the Camp without him nothing could be contrived or determined without his Policy At the last when it was declared that Antigonus came against him with an Army he enforced them to come down and to give him battel where when they despised the Commands of their General they were overcome by the valour of their Enemies In that battel they did not onely lose their glory gained in so many wars but their booty also with their wives and children But Eumenes who was the Author of their overthrow and had no other hope of safty did encourage the conquer'd affirming that they were superior to their Enemies in courage for they slew five thousand of them and if they would but continue the war he assured them that the Enemy of their own accord would desire peace of them He enformed them that their losses by which they thought themselves overcome were but two thousand women and a few children and slaves which were but the luggage the lumber of the war and to be repaired by fighting and prosecuting and not by forsaking the Victory But the Argyraspides made answer that they would neither fly after the dammages of Matrimony and the losses of their wives nor would they make war against their own children Moreover they did torment him with reproaches that in their returning home after so many yeers of their pay dearly earned with the rewards of so many Victories he recalled them being discharged into new wars and battels as lasting as they were dangerous and had with vain promises deceived them being almost at their journeys end in the very entrance of their Country and the sight of their houshold gods and now having lost all the booty which they gained in their happy warfare he would not permit them in the penury of their old age to rest being overcome Immediately upon this their Captains not knowing of it they sent Ambassadors to Antigonus demanding that what they had lost might be restored to them He promised that all things should be returned if they would deliver up Eumenes unto him which being understood Eumenes with a few men did attempt to flâ—e but being brought back and his affairs altogether desperate there being a great concourse of the multitude he desired to have the liberty to speak unto the Army which being readily granted by them all silence being made and his handcuffs of steel taken off he stretched forth his hand unto the people having yet some other chains upon him and said Souldiers Behold here the habits and the ornaments of your General which none of the Enemies have imposed upon me for that would be my comfort Iâ— is you who of a Conquerour have made me conquered and of a General a Captive four times within this one yeer have you obliged your selves unto me in an Oath of fidelity but that I do omit for it becomes nor the miserable to be reproachful One thing I intreat of you that if Antigonus be resolved to take away my life that you will give me the leave to die amongst you For it concerns not him
at all where or in what manner I shall fall and I shall by this means be delivered from the ignominy of death This if I shall obtain I will disoblige you all of the Oath by which you have so often devoted your selves unto me or if you are ashamed to lay violent hands upon me desiring it give me a sword and permit your General to do that for you without any Oath which you have so often sworn that you would act for your General When he could not obtain it of them he turned his entreaties into curses and in a great passion But you he said O devoted Heads may the gods the Revengers of perjury look down in judgements on you and give unto you such ends as you have given to your Generals It is you who have imbrued your guilty hands in the blood of Perdiccas It is you who attempted the murder of Antipater It is you which is the worst of all who would have killed Alexander himself if it were possible for him to have fallen by a mortal hand having so often tormented him with your seditions I now the last sacrifice of such perfidious wretches do fix these curses and imprecations on you May you live all your lives Vagabonds desolate in Tents and in banishment May your own Arms devour you by which you have destroyed more Captains of your own then of your enemies Being full of passion he commanded his keepers to go before to the Camp of Antigonus The Army followed having betrayed their General he himself a Captive did bring the triumph of himself to the Tents of his Conqueror They delivered all the Trophies all the Palms and Lawrels of King Alexander together with themselves unto the Conqueror and that nothing of the pomp might be wanting their Elephants and the Auxiliaries of the East did follow Much more honourable was this for Antigonus then so many Victories were for Alexander for though Alexander conquered the East Antigonus conquered those by whom the East was overcome Antigonus therefore divided amongst his Army these Conquerors of the World having restored all things to them which he took from them in the former victory After this he did set a Guard upon Eumenes being not admitted to come into his presence in respect of the familiarity of their former friendship In the mean time Eurydice the wife of Aridaeus the King of the Macedons as soon as she heard that Polypercon was returned out of Greece into Macedonia and that Olympias was sens for by him being possessed with a female emulation and abusing the weakness of her Husband whose Offices she challenged to her self she did