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[1] Passing the winter there to his heart’s content, he was meanwhile carried away by no incitements of the pleasures in which all Syria abounds; but as if for recreation devoting his attention to cases at law, not less than to difficult and warlike affairs, he was distracted by many cares, as with remarkable willingness to receive information he deliberated how he might give each man his due by righteous decisions, bringing the guilty to order with moderate punishments and protecting the innocent with the safety of their property.
[2] And, although in arguing cases he was sometimes untimely, asking at some inopportune moment what the religion of each of the litigants was, yet it cannot be found that in the decision of any suit he was inconsistent with equity, nor could he ever be accused because of a man’s religious views, or for any other cause, of having deviated from the straight path of justice.
[3] For that is desirable and proper judgement, when, after examination of all the circumstances, just is distinguished from unjust; and that he might not depart from this, he was as careful as of dangerous rocks.
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Now this he was able to accomplish for the reason that, recognising the hastiness of his somewhat excitable disposition, he allowed his prefects and associates freely to curb his impulses, when they led him away from what was fitting, by a timely admonition; and at times he showed that he regretted his errors and was glad to be corrected.
[4] And when the defenders of causes greeted him with the greatest applause, declaring that he understood perfect justice, he is said to have replied with emotion:
I should certainly rejoice and show my joy, if I were praised by those whom I knew to have also the power to blame me in case I was wrong in deed or word.
[5] But it will suffice, in place of many examples of the clemency that he showed in judicial processes, to set down this one, which is neither out of place nor ill-chosen. When a certain woman had been brought before the court, and contrary to her expectation saw that her accuser, who was one of the court servants that had been discharged, wore his girdle,
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she loudly complained at this act of insolence. Whereupon the emperor said:
Go on with your charge, woman, if you think that you have been wronged in any way; for this man has thus girt himself in order to go through the mire the more easily
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; it can do little harm to your cause.
[6] And these and similar instances led to the belief, as he himself constantly affirmed, that the old goddess of Justice,
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whom Aratus takes up to heaven
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because she was displeased with the vices of mankind, had returned to earth during his reign, were it not that sometimes Julian followed his own inclination rather than the demands of the laws, and by occasionally erring clouded the many glories of his career.
[7] For after many other things, he also corrected some of the laws, removing ambiguities, so that they showed clearly what they demanded or forbade to be done. But this one thing was inhumane, and ought to be buried in eternal silence, namely, that he forbade teachers of rhetoric and literature to practise their profession, if they were followers of the Christian religion.
Res Gestae. Ammianus Marcellinus. John C. Rolfe (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-1940.
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