Book 28
6.28
When this favourable turn of fortune was fully known and the instigator of the awful troubles put to death, Erechthius and Aristomenes, who, when they learned that it had been ordered that their tongues should be cut out,See 6, 20, above. as over-lavishly used, had withdrawn to far remote and hidden places, now hastened from concealment; and when the emperor Gratian—for Valentinian had died—was given trustworthy information of the abominable deception, they were sent for trial to the proconsul HesperiusIn 376. and the deputy Flavianus.In 382 and 391 he was praetorian prefect; and according to Symmachus, 2, 82, 83, he received the consulship, apparently from the usurper Eugenius. These officials, being men of impartial justice combined with most rightful authority, having put Caecilius to the torture, learned from his open confession that he himself had persuaded his citizens to make trouble for the envoys by false statements. This investigation was followed by a report, which disclosed the fullest confirmation of the acts which had been committed; to this no reply was made.
