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====== The Annals ======

By Tacitus

Written 109 AD

Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb

Annals is at least 16 books long, but books 7-10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16 are missing

====== Table Of Contents ======

  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus|The Annals Book I]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_2|The Annals Book II]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_3|The Annals Book III]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_4|The Annals Book IV]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_5|The Annals Book V]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_6|The Annals Book VI]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_7|The Annals Book XI]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_8|The Annals Book XII]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_9|The Annals Book XIII]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_10|The Annals Book XIV]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_11|The Annals Book XV]]
  * [[the_annals_by_tacitus_12|The Annals Book XVI]]

====== Book XV ======

A.D. 62-65 

Meanwhile, the Parthian king, Vologeses, when he heard of Corbulo's
achievements and of a foreign prince, Tigranes, having been set over
Armenia, though he longed at the same time to avenge the majesty of
the Arsacids, which had been insulted by the expulsion of his brother
Tiridates, was, on the other hand, drawn to different thoughts as
he reflected on the greatness of Rome, and felt reverence for a hitherto
unbroken treaty. Naturally irresolute, he was now hampered by a revolt
of the Hyrcanians, a powerful tribe, and by several wars arising out
of it. Suddenly, as he was wavering, fresh and further tidings of
disgrace goaded him to action. Tigranes, quitting Armenia, had ravaged
the Adiabeni, a people on its border, too extensively and continuously
for mere plundering raids. The chief men of the tribes were indignant
at having fallen into such contempt that they were victims to the
inroads, not indeed of a Roman general, but of a daring hostage, who
for so many years had been numbered among slaves. Their anger was
inflamed by Monobazus, who ruled the Adiabeni, and repeatedly asked
what protection he was to seek and from what quarter- "Already," he
said, "Armenia has been given up, and its borders are being wrested
from us, and unless the Parthians help us, we shall find that subjection
to Rome is lighter for those who surrender than for the conquered."
Tiridates too, exile as he was from his kingdom, by his silence or
very moderate complaints made the deeper impression. "It is not,"
he urged, "by weak inaction that great empires are held together;
there must be the struggle of brave men in arms; might is right with
those who are at the summit of power. And though it is the glory of
a private house to keep its own, it is the glory of a king to fight
for the possessions of others." 

Moved by these considerations Vologeses called a council, placed Tiridates
by his side, and began to speak as follows: "This man before you,
born from the same father as myself, having waived in my favour, on
the ground of age, the highest title of all, was established by me
in the possession of Armenia, which is accounted the third grade of
power. As for Media, Pacorus was already in possession of it. And
I thought to myself that I had duly arranged our family and home so
as to guard against the old feuds and rivalries of brothers. The Romans
thwart me, and though they have never with success to themselves disturbed
the peace between us, they are now again breaking it to their own
destruction. I will not attempt to deny one thing. It was by just
dealing rather than by bloodshed, by having a good cause rather than
by arms, that I had wished to retain what my ancestors had won. If
I have sinned through irresolution, my valour shall make amends for
it. Assuredly your strength and renown are at their height, and you
have in addition the repute of obedience, which the greatest of mortals
must not despise, and which the gods highly esteem." 

As he spoke, he encircled Tiridates' brow with a diadem, and to Moneses,
a noble, he entrusted a highly efficient body of cavalry, which was
the king's customary escort, giving him also some auxiliaries from
the Adiabeni, and orders that Tigranes was to be driven out of Armenia.
He would himself abandon his feud with the Hyrcanians, and raise his
own national force in all its warlike strength by way of menace to
the Roman provinces. 

When Corbulo had heard all this from messengers he could trust, he
sent two legions under Verulanus Severus and Vettius Bolanus to the
support of Tigranes, with secret instructions that they were to conduct
all their operations with deliberation rather than despatch, as he
would prefer to sustain rather than to make war. And indeed he had
written to the emperor that a general was wanted specially for the
defence of Armenia, and that Syria, threatened as it was by Vologeses,
was in yet more imminent peril. Meanwhile he posted his remaining
legions on the bank of the Euphrates, armed a hastily collected force
of provincials, and occupied with troops the enemy's approaches. And
as the country was deficient in water, he established forts to guard
the wells, and concealed some of the streams with heaps of sand.

