CHAPTER LV

THE LAWLESS CONDUCT AND COVETOUSNESS OF LICINIUS

SUCH were the ordinances of Licinius. But why should I enumerate his innovations respecting marriage, or those which had in view the property of the dying, whereby he presumed to abrogate the ancient and wisely established laws of the Romans, and to introduce certain barbarous and cruel institutions in their stead, inventing a thousand pretences for oppressing his subjects? Hence it was that he devised a new method of measuring land, by which he reckoned the smallest portion at more than its actual dimensions, from an insatiable desire of unjust exaction. Hence too he registered the names of country residents who were now no more, and had long been numbered with the dead, procuring to himself by this expedient a sordid and unlawful gain. For his meanness was as unlimited as his rapacity was insatiable. So that when he had filled all his treasuries with gold, and silver, and boundless wealth, he bitterly bewailed his poverty, and suffered as it were the torments of Tantalus. But why should I mention how many innocent persons he punished with exile; how much property he confiscated; how many men of noble birth and unblemished character he imprisoned, whose wives he handed over to be basely insulted by his profligate slaves; in short, to how many married women and virgins he himself offered violence, though already feeling the infirmities of age? I need not enlarge on these subjects, since the enormity of his last actions causes the former to appear trifling and of little moment.