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A wealthy criminal might obtain, not only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the witnesses, and the judge. By these means, Cleander, in the space of three years, had accumulated more wealth than had ever yet been possessed by any freedman.
Cleander, the successor of Perennis, was a Phrygian by birth; of a nation over whose stubborn, but servile temper, blows only could prevail. He had been sent from his native country to Rome, in the capacity of a slave. As a slave he entered the Imperial palace, rendered himself useful to his master's passions, and rapidly ascended to the most exalted station which a subject could enjoy.
His influence over the mind of Commodus was much greater than that of his predecessor; for Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue which could inspire the emperor with envy or distrust. Avarice was the reigning passion of his soul, and the great principle of his administration.
They gave Polydamas several letters to Parmenio, as if from his friends, and to one of them they attached the seal of his son Philotas, the more completely to deceive the unhappy father. Polydamas was eleven days on his journey into Media. He had letters to Cleander, the governor of the province of Media, which contained the king's warrant for Parmenio's execution.
Under Perennis and later under Cleander not a few senators took with them into their boxes favorites who were not only not of senatorial rank, nor even nobles, but not Romans at all: foreign visitors, alien residents of Rome, freedmen or even slaves, and the other senators, as a class exquisitely sensitive to any invasion of their privileges by outsiders, winked at the practice partly because some of them participated in it, much more because they feared to suffer out-and-out ruin, if, by word or look, they incurred the disfavor of Perennis while he was all-powerful or, later, of the more omnipotent Cleander.
Cleander went back to Byzantium, and the Greeks marched from Calpe to Chrysopolis, which faces Byzantium. Here the whole force was at last carried over to the opposite shore, and once more found itself on European soil, having received promises of pay from the admiral Anaxibius.
Against these assailants Alexander sent from his second line Menidas' cavalry. As these proved too few to make head against the enemy, he ordered Ariston also from the second line with his right horse, and Cleander with his foot, in support of Menidas.
An oligarchy is also changed into a tyranny; such was the rise of most of the ancient tyrannies in Sicily; at Leontini, into the tyranny of Panaetius; at Gela, into that of Cleander; at Rhegium into that of Anaxilaus; and the like in many other cities.
Agathemer, who knew the former slaves and present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that the others were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, like him a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival.
Our evening meal was truly, as Cleander had called it, a feast and a banquet. When we reached our quarters the food was ready and just ready and our repast began at once. It was calculated, in every particular, to induce gluttonous gorging and guzzling.
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