 Book 16, Part 1 of the Annals by Publius Canelius Tacitus. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Annals by Publius Canelius Tacitus. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Broderib. Book 16, A.D. 65 and 66. Part 1, Wild Prodigality of Nero. Fortune soon afterwards made a dupe of Nero through his own credulity and the promises of Caecilius Bassus, a Carthaginian by birth and a man of crazed imagination who rested a vision seen in the slumber of night into a confident expectation. He sailed to Rome and, having purchased admission to the emperor, he explained how he had discovered on his land a cave of immense depth which contained a vast quantity of gold, not in the form of coin but in the shapeless and ponderous masses of ancient days. In fact, he said, ingots of great weight lay there with bars standing near them in another part of the cave, a treasure hidden for so many ages to increase the wealth of the present. Phoenician Dito, as he sought to show by inference, after fleeing from Tyre and founding Carthage, had concealed these riches in the fear that a new people might be demoralized by a superabundance of money or that the Numidian kings, already for other reasons hostile, might by lust of gold be provoked to war. Nero, upon this, without sufficiently examining the credibility of the author of the story or of the matter itself or sending persons through whom he might assertan whether the intelligence was true, himself actually encouraged the report and dispatched men to bring the spoil as if it were already acquired. They had triremes assign them and crews specially selected to promote speed. Nothing else at the time was the subject of the credulous gossip of the people and of the very different conversation of thinking persons. It happened, too, that the quinquinial games were being celebrated for the second time and the orators took from this same incident their chief materials for eulogies on the emperor. Not only, they said, were there the usual harvests and the gold of the mine with its alloy, but the earth now teamed with a new abundance and wealth was thrust on them by the bounty of the gods. These and other servile flatteries they invented with consummate eloquence and equal sycophancy, confidently counting on the faculty of his belief. Extravagance, meanwhile, increased on the strength of a comarital hope and ancient wealth was wasted as apparently the emperor had lighted on treasures of his wander for many a year. He even gave away profusely from this source and the expectation of riches was one of the causes of the poverty of the state. Basus, indeed, dug up his land and extensive plains in the neighborhood while he persisted that this or that was the place of the promised cave and was followed not only by our soldiers but by the rustic population who were engaged to execute the work. Till at last he threw off his infatuation and wondered that his dreams had never before been false and that now for the first time he had been deluded he escaped to grace and danger by a voluntary death. Some have said that he was imprisoned and soon released. His property had not been taken from him as a substitute for the royal treasure. Meanwhile the senate, as they were now on the eve of the quinquennial contest, wishing to avert scandal, offered the emperor the victory in song and added the crown of eloquence that thus a veil might be thrown over a shameful exposure on the stage. Nero, however, repeatedly declared that he wanted neither favor nor the senate's influence as he was a match for his rivals and was certain in the conscientious opinion of the judges to win the honor by merit. First he recited a poem on the stage. Then at the important request of the rabble that he would make public property of all his accomplishments these were their words. He entered the theater and conformed to all the laws of heart-playing not sitting down when tired nor wiping off the perspiration with anything but the garments he wore or letting himself to be seen to spit or clear his nostrils. Last of all, on bended knee he saluted the assembly with a motion of the hand and awaited the verdict of the judges with pretending anxiety. And then the city populace who were want to encourage every gesture even of actors made the place ring with measured strains of elaborate applause. One would have thought that they were rejoicing and perhaps they did rejoice in their indifference to the public disgrace. All, however, who were present from remote towns and still retained the idly of strict morals and primitive ways all too who had come on embassies or on private business from distant provinces where they had been unused to such wantoness were unable to endure the spectacle and disdain the degrading fatigue which wearied their unpracticed hands while they disturbed those who knew their part and were often struck by soldiers stationed in the seats to see that not a moment of time passed with less vigorous applause or in the silence of indifference. It was a known fact that several nights and struggling through the narrow approaches and the pressure of the crowd were trampled to death and that others while keeping their seats day and night were seized with some fatal malady or it was still worse danger to be absent from the show as many openly and many more secretly made it their business to scrutinize names and faces and to note the delight or the disgust of the company. Hence came cruel severities immediately exercised on the humble and resentments concealed for the moment but subsequently paid off towards men of distinction. There was a story