While Corbulo was thus preparing for the defence of Syria, Moneses
rapidly pushed on his forces to anticipate the rumour of his advance,
but he did not any the more find Tigranes unaware of or unprepared
for his movement. He had, in fact, occupied Tigranocerta, a city strong
from the multitude of its defenders and the vastness of its fortifications.
In addition, the river Nicephorius, the breadth of which is far from
contemptible, circled a portion of its walls, and a wide fosse was
drawn where they distrusted the protection of the stream. There were
some soldiers too, and supplies previously provided. In the conveyance
of these a few men had hurried on too eagerly, and, having been surprised
by a sudden attack from the enemy, had inspired their comrades with
rage rather than fear. But the Parthian has not the daring in close
combat needed for a successful siege. His thin showers of arrows do
not alarm men within walls, and only disappoint himself. The Adiabeni,
when they began to advance their scaling ladders and engines, were
easily driven back, and then cut down by a sally of our men.

Corbulo, however, notwithstanding his successes thought he must use
his good fortune with moderation, and sent Vologeses a message of
remonstrance against the violence done to a Roman province, and the
blockade of an allied and friendly king and of Roman cohorts. "He
had better give up the siege, or he, Corbulo too would encamp in his
territory, as on hostile ground." Casperius, a centurion selected
for this mission, had an interview with the king at the town Nisibis,
thirty-seven miles distant from Tigranocerta, and with fearless spirit
announced his message. With Vologeses it was an old and deep conviction
that he should shun the arms of Rome. Nor was the present going smoothly
with him. The seige was a failure; Tigranes was safe with his troops
and supplies; those who had undertaken the storming of the place had
been routed; legions had been sent into Armenia, and other legions
were ready to rush to the attack on behalf of Syria, while his own
cavalry was crippled by want of food. A host of locusts, suddenly
appearing, had devoured every blade of grass and every leaf. And so,
hiding his fear and presenting a more conciliatory attitude, he replied
that he would send envoys to the Roman emperor for the possession
of Armenia and the conclusion of a lasting peace. He ordered Moneses
to leave Tigranocerta, while he himself retired. 

Many spoke highly of these results, as due to the king's alarm and
the threats of Corbulo, and as splendid successes. Others explained
them as a secret understanding that with the cessation of war on both
sides and the departure of Vologeses, Tigranes also was to quit Armenia.
"Why," it was asked, "had the Roman army been withdrawn from Tigranocerta?
Why had they abandoned in peace what they had defended in war? Was
it better for them to have wintered on the confines of Cappadocia
in hastily constructed huts, than in the capital of a kingdom lately
recovered? There had been, in short, a suspension of arms, in order
that Vologeses might fight some other foe than Corbulo, and that Corbulo
might not further risk the glory he had earned in so many years. For,
as I have related, he had asked for a general exclusively for the
defence of Armenia, and it was heard that Caesennius Paetus was on
his way. And indeed he had now arrived, and the army was thus divided;
the fourth and twelfth legions, with the fifth which had lately been
raised in Moesia and the auxiliaries from Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia,
were under the command of Paetus, while the third, sixth, and tenth
legions and the old soldiery of Syria remained with Corbulo. All else
they were to share or divide between them according to circumstances.
But as Corbulo could not endure a rival, so Paetus, who would have
been sufficiently honoured by ranking second to him, disparaged the
results of the war, and said repeatedly that there had been no bloodshed
or spoil, that the sieges of cities were sieges only in name, and
that he would soon impose on the conquered tribute and laws and Roman
administration, instead of the empty shadow of a king. 

About the same time the envoys of Vologeses, who had been sent, as
I have related, to the emperor, returned without success, and the
Parthians made open war. Nor did Paetus decline the challenge, but
with two legions, the 4th and 12th, the first of which was then commanded
by Funisulanus Vettonianus and the second by Calavius Sabinus, entered
Armenia, with unlucky omen. In the passage of the Euphrates, which
they crossed by a bridge, a horse which carried the consul's official
emblems, took fright without any apparent cause and fled to the rear.
A victim, too, standing by some of the winter-tents, which were being
fortified, broke its way through them, when the work was but half
finished, and got clear out of the entrenchments. Then again the soldiers'
javelins gleamed with light, a prodigy the more significant because
the Parthian foe fights with missiles. 

