(Now that I have told the story of this first campaign, which was fought at the end of the autumn, shall I here break off my narrative? Or is it altogether unfair to withhold the end and issue of your achievements from those who are eager to hear? Winter overtook us and gave the usurper a chance to escape punishment. Then followed a splendid proclamation worthy of your imperial generosity. An amnesty was granted to those who had taken sides with the usurper, except when they had shared the guilt of those infamous murders. Thus they who had never hoped even to see again anything that they held dear, recovered their houses, money, and native land. Then you welcomed the fleet which arrived from Italy bringing thence many citizens who, no doubt, had fled from the usurper’s savage cruelty. Then when the occasion demanded that you should take the field, you again menaced the usurper. He however took cover in the fastnesses of Italy and hid his army away there in the mountains, wild‐beast fashion, and never even dared to carry on the war beneath the open heavens. But he betook himself to the neighbouring town(180) which is devoted to pleasure and high living, and spent his time in public shows and sensual pleasures, believing that the impassable mountains alone would suffice for his safety. Moreover, intemperate as he was by nature, he thought it clear gain to be able to indulge his appetites at so dangerous a crisis, and he evidently placed too much confidence in the safety of his position, because the town is cut off from that part of Italy by a natural rampart of mountains, except the half that is bounded by a shoaling sea, which resembles the marshes of Egypt and makes that part of the country inaccessible even to an invading fleet. It seems however as though nature herself will not devise any safeguard for the sensual and cowardly against the temperate and brave, for when prudence and courage advance hand in hand she makes everything give way before them. Long since she revealed to us those arts through which we have attained an abundance of what was once thought to be unattainable, and in the field of individual effort we see that what seemed impossible for many working together to achieve can be accomplished by a prudent man. And since by your own actions you demonstrated this fact it is only fair, O my Emperor, that you should accept my words to that effect.)