that Bespasian was insulted by Phoebus, a freedman for closing his eyes in a doze and that having with difficulty been screened by the intercessions of the well-disposed he escaped imminent destruction through his grander destiny. After the conclusion of the games Popiah died from a casual outburst of rage in her husband who felled her with a kick when she was pregnant. That there was poison I cannot believe though some writers so relate from hatred rather than from belief for the emperor was desirous of children and wholly swayed by love of his wife. Her body was not consumed by fire according to Roman usage but after the custom of foreign princes was filled with fragrant spices and embalmed and then consigned to the sepulchre of the Juliae. She had however a public funeral and Nero himself from the rostra eulogized her beauty her lot in having been the mother of a deified child and fortunes other gifts as though they were virtues. To the death of Popiah which grief was a delight to those who recalled the past thought of her shamelessness and cruelty, Nero added fresh and greater odium by forbidding Gaius Cassius to attend the funeral. This was the first token of mischief nor was it long delayed. Salinas was coupled with Cassius no crime being alleged but that Cassius was eminent for his ancestral wealth and dignity of character. Salinas for the nobility of his birth and the quiet demeanor of his youth the emperor accordingly sent the senate a speech in which he argued that both ought to be removed from the senate and made it a reproach against Cassius that among his ancestors busts he had specially revered that of Gaius Cassius which bore the inscription to the party leader. In fact he had thereby sought to sow the seeds of civil war and revolt from the house of the Caesars and that he might not merely avail himself of the memory of a hated name to stir up strife but had associated with him Lucius Salinas a youth of noble birth and reckless spirit to whom he might point as an instrument of revolution. Nero then denounced Salinas himself in the same terms as he had his uncle Torquatis implying that he had already arranged the details of imperial business and setting freedmen to manage his accounts, papers and correspondence imputations utterly groundless and false. Salinas in truth was intensely apprehensive and had been frightened in decaution by his uncle's destruction. Nero then procured persons under the name of informers to invent against Lepida the wife of Cassius and aunt of Salinas a charge of incest with her brother's son and of some ghastly religious ceremonial. Volcatius Tullinus and Marcellus Cornelius Senators and Fabatus a Roman knight were drawn in as accomplices by an appeal to the emperor these men eluded an impending doom and subsequently as being too insignificant escaped from Nero who was busy with crimes on a far greater scale. The senate was then consulted and sentences of exile were passed on Cassius and Salinas. As to Lepida the emperor was to decide. Cassius was transported to the island of Sardinia and he was quietly left to old age. Salinas was removed to Ostia whence it was pretended he was to be conveyed to Naxos. He was afterwards confined in a town of Apulia named Barium. There as he was wisely enduring a most undeserved calamity he was suddenly seized by a centurion sent to slay him. When the man advised him to sever his veins he replied that though he had resolved in his heart to die he would not let a cutthroat have the glory of the service. The centurion seeing that unarmed as he was he was very powerful and more enraged than a frightened man ordered his soldiers to overpower him and Salinas failed not to resist and to strike blows as well as he could with his bare hands till he was cut down by the centurion as though in battle with wounds in his breast. With equal courage Lucius Vetus his mother-in-law Sextia and his daughter Pulutia submitted to death. They were hated by the emperor because they seemed a living reproach on him for the murder of Rubilius Plautus son-in-law of Lucius Vetus. But the first opportunity of unmasking his savage wrath was furnished by Fortunatus a freedman who having embezzled his patron's property deserted him to become his accuser. He had as his accomplice Claudius Dumanius whom Vetus, when proconsul of Asia had imprisoned for his gross misdeeds and whom Nero now released as a recompense for the accusation. When the accused knew this and saw that he and his freedmen were pitted against each other on unequal footing he retired to his estate at Formii. There he was put under the secret surveillance of soldiers. With him was his daughter who, to say nothing of the now imminent peril had all the fury of a long grief ever since she had seen the murders of her husband Plautus. She had clasped his bleeding neck in a bloodstained apparel clinging to her widowhood in perpetual sorrow and using only such nourishment as might suffice to avert starvation. Then, at her father's bidding she went to Neopolis. As she was forbidden to approach Nero she would haunt his doors and implore him to hear an innocent man and not to surrender to a freedman who had once been his colleague in the consulship now pleading with the cries of a woman now again forgetting her sex and lifting up her voice in a tone of menace till the Emperor showed himself unmoved alike by entreaty and reproach. She therefore told her father by message that she had cast hope aside and yielded to necessity. He was at the same time informed that judicial proceedings in the Senate and a dreadful sentence were hanging over him. Some there