Paetus, however, despising omens, before he had yet thoroughly fortified
his winter-camp or provided for his corn supply, hurried his army
across Mount Taurus, for the recovery, as he gave out, of Tigranocerta
and the ravaging of the country which Corbulo had left untouched.
Some forts too were taken, and some glory as well as plunder had been
secured, if only he had enjoyed his glory modestly, and his plunder
with vigilance. While he was overrunning in tedious expeditions districts
which could not be held, the supplies which had been captured, were
spoilt, and as winter was now at hand, he led back his army and wrote
a letter to the emperor, as if the war was finished, in pompous language,
but barren of facts. 

Meanwhile Corbulo occupied the bank of the Euphrates, which he had
never neglected, with troops at closer intervals. That he might have
no hindrance in throwing a bridge over it from the enemy's cavalry,
which was already scouring the adjoining plains with a formidable
display, he launched on the river some vessels of remarkable size,
linked together by beams, with towers rising from their decks, and
with catapults and balistas he drove off the barbarians. The stones
and spears penetrated their host at a range beyond the reach of the
opposing volleys of arrows. The bridge was then completed, and the
hills facing us were occupied by our auxiliary infantry, then, by
the entrenchments of the legions, with such rapidity and such a display
of force that the Parthians, giving up their preparations for the
invasion of Syria, concentrated all their hopes on Armenia.

Paetus, ignorant of the impending danger, was keeping the 5th legion
at a distance in Pontus; the rest he had weakened by indiscriminate
furloughs, till it was heard that Vologeses was approaching with a
powerful force bent on war. He summoned the 12th legion, and then
was discovered the numerical feebleness of the source from which he
had hoped for the repute of an augmented army. Yet even thus the camp
might have been held, and the Parthian foe baffled, by protracting
the war, had Paetus stood firm either by his own counsels or by those
of others. But though military men had put him on his guard against
imminent disasters, still, not wishing to seem to need the advice
of others, he would fall back on some quite different and inferior
plan. So now, leaving his winter quarters, and exclaiming that not
the fosse or the rampart, but the men's bodies and weapons were given
him for facing the foe, he led out his legions, as if he meant to
fight a battle. Then, after losing a centurion and a few soldiers
whom he had sent on in advance to reconnoitre the enemy's forces,
he returned in alarm. And, as Vologeses had not pressed his advantage
with much vigour, Paetus once again, with vain confidence, posted
3000 chosen infantry on the adjacent ridge of the taurus, in order
to bar the king's passage. He also stationed some Pannonian troopers,
the flower of his cavalry, in a part of the plain. His wife and son
he removed to a fortress named Arsamosata, with a cohort for their
defence, thus dispersing the troops which, if kept together, could
easily have checked the desultory skirmishing of the enemy. He could,
it is said, scarcely be driven to confess to Corbulo how the enemy
was pressing him. Corbulo made no haste, that, when the dangers thickened,
the glory of the rescue might be enhanced. Yet he ordered 1000 men
from each of his three legions with 800 cavalry, and an equal number
of infantry to be in instant readiness. 

Vologeses meanwhile, though he had heard that the roads were blocked
by Paetus, here with infantry, there with cavalry, did not alter his
plan, but drove off the latter by the menace of an attack, and crushed
the legionaires, only one centurion of whom, Tarquitius Crescens,
dared to defend a tower in which he was keeping guard. He had often
sallied out, and cut to pieces such of the barbarians as came close
up to the walls, till he was overwhelmed with volleys of firebrands.
Every foot soldier still unwounded fled to remote wilds, and those
who were disabled, returned to the camp, exaggerating in their terror
the king's valour, and the warlike strength of his tribes, everything
in short, to the simple credulity of those who trembled with like
fear. Even the general did not struggle against his reverses. He had
indeed wholly abandoned all the duties of a soldier, and had again
sent an entreaty to Corbulo, that he would come with speed to save
the standards and eagles, and the name yet left to the unfortunate
army; they meantime, he said, would hold to their fidelity while life
lasted. 

Corbulo, perfectly fearless, left half his army in Syria to retain
the forts built on the Euphrates, and taking the nearest route, which
also was not deficient in supplies, marched through the country of
Commagene, then through Cappadocia, and thence into Armenia. Beside
the other usual accompaniments of war, his army was followed by a
great number of camels laden with corn, to keep off famine as well
as the enemy. The first he met of the defeated army was Paccius, a
first-rank centurion, then many of the soldiers, whom, when they pleaded
various excuses for flight, he advised to return to their standards
and throw themselves on the mercy of Paetus. "For himself," he said,
"he had no forgiveness but for the victorious." 

