Ut longum permensus iter ductusque maligno stamine fatorum claram subrepsit in aulam, ilicet ambitio nasci, discedere rectum, venum cuncta dari; profert arcana, clientes fallit et ambitos a principe vendit honores. 180 ingeminat crimen, commoti pectoris ignem nutrit et exiguum stimulando vulnus acerbat. ac velut innumeros amnes accedere Nereus nescit et undantem quamvis hinc hauriat Histrum, hinc bibat aestivum septeno gurgite Nilum, 185 par semper similisque manet: sic fluctibus auri expleri calor ille nequit. cuicumque monile contextum gemmis aut praedia culta fuissent, Rufino populandus erat, dominoque parabat exitium fecundus ager; metuenda colonis 190 fertilitas: laribus pellit, detrudit avitis * * * * * Page 39 with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold: but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for the gold cursed his prayer. Thus Rufinus, overcome, cried out: “Whithersoever thou summonest me I follow, be thou man or god.” Then at the Fury’s bidding he left his fatherland and approached the cities of the East, threading the once floating Symplegades and the seas renowned for the voyage of the Argo, ship of Thessaly, till he came to where, beneath its high-walled town, the gleaming Bosporus separates Asia from the Thracian coast. When he had completed this long journey and, led by the evil thread of the fates, had won his way into the far-famed palace, then did ambition straightway come to birth and right was no more. Everything had its price. He betrayed secrets, deceived dependents, and sold honours that had been wheedled from the emperor. He followed up one crime with another, heaping fuel on the inflamed mind and probing and embittering the erstwhile trivial wound. And yet, as Nereus knows no addition from the infinitude of rivers that flow into him and though here he drains Danube’s wave and there Nile’s summer flood with its sevenfold mouth, yet ever remains his same and constant self, so Rufinus’ thirst knew no abatement for all the streams of gold that flowed in upon him. Had any a necklace studded with jewels or a fertile demesne he was sure prey for Rufinus: a rich property assured the ruin of its own possessor: fertility was the husbandman’s bane. He drives them from their homes, expels them from the lands their sires had * * * * * Page 40 finibus; aut aufert vivis aut occupat heres congestae cumulantur opes orbisque ruinas accipit una domus: populi servire coacti plenaque privato succumbunt oppida regno. 195