8.
Then, after some other matters, he gives again the following account of what befell him: --Germanus, indeed, boasts himself of many professions of faith. He, forsooth, is able to speak of many adverse things which have happened to him! Can he then reckon up in his own case as many condemnatory sentences 1 as we can number in ours, and confiscations too, and proscriptions, and spoilings of goods, and losses of dignities, 2 and despisings of worldly honour, and contemnings of the laudations of governors and councillors, and patient subjections to the threatenings of the adversaries, 3 and to outcries, and perils, and persecutions, and a wandering life, and the pressure of difficulties, and all kinds of trouble, such as befell me in the time of Decius and Sabinus, 4 and such also as I have been suffering under the present severities of AEmilianus? But where in the world did Germanus make his appearance? And what mention is made of him? But I retire from this huge act of folly into which I am suffering myself to fall on account of Germanus; and accordingly I forbear giving to the brethren, who already have full knowledge of these things, a particular and detailed narrative of all that happened.
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apophaseis. ↩
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Maximus, in the scholia to the book of Dionysius the Areopagite, De coelesti hierarchia, ch. 5, states that Dionysius was by profession a rhetor before his conversion: ho goun megas Dionusios ho 'Alexandreon episkopos, ho apo rhetoron, etc.--Vales. ↩
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ton enantion hapeilon. ↩
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This Sabinus had been prefect of Egypt in the time of Decius; it is of him that Dionysius writes in his Epistle to Fabius, which is given above. The AEmilianus, prefect of Egypt, who is mentioned here, afterwards seized the imperial power, as Pollio writes in his Thirty Tyrants, who, however, calls him general (ducem), and not prefect of Egypt.--Vales. ↩
