“In one and the same day he gave audience to several ambassadors, and wrote or dictated a great number of letters to his generals, his civil magistrates, his private friends, and the different cities of his dominions. He listened to the memorials which had been received, considered the subject of the petitions, and signified his intentions more rapidly than they could be taken in shorthand by the diligence of his secretaries. He possessed such flexibility of thought, and such firmness of attention, that he could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate, and pursue at once three several trains of ideas without hesitation and without error. While his ministers reposed, the prince flew with agility from one labour to another, and, after a hasty dinner, retired into his library till the public business, which he had appointed for the evening, summoned him to interrupt the prosecution of his studies. The supper of the emperor was still less substantial than the former meal; his sleep was never clouded by the fumes of indigestion.... He was soon awakened by the entrance of fresh secretaries who had slept the preceding day, and his servants were obliged to wait alternately, while their indefatigable master allowed himself scarcely any other refreshment than the change of occupation. The predecessors of Julian, his uncle, his brother, and his cousin, indulged their puerile taste for the games of the circus under the specious pretence of complying with the inclination of the people, and they frequently remained the greater part of the day as idle spectators.... On solemn festivals Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus, and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public, or the improvement of his own mind. By this avarice of time he seemed to protract the short duration of his reign, and, if the dates were less securely ascertained, we should refuse to believe that only _sixteen months_ elapsed between the death of Constantius and the departure of his successor for the Persian war in which he perished.”[89]