Kitap 28
1.3
When in the first Medic war the Persians had plundered Asia, they besieged Miletus with mighty forces, threatened the defenders with death by torture, and drove the besieged to the necessity, overwhelmed as they all were by a weight of evils, of killing their own dear ones, consigning their movable possessions to the flames, and each one striving to be first to throw himself into the fire, to burn on the common funeral pyre of their country.
1.4
Soon after this, Phrynichus composed a play with this disaster as its plot, which he put upon the stage at Athens in the lofty language of tragedy. At first he was heard with pleasure, but as the sad story went on in too tragic style, the people became angry and punishedWith a fine of 1000 drachmas. The play was the Capture of Miletus, produced soon after 494 B.C.; cf. Herodotus, vi. 21. him, thinking that consolation was not his object but blame and reproach, when he had the bad taste to include among stage-plays a portrayal even of those sufferings which a well-beloved city had undergone, without receiving any support from its founders.For auctores in this sense, cf. Suet., Claud. 25, 3. For Miletus was a colony of the Athenians founded by Nileus, the son of Codrus (who is said to have sacrificed himself for his country in the Dorian war) and by other Ionians.Ammianus’ purpose in telling this story is to show that he might dread to give a description of the degeneracy of the Romans, for fear of what befel Phrynichus.
