rumour--that Babylon is again in arms and, under a new monarch,[122] threatens our Empire; the Parthians, long inactive, and now scorning slothful ease, seek to put an end to the peace imposed by Rome. Rare among the Medes is the murder of a king, for punishment falls on the regicide’s whole family. Thus equal obedience is offered to their overlords, cruel as well as kind. But what would not the year of Eutropius’ consulship dare? ’Tis that has stricken down our faithful ally Sapor and roused the Persians’ swords against their own king; that has cast the torch of the Furies across the Euphrates, there to kindle rebellion, that no quarter of the globe may escape carnage. Then indeed men’s hearts failed them, their courage ebbed away amid all these storms; surrounded as they were on every side by the din of war, at last they recognized the wrath of heaven and their consul’s evil omen, learning too late--schooled by the stubborn issue--their now irrevocable doom. They say that the twin sons of Iapetus formed our first parents of the same materials but with unequal skill. Those whom Prometheus fashioned, and with whose clay he mingled abundant ether, foresee the distant future and, thanks to their more careful making by a better workman, are thus prepared to meet what fate has in store for them. Those framed of baser clay by the sorry artificer the Greek poets so well call Epimetheus, men through whose limbs no ethereal vigour spreads--these, like sheep, cannot avoid the dangers that o’erhang them, nor foresee aught. Not till the blow has fallen do they protest and weep too late the accomplished deed. [122] Varanes IV., who, like his three predecessors, Artaxerxes, Sapor III., and Varanes III., had observed a truce with Rome, died in 399 and was succeeded by Isdigerdes. For all Claudian’s real or simulated anxiety this monarch was as peaceably disposed as the previous ones (see Oros. vii. 34). Claudian seems to have made an error in calling him Sapor (l. 481). * * * * * Page 222