Section 467
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436 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. riage, or his novelties in regard to the dying 1 By means oi which he dared to restrict the ancient and wisely established institutions of the Romans, and to introduce as a substitute cer tain barbarous, savage, unlawful, and truly lawless laws.* He also invented innumerable pretexts of exaction against the peo ple subject to him, and every variety of method to extort silver and gold, new measurements of lands,f, and means of gain by way of penalty,J from those in the country, who were no longer living, but had long since died. Who can tell the expatriations that this enemy of mankind devised besides these, the banishment of nobles and illustrious men, those too, whom he separated from their youthful wives, consigning the latter to be shamefully abused by certain miscreants of his own ; with how many fe males, married and unmarried, he, though in the last stages of advanced age, gratified his unbridled passions. Why, I say, should I delay in reciting those things, when the excessive wick edness of his last deeds make the first to appear as trifles, and a mere nothing ? He at last proceeded to such an extent of mad ness, as to attack the bishops ; now indeed, regarding them as the servants of the Supreme God, hostile to his measures ; but yet not openly for fear of his superior (Constantine.) But commencing his operations in a clandestine and crafty manner, by means of his governors and magistrates, he insidiously destroyed the most dis tinguished and approved of these. And the manner of the murder itself, perpetrated upon them, was strange, and such as had never before been heard of. But the excesses perpetrated at Amana, and other cities of Pontus, surpassed all others in savage cruelty0 There some of the churches of God were razed to the ground, some were closed, so that no one accustomed to frequent them could get into them, nor render God the worship that we owe, * The paronomasia we have here attempted to transfer. •j-These new surveys of land afforded new pretexts for embezzlement, &c. , they were always attended by a new assessment. f f.-r.£x,u.oi> xjpJoj, we have rendered thus. Valesius says, exitiale Incrum, which is too general to reach the sense. The expression seems to refer to the unlawful levies and impositions upon estates whose proprietors were long dead; length of time, probably affording the better pretext to involve and encumber them.