Book 28
6.27
When this letter had been sent to the Palace and read, Meterius, on being seized by order of Valentinian, admitted that the letter was his. Therefore Palladius was ordered to be produced, but thinking of the mass of crimes that he had concocted, at a halting-station, as darkness was coming on, noticing the absence of the guards, who on a festal day of the Christian religionVigils were held on various sacred anniversaries, e.g., on the night of the birth of the Saviour, Lact., Div. Inst., vii. 19, 3: at Easter, Tertull., Ad Uxorem, ii. 4; etc. were spending the whole night in church, he knotted a noose about his neck and strangled himself.
