Nothing on earth restrained him, no proffering of wiser counsels, no fear for the future, no hatred of the mob, none of the other factors which, in normal men, curb vanity or check mighty ambition. Had some rein kept him under control, he would have overrun the whole inhabited world, country by country. He would have won glory on every battlefield, and none of the emperors before him would have been his rival.**208 But lack of restraint, refusal to accept reason as his guide, these were the ruin of his noble character.
63. I have described more or less, the alarm and confusion he caused in the political world. In the world of foreign affairs, his ambition was to effect a union of the eastern and western barbarians. They themselves were heartily afraid of him. For the first time they changed their usual tactics. Having observed the quality of the man they had to deal with, instead of pursuing an aggressive strategy they sought safety in obscurity.
The ruler of Egypt
The Sultan of Parthia, for example, the arch-revolutionary of former times, now adopted an almost retrogressive policy. In no place would he stay for any length of time, had no fixed abode, and — a thing which is really astonishing — went into complete retirement, cutting himself off from intercourse with everyone. The ruler of Egypt, too, even to this day is terrified of the man and still courts his favour with flattery. He even goes so far as to lament Isaac’s downfall. The truth is, the emperor’s appearance and the emperor’s words were as potent as his hands were strong, hands with which he had torn down many a city and destroyed walls defended by thousands of warriors.
64. He preferred to be ignorant of nothing, even down to the smallest detail, but since he knew this to be impossible, he would try to obtain his information by indirect means. He used to send for an expert and, without questioning him on the subject about which he was ignorant, by clever manoeuvring round it, he would make the other reveal what he himself did not know, in such a way that the expert was apparently explaining something that was common knowledge to both of them alike. He often tried to catch me like that too, but when on one occasion I ventured to tell him it was a secret, he was taken aback and blushed as if he had been caught doing something wrong. Being a man of great pride, he had a horror of being rebuked, whether openly or subtly.
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