write to Polypercon in the name of the King to deliver the Arms to Cassander to whom the King had transferred the administration of the Kingdom she sent also Letters to Antigonus to the same effect in Asia by which benefit Cassander being obliged did perform all things which the boldness of the Queen did prompt him to Having marched into Greece he made war there on many Cities by the destruction whereof the Spartans being affrighted as by a fire in a neighbours house distrusting to their arms they did enclose their City with a Wall contrary to the answer of the Oracles and the ancient glory of their Predecessors whose honourable custom alwayes it was to defend it with their arms and not with their Walls So much they degenerated from their Ancestors that when for many yeers the wall of their City was the vertue and the valour of their Citizens they now conceived they could not be safe unless they lay hâ—d under the protection of a Wall Whiles these things were thus mannaged the troubled Estate of Macedonia did call back Cassander out of Greece for Olympias the Mother of Alexander the Great being come from Epirus towards Macedonia Aeacidas the King of the Molossi following her she was forbidden by Eurydice and King Aridaeus to enter into the Confines of that Kingdom which so incensed the Macedons both in the regard of the memory of her Husband the greatness of her Son and the indignity of the act that they all sided with Olympias by whose command both Eurydice and King Aridaeus were both slain having raigned six yeers after the decease of Alexander But Olympias enjoyed not the Kingdom long afterwards for having committed many great slaughters of the Princes after a womanish rather then a manly way she turned the love of her Subjects into hatred Therefore having heard of the approach of Cassander distrusting to the Macedons she fled with Roxane her daughter-in-law and Hercules her grand-child into the City of Pictua In her journey Dardamia the daughter of King Aeacidas and Thessalonice her kinswoman being also famous her self by the name of Philip her Father and many other Ladies of royal blood a gallant rather then a profitable company did attend her When Cassander was informed of it in a swift match he came to Pictua and layd a close siege unto the City Which when it was oppressed with the sword and famine Olympias being no longer able to endure the tediousness of the siege having Articles for her life did deliver her self to the Conqueror But Cassander having called the people to an Assembly to understand what they would have done in relation to Olympias he suborned the Parents and kindred of the noble men whom she had put to death who having put on mourning habits did accuse the cruelty of the woman by whom the Macedons were so much instigated that without any respect to her former Majesty they did decree that she should be put to death being altogether unmindful that by her Son and Husband they not onely enjoyed their lives with safety amongst their neighbours but also became masters of such great wealth as also of the Empire of the world But Olympias when she beheld the armed men to come resolutely towards her being cloathed in royal habiliaments and leaning on her two Maids she did go to meet them The Executioners beholding her were amazed and stood still startled at the Majesty of her presence and the names of so many of their Kings which came at once into their memory At the last they were commanded by Cassander to run her through with a sword she drew not back from the sword nor at the thrust that was made nor gave any shrike like a woman but submitted unto death after the manner of valiant men and for the glory of her antient family insomuch that you might have seen Alexander again in his dying mother Moreover she covered her face with her hair and the neither parts of her body with her garments that nothing unseemly might be discovered After this Cassender did take to wife Thessalonice the daughter of King Aridaeus and sent the Son of Alexander with the Mother to be kept prisoners in the Tower of Amphipolis THE Fifteenth BOOK OF IVSTINE PErdiccas and his brother Alcetas Eumenes and Polypercon and divers Captains of the other party being slain
Pannonia by the Sarmatians and France by the neighbouring Nations having lived seventy eight years he was destroyed by the treachery of Caligula Caius Caesar Caligula CAligula raigned four years he was the Son of Germanicus and because he was born in the Army he took his name according to the shooe the Souldiers do wear which the Latines call Caligula Before he was made Emperor he was dear and acceptable to all but after he was invested with the Empire he was such a one that not undeservedly it was said of him That there was never a more cruel Lord then himself He defiled his three sisters and did wear that manner of habit in which his gods were cloathed he affirmed himself to be Jupiter for his incest and amongst the roaring Boyes he called himself Bacchus I know not well whether it be expedient to commit his name to memory but because we delight to know all things concerning Princes and that wicked men might decline such bad Examples for the fear of infamy I have inserted his name in this Catalogue he caused noble Matrons to be prostituted in his Palace unto publick lust and was the first who having set the Diadem on his head did command himself to be called Lord. In the space of three miles in the Bay of Puteoli having