only by the influence of servile fear.
The fate of Lucian proclaimed to the East, that the praefect, whose
industry was much abated in the despatch of ordinary business, was
active and indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge. Lucian, the son of
the praefect Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul, and the enemy of Julian,
had employed a considerable part of his inheritance, the fruit of rapine
and corruption, to purchase the friendship of Rufinus, and the high
office of Count of the East. But the new magistrate imprudently departed
from the maxims of the court, and of the times; disgraced his benefactor
by the contrast of a virtuous and temperate administration; and presumed
to refuse an act of injustice, which might have tended to the profit
of the emperor's uncle. Arcadius was easily persuaded to resent the
supposed insult; and the praefect of the East resolved to execute in
person the cruel vengeance, which he meditated against this ungrateful
delegate of his power. He performed with incessant speed the journey of
seven or eight hundred miles, from Constantinople to Antioch, entered
the capital of Syria at the dead of night, and spread universal
consternation among a people ignorant of his design, but not ignorant
of his character. The Count of the fifteen provinces of the East was
dragged, like the vilest malefactor, before the arbitrary tribunal of
Rufinus. Notwithstanding the clearest evidence of his integrity, which
was not impeached even by the voice of an accuser, Lucian was condemned,
almost with out a trial, to suffer a cruel and ignominious punishment.
The ministers of the tyrant, by the orders, and in the presence, of
their master, beat him on the neck with leather thongs armed at the
extremities with lead; and when he fainted under the violence of the
pain, he was removed in a close litter, to conceal his dying agonies
from the eyes of the indignant city. No sooner had Rufinus perpetrated
this inhuman act, the sole object of his expedition, than he returned,
amidst the deep and silent curses of a trembling people, from Antioch
to Constantinople; and his diligence was accelerated by the hope of
accomplishing, without delay, the nuptials of his daughter with the
emperor of the East.

But Rufinus soon experienced, that a prudent minister should constantly
secure his royal captive by the strong, though invisible chain of habit;
and that the merit, and much more easily the favor, of the absent,
are obliterated in a s