were who advised him the name the Emperor has his chief heir and so secure the remainder for his grandchildren but he spurned the notion which had clung to freedom by a final act of civility he bestowed on his slaves all his ready money and ordering each to convey away for himself whatever he could carry leaving only three couches for the last scene. Then in the same chamber with the same weapon they sundered their veins and speedily hurried into a bath covered each as delicacy required with a single garment the father gazing intently on his daughter the grandmother on her grandchild she again on both while with rival earnestness they prayed that the ebbing life might have a quick departure each wishing to leave a relative still surviving but just on the verge of death fortune preserved the due order the oldest died first then the others according to the priority of age they were prosecuted after their burial and the sentence was that they should be punished in ancient fashion Nero interposed his veto allowing them to die without his interference such were the mockeries added to murders already perpetrated Publius Gallus a Roman knight was outlawed for having been intimate with Phineas Rufus and somewhat acquainted with Vetus to the freedman who was the accuser was given as a reward for his service a seat in the theater among the tribunes officers the month two following April or Nero Nius was changed from Mayus to the name of Claudius and Junius into that of Germanicus Cornelius Orphitius the proposer of the motion publicly declaring that the month Junius had been passed over because the execution of the two Torquatai for their crimes had now rendered its name inauspicious a year of shame and so many evil deeds heaven also marked by storms and pestilence Campania was devastated by a hurricane which destroyed everywhere plantations and crops and carried its fury into the neighborhood of Rome where a terrible plague was sweeping away all classes of human beings without any such derangement of the atmosphere as to be visibly apparent yet the houses were filled with lifeless forms in the streets with funerals neither age nor sex was exempt from peril slaves in the freeborn population alike was suddenly cut off amid the wailings of wives and children who were often consumed on the very funeral pile of their friends by whom they had been sitting and shedding tears knights and senators perished indiscriminately and yet their deaths were less deployed because they seemed to forestall the emperor's cruelty by an ordinary death that same year levies of troops were held in Narbonne Gaul Africa and Asia to fill up the legions of Illyricum all soldiers in which, worn out by age or ill health were receiving their discharge Unum was consoled by the prince for a ruinous disaster by a gift of four million Cisterci's so that what was lost to the city might be replaced its people had previously offered the same amount for the distresses of Rome in the consulship of Gaia Suetonius and Lucius Telecinus Anistius Socianus whom, as I have stated, had been punished with exile for repeated satires on Nero having heard that there was such honor for informers and that the emperor was so partial to bloodshed being himself too of a restless temper and quick to seize opportunities made a friend of a man in light condition with himself one Pemennis an exile in the same place noted for his skill as an astrologer and consequently bound to many in close intimacy he thought that there must be a meaning in the frequent messages and the consultations and he learned at the same time that an annual payment was furnished him to that Antoneus was hated by Nero for his love of Agrippina and that his wealth was sufficiently conspicuous to provoke cupidity and that this was the cause of the destruction of many. Accordingly he intercepted a letter from Anteus and having also stolen some notes about the day of his nativity and his future career which were hidden away among Pemennis secret papers and having further discovered some remarks on the birth and life of Ostoria Scapula he wrote to the emperor that he would communicate important news which would contribute to his safety if he could but obtain a brief reprieve of his exile Anteus and Ostorius were he hinted grasping at empire prying into the destinies of themselves and of the prince some swift galleys were then dispatched and Socianus speedily arrived on the disclosure of his information Anteus and Ostorius were classed with condemned criminals rather than with men on their trial so completely indeed that no one would attest the will of Anteus till Tigalinas interposed to sanction it Anteus had been previously advised by him not to delay this final document then he drank poison but disgusted by its slowness he hastened death by severing his veins Ostorius was living at the time on a remote estate on the Ligurian frontier Scyther a Centurion was dispatched to hurry on his destruction there was a motive for promptitude arising out of the fact that Ostorius with his great military fame and the civic crown that he had won in Britain possessed too as he was of huge bodily strength and skill in arms had made Nero who was always timid and now more frightened than ever by the lately discovered conspiracy fearful of a sudden attack so the Centurion having barred every exit from the house he used the emperor's orders to Ostorius that fortitude which he had shown in fighting the enemy Ostorius now turned against himself and has his veins those severed allowed by the scanty flow of blood he used the help of a slave simply to hold up a dagger firmly