cast up the sand and made the ground firm and passable being clothed in habiliaments wrought all over with gold and having on his head a Crown of Brass he did ride as triumphant in a Chariot drawn with two horses richly entrapped not long afterwards he was killed by his own Souldiers Claudius Tiberius CLaudius Tiberius the Son of Drusus the Brother of Tiberius and Uncle to Caligula did Reign fourteen years He when the Senate had decreed that the stock of the Caesars should be rooted out being found by the Souldiers where he laie hid in a blinde hole because he seemed to them to be a modest and a tame thing they having no knowledge at all of him was made Emperor He was much addicted unto drunkenness glutrony and lust cowardly and almost stupid slothful and timerous and a slave to the commands of his servants and his wife In his time Scribonianus Carmillus being made Emperor amongst the Dalmatians was immediately put to death The Moores were expelled from their Provinces and the Armie of the Masulamians was overthrown and the water called Aqua Claudia was brought unto Rome His wife Messalina at the first privately and afterwards openly and as it were by Authoritie did pollute her self with adulteries and many for fear abstaining to join with her were put to death Afterwards being inflamed with a more desperate lust she commanded the most noble of the Matrons and the Virgins to go along with her and to do as she did and men were compelled to be present and if any one did refuse he was immediately accused of one capital crime or other and he and his whole Family were condemned to suffer all the tormen's that crueltie could invent insomuch that she seemed to command all her self rather then to be subject to the Emperor her husband And her servants made free being preferred to the places of the cheifest Authoritie they did pollute all things with their whoredoms and murders and banishments and proscriptions amongst whom she made Felix Governor of the Legions in Iudaea At the triumph over the Britains she gave unto Possidius the Eunuch a gallant suit of Arms as a partaker of this victorie amongst the most valiant of the Souldiers in the mean time Polybus in greâ— state did walk in the midst of the two Consuls Narcissus the Secretarie did surpass them all and seemed to be his masters master Pallas being honored with the Robes of a Praetor was grown so rich that he being the cause of the great Dehaust of moneys in the Exchequer it was wittily divulged in the Libel that the Emperor might have supplies of monie enough if he might be received by his two slaves into their societie In this time a Phoenix was seen in Egypt which bird they say did flie out of Arabia in the five hundred year of its age to some memorable places thereabouts An Island did suddenly rise up out of the Aegean Sea This Claudius married Agrippina the daughter of his own Brother Germanicus who procured the Empire for her Son and first made away her step-son by manifold treacheries and afterwards her own husband by poyson He lived threescore and four years whose Funeral as sometimes the Funeral of Tarquinius Priscus was a long time concealed whilest the Guard corrupted by the craft and largesses of this woman did dissemble that he was but sick Nero his step-son did take upon him the Government of the Empire Domitian Nero. DOmitian Nero the Son of Domitian Aenobarbus and Agrippina reigned sixteen years He for the space of five years seemed tolerable whereupon some have delivered that the Emperor Trajan was accustomed to say That all Princes do differ much from the first five years of Nero. He builded in the City an Amphitheatre and places to bathe in By the permission of Polemon Regulus he reduced Pontus into the form of a Province whereupon it was called Pontus Polemoniacus he also reduced the Cottian Alps Cottius the King thereof being dead the rest of his life he did lead with such infamie and dishonor that any one might be ashamed but to make mention of it for he made such a progress in all wickedness that he spared not either his own or any others modestie and at the last being cloaâ—hed in the habite of Virgins when they are to be married the Senate openly being called and the Dowrie named the people flocked round about as to a wedding and being covered with the skin of a wilde beast he shewed to both sexes many proofs of abhorred lust He defiled his own mother and afterwards killed her he married Octavia and Sabina surnamed Poppea their husbands being slain Not long afterwards Galba in Spain and Caius Julius did attempt to dispossess him of the Empire when he understood of the approach of Galba and that it was decreed by the Senate that his neck being put into a fork after the antient manner he should be whipped to death with rods being forsaken on all sides he did steal out of the Citie about midnight and none following him but Phaon Epaphroditus Nephitus and the Eunuch Sporus whom somtimes Nero had assaied in the spite of nature to turn into a woman he did thrust himself through with a sword the impure Eunuch Sporus helping his trembling hand and when he found that there was none of them that would kill him outright he cried out Is it so have I neither a friend left me nor an enemie I have lived wickedly and shall die as wretchedly He died in the two and thirtieth year of his age the Persians so much did love him that they sent Embassadors to desire leave that they might be permitted to build a Monument