Lydus continues[134]: 'Now, what followed, like the Peleus of Euripides, I can never describe without tears. For on account of all these sources of revenue having been dried up, I myself have had to bear my part in the general misery of our time, since, though I have reached the highest grade of promotion in the service, I have derived nothing from it but the bare name. I do not blush to call Justice herself as a witness to the truth of what I say, when I affirm that I am not conscious of having received one obol from the Princeps, nor from the Letters Patent for promotions in the office[135]. For indeed whence should I have derived it, since it was the ancient custom that those who in any way appeared in the highest courts should pay to the _officium_ seven and thirty _aurei_ [L22] for a "one-membered" suit; but ever after this bargain was made there has been given only a very moderate sum of copper--not gold--in a beggarly way, as if one were buying a flask of oil, and that not regularly? Or how compel the Princeps to pay the ancient covenanted sum to the Cornicularius of the day, when he now scarcely remembered the bare name of that officer, as he never condescended to be present in the court when promotions were made from a lower grade to a higher? Bitterly do I regret that I was so late in coming to perceive for what a paltry price I was rendering my long services as assistant in the courts, receiving in fact nothing therefrom as my own _solatium_. It serves me right, however, for having chosen that line of employment, as I will explain, if the reader will allow me to recount to him my career from its commencement to the present time.' [Footnote 134: De Mag. iii. 25.] [Footnote 135: [Greek: apo ton legomenon kompleusimon], apparently the same source of revenue as the promotion-money ([Greek: ten ek tou bathmou pronomian]).] Lydus then goes on to describe his arrival at Constantinople (A.D. 511), his intention to enter the _Scrinium Memoriae_ (in which he would have served under the Magister Officiorum), and his abandonment of this intention upon the pressing entreaties of his countryman Zoticus, who was at the time Praefectus Praetorio. This step Lydus looks upon as the fatal mistake of his life, though the consequences of it to him were in some degree mitigated by the marriage which Zoticus enabled him to make with a lady possessed of a fortune of 100 pounds' weight of gold (L4,000). Her property, her virtues (for 'she was superior to all women who have ever been admired for their moral excellence'), and the consolations of Philosophy and Literature, did much to soothe the disappointment of Lydus, who nevertheless felt, when he retired to his books after forty years of service, in which he had reached the unrewarded post of Cornicularius, that his official life had been a failure.