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Such is the information which I have been enabled to collect
concerning the ecclesiastical philosophers of that time. As to the
pagans, they were nearly all exterminated about the period to which we
have been referring. Some among them, who were reputed to excel in
philosophy, and who viewed with extreme displeasure the progress of the
Christian religion, were devising who would be the successor of
Valens on the throne of the Roman Empire, and resorted to every
variety of mantic art for the purpose of attaining this insight into
futurity. After various incantations, they constructed a tripod of
laurel wood, and they wound up with the invocations and words to which
they are accustomed; so that the name of the emperor might be shown by
the collection of letters which were indicated, letter by letter,
through the machinery of the tripod and the prophecy. They were gaping
with open mouth for Theodore, a man who held a distinguished military
appointment in the palace. He was a pagan and a learned man. The
disposition of the letters, coming as far as the delta of his name,
deceived the philosophers. They hence expected that Theodore would
very soon be the emperor. When their undertaking was informed upon,
Valens was as unbearably incensed, as if a conspiracy had been formed
against his safety.
Therefore all were arrested; Theodore and the constructors of the
tripod were commanded to be put to death, some with fire, others with
the sword. Likewise for the same reason the most brilliant
philosophers of the empire were slain; since the wrath of the emperor
was unchecked, the death penalty advanced even to those who were not
philosophers, but who wore garments similar to theirs; hence those who
applied themselves to other pursuits would not clothe themselves with
the crocotium or tribonium, on account of the suspicion and fear of
danger, so that they might not seem to be pursuing magic and sorcery.
I do not in the least think that the emperor will be more blamed by
right thinking people for such wrath and cruelty than the philosophers,
for their rashness and their unphilosophical undertaking. The
emperor, absurdly supposing that he could put his successor to death,
spared neither those who had prophesied nor the subject of their
prophecy, as they say he did not spare those who bore the same name
Theodore, and some were men of distinction, whether they were
precisely the same or similar in beginning with and ending with . The
philosophers, on the other hand, acted as if the deposition and
restoration of emperors had depended solely on them; for if the
imperial succession was to be considered dependent on the arrangement of
the stars, what was requisite but to await the accession of the future
emperor, whoever he might be? or if the succession was regarded as
dependent on the will of God, what right had man to meddle? For it
is not the function of human foreknowledge or zeal to understand God's
thought; nor if it were right, would it be well for men, even if they
be the wisest of all, to think that they can plan better than God.
If it were merely from rash curiosity to discern the things of futurity
that they showed such lack of judgment as to be ready to be caught in
danger, and to despise the laws anciently established among the
Romans, and at a time when it was not dangerous to conduct pagan
worship and to sacrifice; in this they thought differently from
Socrates; for when unjustly condemned to drink poison, he refused to
save himself by violating the laws in which he had been born and
educated, nor would he escape from prison, although it was in his
power to do so.
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