[146] I have described these events at length, not in order to recall long-past iniquities but to extol the justice which watches over human affairs, because, to those who had been hostile to him from the first and of all his foes the most bitter it also fell to conduct his arraignment and so magnify his afflictions to the uttermost. For arraignment is not by itself so grievous as when it is brought by admitted foes.

[147] Not only was he accused, a ruler by his subjects, a potentate who but now had the life of both in his hands by inveterate enemies, but he was also condemned, suffering thereby a mighty twofold blow in that his fall was coupled with the laughter of gloating enemies, which to men of good sense is worse even than death.

[148] Then there came to him a rich harvest of misfortunes. He was at once deprived of all his property, both what he inherited from his parents and what he acquired himself. For his taste for things ornamental was quite exceptional. Wealth was not with him as it is with some rich men inert matter, but everything had been carefully selected for its elaborate workmanship, his cups, clothes, coverlets, utensils and all the other ornaments of the house,

[149] all were of the choicest: besides these the staff of household slaves had been picked as the best for comeliness of form and fine condition and the faultless way in which they ministered to the needs of their master. For whatever tasks they were severally appointed to do they excelled in, so that they were held to stand either first among those who performed the same functions or certainly second to none.

[150] A clear proof of this is that while a vast number of properties belonging to condemned persons were sold by public auction, that of Flaccus alone was reserved for the emperor, a few articles only being excepted so as not to run counter to the law enacted about persons convicted on these grounds.

[151] And when his property had been taken from him he was sentenced to banishment and expelled not only from the whole continent, which is the larger and better section of the habitable world, but also from every one of the islands in which life can prosper. For he was to be exiled to the most miserable of the Aegean islands, called Gyara, had he not found an intercessor in Lepidus who enabled him to exchange Gyara for Andros, the island which lies nearest to it.

[152] He then again travelled along the road from Rome to Brundisium which he had travelled a few years before at the time when he had been appointed a governor of Egypt and its neighbour Libya, so that the cities which then beheld him puffed with pride, parading the grandeur of his good fortune, might once more behold him covered with dishonour instead.

[153] As fingers pointed at him and reproaches poured upon him he was oppressed by the heavier afflictions caused by the change which had overwhelmed him, for his misery was ever being renewed and rekindled by the accession of fresh troubles which also forcibly brought back, like symptoms recurring in sickness, recollections of past mishaps which seemed for a while to have been dulled.