and then pressing the man's hands toward him he met the point with his throat even if I had to relate foreign wars and deaths encountered in the service of the state with such monotony of disaster I should myself have been overcome by disgust while I should look for weariness in my readers second as they would be by the melancholy and continuous destruction of our citizens however glorious to themselves but now a servile submissiveness and so much wanton bloodshed at home fatigue the mine and paralyze it with grief the only indulgence I would ask from those who will acquaint themselves with these whores is that I be not thought to hate men who perish so tamely such was the wrath of heaven against the Roman state that one may not pass over it with a single mention as one might the defeat of armies in the capture of cities let us grant this privilege to the posterity of illustrious men that just as in their funeral obsequies such men are not confounded in a common burial so in the record of their end they may receive and retain a special memorial within a few days in quick succession Mella, Kerylius Anichius Rufius Crispinus and Petronius Fel Mella and Crispinus being Roman knights with senatorian rank the latter had once commanded the Praetorians and had been rewarded with the decorations of the consulate he had lately been banished to Sardinia on the charge of conspiracy and on receiving a message that he was doomed to die had destroyed himself Mella, son of the same parents as Galio and Seneca had refrained from seeking promotion out of a perverse vanity which wished to raise a Roman knight to inequality with ex-consuls he also thought that there was a shorter road to the acquisition of wealth through offices connected with the administration of the emperor's private business he had, too, in his son Enaius Lucanus a powerful aid in rising to distinction after the death of Lucanus he rigorously called in the debts due to his estate he spoke to an accuser in the person of Fabius Romanus one of the intimate friends of Lucanus a story was invented that the father and son shared between them a knowledge of the conspiracy and a letter was forged in Lucanus's name this Nero examined and ordered it to be conveyed to Mella whose wealth he ravenously desired Mella, meanwhile adopting the easiest mode of death than in fashion opened his veins after adding a codicil to his will bequeathing an immense amount to Tigalinas and his son-in-law Cosutanius Capito in order to save the remainder in this codicil he is also said to have written by way of remonstrance against the injustice of his death that he died without any cause for punishment while Rufius Crispinus and Anichius Carilius still enjoyed life though bitter foes to the prince it was thought that he had invented this about Crispinus because the man had already been murdered about Cerilius with the object of procuring his murder soon afterwards Cerilius laid violent hands on himself and received less pity than the others because men remembered that he had betrayed a conspiracy to Gaius Caesar with regards to Gaius Protonius I ought to dwell a little on his antecedents he passed his days in sleep his nights in the business and pleasures of life Indulence had raised him to fame as energy raises others and he was reckoned not a debauchy and spendthrift like most of those who squander their substance but a man of refined luxury and indeed his talk and his doings the freer they were and the more show of carelessness they exhibited were the better liked for their look of natural simplicity yet as proconsul of Bithynia and soon afterwards as consul he had showed himself a man of vigor and equal to business then falling back into vice or affecting vice a hero to be one of his few intimate associates as a critic in matters of taste while the emperor thought nothing charming or elegant in luxury unless Protonius had expressed to him his approval of it hence jealousy on the part of Tigalinas who looked on him as a rival and even as a superior in the science of pleasure and so he worked on the prince's cruelty which dominated every other passion charging Protonius with having been the friend bribing a slave to become an informer robbing him of his means of defense and hurrying into prison the greater part of his domestics it happened at the time that the emperor was on his way to Campania and that Protonius after going as far as Kumai was there detained he bore no longer the suspense of fear or hope yet he did not fling away his life with precipitant haste but having made an incision in his veins and then according to his humor he again opened them while he conversed with his friends not in a serious strain or on topics that might win for him the glory of courage and he listened to them as they repeated not thoughts on the immortality of the soul or on the theories of philosophers but light poetry and playful verses to some of his slaves he gave liberal presence a flogging to others he dined, indulged himself in sleep that death though forced on him a very natural appearance even in his will he did not as many in their last moments flatter Nero or Tigalinas or any other of the men in power on the contrary he described fully the prince's shameful excesses with the names of his male and female companions and their novelties in debauchery and set the account under seal to Nero then he broke his signet ring that it might not be subsequently available for imperiling others about how the ingenious varieties of his nightly revels became notorious Celia came to his mind who as a senator's wife was a conspicuous person and