The persecuted had become the persecutor. The Christian emperor Valens unleashed an outpouring of intolerance in the Eastern half of the empire after pagan diviners tried to predict his death in 369. Suspects accused of magic, including a number of philosophers, were tortured and executed, and heaps of secular works on philosophy and law were burned. According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, people frantically burned their whole libraries to avoid accusation.
