i No 190, p.264.The emperors adopted with pleasure this Persian metaphor.] [Footnote 161: For the Agentes in Rebus, see Ammian.l.xv.c.3, l.
xvi.c.5, l.xxii.c.7, with the curious annotations of Valesius.

Cod.
Theod.l.vi.tit.xxvii.

xxviii.xxix.Among the passages collected in the Commentary of Godefroy, the most remarkable is one from Libanius, in his discourse concerning the death of Julian.] The deceitful and dangerous experiment of the criminal quaestion, as it is emphatically styled, was admitted, rather than approved, in the jurisprudence of the Romans.

They applied this sanguinary mode of examination only to servile bodies, whose sufferings were seldom weighed by those haughty republicans in the scale of justice or humanity; but they would never consent to violate the sacred person of a citizen, till they possessed the clearest evidence of his guilt.

[162] The annals of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as long as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom and honor, the last hours of a Roman were secured from the danger of ignominions torture.