who had been his chosen associate and all his profligacy and was very intimate with Petronius she was banished for not having as was suspected kept secret which she had seen and endured a sacrifice to his personal resentment Mekunius Thermus an ex-priter he surrendered to the hate of Tigalinas because a freedman of Thermus had brought criminal charges against Tigalinas such that the man had to atone for them himself by the torture of the wrack, his patron by an undeserved death End of Book 16 Part 1 Book 16 Part 2 of the Annals by Publius Conelius Tacitus This is Librivox Recording All Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org The Annals of Publius Conelius Tacitus translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Broderib Book 16 A.D. 65 and 66 Part 2 Nero despises Thricyapitis for his virtue Nero, after having butchered so many illustrious men had last aspired to extirpate himself by murdering Thracyapitis and Barea Seranis both men he had hated of old Thracyapitis on additional grounds because he had walked out of the senate when Ekrebina's case was under discussion as I have already related and had not given the juvenile games any conspicuous encouragement Nero's displeasure at this was the deeper since this same Thracyapitis had sung in a tragedian's dress at Petavium, his birthplace and some games instituted by the Trojan Anznor On the day too, on which the priter Anticius was being sentenced to death for libel's on Nero Thracyap proposed and carried a more merciful decision Again, when divine honors were decreed to Popiah, he was purposefully absent and did not attend her funeral All this Capito Cusutianis would not allow to be forgotten He had a heart eager for the worst wickedness and he also bore ill will to Thracyapitis The weight of whose influence had crushed him while envoys from Cilicia supported by Thracia's advocacy were accusing him of extortion He alleged too, against him the following charges Thracia, he said, at the beginning of the year always avoided the usual oath of allegiance He was not present at the recital of the public prayers though he had been promoted to the priesthood of the 15 He had never offered a sacrifice for the safety of the prince or his heavenly voice Though formally he had been assiduous and unwirried in showing himself a supporter or an opponent even of the most ordinary motions of the senators He had not entered the Senate House for three years and very lately, when all were rushing fither with rival eagerness to put down Salinas and Ventus he had attended, by preference, to the private businesses of his clients This was political schism and they should not dare to do the like It was actual war Capito further added The country, in its eagerness for discord, is now talking of you, Nero and of Thracia as it talked once of Gaia Caesar and Marcus Cato Thracia has his followers, or rather his satellites who copy, not indeed, as yet the audacious tone of his sentiments but only his manners and his looks a sour and gloomy set bent on making your worthfulness a reproach to you He is the only man who cares not for your safety honors not your accomplishments the prince's prosperity he despises Can it be that he is not satisfied with your sorrows and griefs? It shows the same spirit not to believe in Popeye's divinity as to refuse to swear obedience to the acts of the Divine Augustus and the Divine Julius He condemns religious rites He annals laws The daily records of the Roman people are read attentively in the provinces and the armies that they may know what Thracia has not done Let us go over to a system if it is better than ours or let those who desire change have their leader and advisor taken from them That sect of his gave birth to the Tuberones and the Favoniii, names hateful even to the Old Republic They make a show of freedom to overturn the empire should they destroy it they will attack freedom itself In vain have you banished Cassius if you are going to allow rivals of the Brutti to multiply and flourish Finally, write nothing yourself about Thracia Leave the Senate to decide for us Nero further stimulated the eager wrath of Custunianus and associated with him the pungent eloquence of Marcellus Epairus As for the impeachment of Borea Sauronis Astoria Sobinus, a Roman knight, had already claimed it for himself It arose out of his proconsulate of Asia where he increased the prince's animosity by his uprightness and diligence as well as having bestowed pains on opening the port of Ephesus and passed over without punishment the violence of the citizens of Pergamos in their efforts to hinder Acratus, one of the emperor's freedmen from carrying off statues and pictures But the crime imputed to him was friendship with Plautus and intrigues to lure the province into thoughts of revolt The time chosen for the fatal sentence was that at which Tiridates was on his way to receive the sovereignty of Armenia so that the crime at home might be partially veiled amid rumors on foreign affairs or that Nero might display his imperial grandeur by the murder of illustrious men as though it were a kingly exploit Accordingly, when all Rome rushed out to welcome the emperor and see the king Thracia, though forbidden to appear, did not let his spirit be cast down but wrote a note to Nero in which he demanded to know the charges against him and asserted that he would clear himself if he were informed of the crimes alleged and had an opportunity of refuting them This note Nero received with eagerness in the hope that Thracia in dismay had written something to enhance the emperor's glory and to tarnish his