with her husband in a boat towards the suburb across the strait; they
met on their way some men of this faction, who took her away from her
husband with threats, and placed her in their own boat. When she
entered the boat together with these young men, she secretly told her
husband to take courage, and not to fear any evil for her. "Never,"
said she, "will I permit myself to be outraged;" and while her husband
was gazing on her with the greatest sorrow, she sprang into the sea,
and was never seen again. Such were the outrages which the people of
this faction dared to commit in Byzantium.

Yet all this did not so much gall the victims as Justinian's offences
against the State; for those who suffer most cruelly from evil-doers
are in great part consoled by the expectation that the law and the
authorities will avenge them. If they have any hope for the future,
men bear their present sufferings with a much lighter heart; but when
they are outraged by the established government, they are naturally
much more hurt by the evil which befalls them, and the improbability
of redress drives them to despair. Justinian's fault was, not only
that he turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the injured, but did
not even disdain to behave himself as the avowed chief of this party;
that he gave great sums of money to these youths, and kept many of
them in his own retinue; that he even went so far as to appoint some
of them to governments and other official posts.




CHAPTER VIII