Works and Other Worthy Writings (Aldine Edition)

and then again be cast down in any brief and unexpected moment of fortune. However, although Commodus feared that the people might perhaps devise something new against him, nevertheless, at the persuasion of his friends, he returned to the city, and having been received with joyful acclamations and a large retinue, he betook himself to the imperial palace. Yet, from those many dangers he had already encountered, he began to trust no one. Instead, he would kill this man or that, lending credence to any calumny. To these things, he attached no one to himself who had any virtue, but had turned his mind away from all upright pursuits alike. Indeed, he was one whom, day and night, unbridled pleasures of the body—one after another—pressed into the heaviest servitude, and he removed from his threshold, as if they were conspirators, anyone whom either honesty or any discipline, however moderate, might distinguish. But as for buffoons and those who represented the basest things, he held them as if they were his own, and he exercised himself immoderately in driving chariots and killing beasts, for which pursuits his flatterers celebrated him with the glory of courage. Therefore, he handled these things less decorously than was fitting for a modest prince. There appeared at that time also certain prodigies in the sky; for stars appeared perpetually during the day, and some of them, extended into a long shape, seemed to hang, as it were, in the middle of the air. Furthermore, animals of every kind, by no means keeping to their own nature, were produced both with prodigious bodily shapes and with limbs that were not at all congruent. But a great impiety brought both present sorrow and terrified everyone with a very bad omen for the future. For when no rain and no clouds had preceded it, and only a small earthquake, whether by the fall of a nocturnal lightning bolt or by some fire, as if squeezed out in the earthquake itself, the entire Temple of Peace was suddenly consumed by fire—a work which, of course, was the single greatest and most beautiful in the whole city. It was the most opulent of all temples, and exceedingly fortified, and with much adornment of gold and silver. For almost everyone stored their wealth there as if in a treasury, and therefore the fire, raging through the night, rendered many of the opulent destitute. On account of this, all people publicly lamented the common loss, but each one privately lamented their own. But when the entire temple was consumed by fire, very many and very beautiful buildings of the city also burned. Among these was the Temple of Vesta. Thus, even the Palladium could be seen, which the Romans worship above all, and keep in a secret place, brought (as they claim) from Troy, and then for the first time since it came into Italy, it was seen by