own honor When it turned out otherwise, and he himself on the contrary dreaded the glance and the defiant independence of the guiltless man he ordered the senate to be summoned Thracia then consulted his most intimate friends whether he should attempt or spurn defense Conflicting advice was offered Those who thought it best for him to enter the senate house said that they counted confidently on his courage and were sure that he would say nothing but what would heighten his renown It was for the feeble and timid to invest their last moments with secrecy Let the people behold a man who can meet death Let the senate hear words almost of divine inspiration, more than human It was possible that the very miracle might impress even a Nero But should he persist in his cruelty, posterity would at least distinguish between the memory of an honorable death and the cowardice of those who perished in silence Those on the other hand who thought that he ought to wait at home though their opinion of him was the same, hinted that mockeries and insults were in store for him Spare your ears, they said Not only are Kosutianus and Apyrus eagerly bent on crime there are numbers more, daring enough, per chance to raise the hand of violence in their brutality Even good men, through fear, do the like Better save the senate which you have adorned to the last the infamy of such an outrage and leave it a matter of doubt what the senators would have decided had they seen Thracia on his trial It is with a vain hope we are aiming to touch Nero the shame of his abominations We have far more cause to fear that he will vent his fury on your wife, your household, on all others dear to you And therefore, while you are yet stainless and undiscraced seek to close life with the glory of those in whose track and pursuits you have passed it Present at this deliberation was Rusticus Arulanus an enthusiastic youth who, in his ardor for renown offered, as he was tribune of the people, to protest against the sentence of the senate Thracia checked his impetuous temper not wishing him to attempt what would be as futile and useless to the accused as it would be fatal to the protester My days, he said, are ended and I must not now abandon a scheme of life in which for so many years I have persevered You are at the beginning of a career of office and your future is not yet clear Way thoroughly with yourself beforehand at such a crisis as this the path of political life on which you enter He then reserved for his own consideration the question whether it became him to enter the senate The next day however two praetorian guards under arms occupied the temple of Venus Genetrix a group of ordinary citizens with swords which they did not conceal had blocked the approach to the senate Through the squares and colonnades were scattered bodies of soldiers amid whose looks of menace the senators entered their house A speech from the emperor was read by his quistor Without addressing anyone by name he censured the senators for neglecting their public duties and drawing by their example the Roman knights into idleness For what wonder is it, he asked that men do not come from remote provinces when many, after obtaining the consulate from some sacred office, give all their thoughts by choice to the beauty of their gardens Here was, so to say, a weapon for the accusers on which they fastened Cossutianus made a beginning and then Marcellus in more violent tones exclaimed that the whole commonwealth was at stake It is, he said, the stubbornness of inferiors which lessens the clemency of our ruler We senators have hitherto been too lenient to bring him to be mocked with impunity by Thricia throwing off allegiance by his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus indulging similar frenzies by Peconeus Agrippinos the inheritor of his father's hatred towards emperors and by Cirtius Montanus the habitual composer of abominable verses I miss the presence of an ex-console in the senate of a priest when we offer our vows of a citizen when we swear obedience Thus indeed, in defiance to the manners and rights of our ancestors Thracia has openly assumed the part of a traitor and an enemy In a word, let the man want to act the senator and to screen those who disparage the prince come among us Let him propose any reform or change he may desire We shall more readily endure his censure of details than we can now bear the silence by which he condemns everything Is it the peace throughout the world that victories won without loss to our armies which vex him? A man who grieves at the country's prosperity who treats our public places, theaters, and temples as if they were a desert and who is ever threatening us with exile Let us not enable such a one to gratify his perverse vanity To him, the decrees of this house the offices of state the city of Rome seem as nothing Let him sever his life from a country all love for which he has long lost and the very sight of which he has now put from him While Marcellus, with the savage and menacing look he usually wore spoke these and like words with rising fury in his voice countenance and eye that familiar grief to which a thick secession of perils had habituated the senate gave way to a new and profounder panic as they saw the soldiers' hands on their weapons At the same moment a thresher rose before their imagination and some there who had pitied Havidius too doomed as he was to suffer for an innocent alliance What again, they asked was the charge against Agrippinas except his father's sad fate since he too, though guiltless as his son fell beneath the cruelty of Tiberius As for