Against Flaccus (176-180)

And he was continually giving way to dread and to apprehension, and shaking with fear in every limb and every portion of his body, and his whole soul was trembling with terror and quivering with palpitation and agitation, as if nothing in the world could possibly be a comfort to the man now that he was deprived of all favourable hopes;

no good omen ever appeared to him, everything bore a hostile appearance, every report was ill-omened, his waking was painful, his sleep fearful, his solitude resembling that of wild beasts, nevertheless the solitude of his herds was what was most pleasant to him, any dwelling in the city was his greatest affliction; his safe reproach was a solitary abiding in the fields, a dangerous, and painful, and unseemly way of life; every one who approached him, however justly, was an object of suspicion to him.

"This man," he would say, "who is coming quickly hither, is planning something against me, he does not look as if he were hastening for any other object, but he is pursuing me; this pleasant looking man is laying a snare for me; this free-spoken man is despising me; this man is giving me meat and drink as they feed cattle before killing them.

How long shall I, hard-hearted that I am, bear up against such terrible calamities? I well know that I am afraid of death, since out of cruelty the Deity will not punish me violently, to cut short my miserable life, in order to load me to excess with irremediable miseries, which he treasures up against me, to do a pleasure to those whom I treacherously put to death."

While repeating these things over and over again and writhing with his agony, he awaited the end of his destiny, and his uninterrupted sorrow agitated, and disturbed, and overturned his soul. But Caius, being a man of an inhuman nature and insatiable in his revenge, did not, as some persons do, let go those who had been once punished, but raged against them without end, and was continually contriving some new and terrible suffering for them; and, above all men, he hated Flaccus to such a degree, that he suspected all who bore the same name, from his detestation of the very appellation;