Letter 149

149. To Trajan

You yourself set before your eyes the affliction of Maximus, formerly held in esteem but now the most pitiable of all men, who governed our country — would that he had not! For I think the governorship of provinces would become a thing to be deprecated by many, if their tenures of office are to come to such an end. Why, then, need we report each particular, both of what we saw and of what we heard, to a man who, through the great keenness of his mind, is able to conjecture the rest from the few things that were done? Yet, perhaps, in saying this much, I shall not seem to you superfluous: that, many and dreadful as were the things ventured against him before your arrival, those that came after were such as to make the earlier seem an act of kindness. So great was the excess of insolence and loss and bodily affliction in the measures afterwards devised against him by the one in power. And now he comes under guard, to pay out the remnants of his evils here, unless you are willing to stretch out your great hand over the man who is hard pressed. I know that I am doing a superfluous thing in calling upon your goodness to show kindness; nevertheless, since I wish to be useful to the man, I implore your reverend self to add something, for our sake, to your natural zeal for what is good, so that the benefit of our intercession on his behalf may become plain to the man.