Montanus a youth without blemish author of no libelous poem he was positively driven out in exile because he had exhibited genius And meanwhile, Astoria Sobinus the accuser of Seranus entered and began by speaking of his friendship with Rubilius Plautus and of his proconsulate in Asia which he had he said adapted to his own glory rather than to the public welfare by fostering seditious movements in the various states These were bygones but there was a fresh charge involving in the peril of the father to the effect that she had lavished money on astrologers This indeed had really occurred through the filial affection of Servilia that was the girl's name who, out of love for her father and the thoughtlessness of youth had consulted them only, however, about the safety of her family whether Nero could be appeased and the trial before the senate have no dreadful result She was accordingly summoned before the senate before the consuls tribunal the aged parent and opposite to him the daughter in the 20th year of her age widowed and forlorn her husband, Aneus Polio having lately been driven into banishment without so much as a glance at her father whose peril she seemed to have aggravated Then, on the accuser asking her whether she had sold her bridal presence or stripped her neck of its ornaments to raise money for the performance of magical rites on the ground and wept long in silence After a while clasping the altar steps and altar she exclaimed I have invoked no impious deities no enchantments nor alt-else in my unhappy prayers but only that thou, Caesar and you senators, might preserve unharmed this best of fathers my jewels, my apparel and the signs of my rank I gave up as I would have given up my life blood had they demanded it they must have seen this, those men before unknown to me, both as the name they bear and the arts they practice no mention was made by me of the emperor except as one of the divinities but my most unhappy father knows nothing and if it is a crime I alone am guilty While she was yet speaking Soranus caught up her words and exclaimed that she had not gone with him into the province that from her youth she could not have been known to Plautus and that she was even involved in the charges against her husband Treat separately, he said the case of one who is guilty only of an exaggerated filial piety and as for myself let me undergo any fate he was rushing as he spoke into the embraces of his daughter who hurried towards him but the lictors interposed and stopped them both Plais was then given to the witnesses and the appearance among them of Publius Ignatius provoked as much indignation as the cruelty of the prosecution had excited pity a client of Soranus and now hired to ruin his friend he professed the dignified character of a stoic and had trained himself in demeanor and language to exhibit an ideal of virtue in his heart however treacherous and cunning he concealed greed and sensuality as soon as money had brought those vices to light he became an example warning us to beware just as much those who under the guise of virtuous taste are false and deceitful in friendship as of men wholly entangled in falsehoods and stained with every infamy that same day brought with it a noble pattern in Cessius Esclepiodotus whose vast wealth made him the foremost man in Bithynia he had honored Soranus in his prosperity with respect which he did not cast off in his fall and he was now stripped of all his property and into exile so impartially indifferent as heaven to examples of virtue and vice Thrasia, Soranus, and Servilia were allowed the choice of death Helvidius and Peconius were banished from Italy Montanus was spared by his father's intercessions on the understanding that he was not to be admitted to political life the prosecutors Apyrus and Cossutianus received each five million Cistercius Osterius 1200 with the decorations of the quister ship then as evening approached the consul's quister was sent to Thrasia who was passing his time in his garden he had had a crowded gathering of distinguished men and women giving special attention to Dometrius a professor of the cynic philosophy with him as might be inferred from his earnest expression of the face and from words heard when they raised their voices he was speculating the soul and the separation of the spirit from the body till Dometius Cacilianus one of his intimate friends came to him and told him in detail what the senate had decided when all who were present wept and bitterly complained Thrasia urged them to hasten their departure and not to mingle their own perils with the fate of a doomed man Aria too who aspired to follow her husband's end in the example of Aria her mother he counseled to preserve her life and not rob the daughter of their love of her only stay then as he went into a colonnade where he was found by the quister joyful rather than otherwise as he had learnt that Helvidius his sudden law was merely excluded from Italy when he heard the senate's decision he led Helvidius and Dometrius into a chamber and having laid bare the arteries of each arm he let the blood flow freely and filled it on the ground he called the quister to his side and said we pour out a libation to Jupiter the deliverer behold young man and may the gods avert the omen but you have been born into times in which it is well to fortify this spirit with examples of courage then as the slowness of his end brought with it grievous anguish turning his eyes on Dometrius at this point enough much remained to be told about the last two years of Nero's reign end of book 16 end of Tacitus's Annals volume 2