As he spoke, he went up to his legions, cheering them and reminding
them of their past career, and pointing the way to new glory. "It
was not to villages or towns of Armenia, but to a Roman camp with
two legions, a worthy recompense for their efforts, that they were
bound. If each common soldier were to have bestowed on him by the
emperor's hand the special honour of a crown for a rescued citizen,
how wonderfully great the glory, when the numbers would be equal of
those who had brought and of those had received deliverance." Roused
by these and like words into a common enthusiasm, and some too were
filled with an ardour peculiarly their own by the perils of brothers
and kinsfolk, they hurried on by day and night their uninterrupted
march. 

All the more vigorously did Vologeses press the besieged, now attacking
the legions' entrenchments, and now again the fortress, which guarded
those whose years unfitted them for war. He advanced closer than is
the Parthian practice, seeking to lure the enemy to an engagement
by such rashness. They, however, could hardly be dragged out of their
tents, and would merely defend their lives, some held back by the
general's order, others by their own cowardice; they seemed to be
awaiting Corbulo, and should they be overpowered by force, they had
before them the examples of Candium and Numantia. "Neither the Samnites,
Italian people as they were, nor the Carthaginians, the rivals of
the Roman empire, were, it seemed, equally formidable, and even the
men of old, with all their strength and glory, whenever fortune was
adverse, had taken thought for safety." 

The general, although he was overcome by the despair of his army,
first wrote a letter to Vologeses, not a suppliant petition, but in
a tone of remonstrance against the doing of hostile acts on behalf
of the Armenians, who always had been under Roman dominion, or subject
to a king chosen by the emperor. Peace, he reminded him, was equally
for the interest of both, and it would be well for him not to look
only at the present. He indeed had advanced with the whole strength
of his kingdom against two legions, while the Romans had all the rest
of the world with which to sustain the war. 

To this Vologeses replied nothing to the purpose, but merely that
he must wait for his brothers Pacorus and Tiridates, that the place
and time of their meeting had been fixed on as the occasion when they
would decide about Armenia, and that heaven had granted them a further
honour, well worthy of the Arsacids, the having to determine the fate
of Roman legions. Messengers were then despatched by Paetus and an
interview requested with the king, who ordered Vasaces, the commander
of the cavalry, to go. Thereupon Paetus dwelt on the memories of the
Luculli and Pompeii, and of all that the Caesars had done in the way
of holding or giving away Armenia, while Vasaces declared that we
had the mere shadow of possession and of bestowing, but the Parthians,
the reality of power. After much arguing on both sides, Monobazus
of the Adiabeni was called the next day to be a witness to the stipulations
into which they had entered. It was agreed that the legions should
be released from the blockade, that all the troops should quit Armenian
territory, and that the forts and supplies should be surrendered to
the Parthians, and when all this had been completed, Vologeses was
to have full permission to send envoys to Nero. 

Meanwhile Paetus threw a bridge over the river Arsanias, which flowed
by the camp, apparently with the view of facilitating his march. It
was the Parthians, however, who had required this, as an evidence
of their victory; for the bridge was of use to them, while our men
went a different way. Rumour added that the legions had been passed
under the yoke, with other miserable disgraces, of which the Armenians
had borrowed imitations. For they not only entered our lines before
the Roman army began to retire, but also stood about the camp streets,
recognizing and dragging off slaves or beasts of burden which we had
previously captured. They even seized clothes and detained weapons,
for the soldiers were utterly cowed and gave up everything, so that
no cause for fighting might arise. Vologeses having piled up the arms
and bodies of the slain in order to attest our defeat, refrained from
gazing on the fugitive legions. He sought a character for moderation
after he had glutted his pride. Seated himself on an elephant, he
crossed the river Arsanias, while those next to his person rushed
through it at the utmost speed of their horses; for a rumour had gained
ground that the bridge would give way, through the trickery of its
builders. But those who ventured to go on it found it to be firm and
trustworthy. 

As for the besieged, it appeared that they had such an abundance of
corn that they fired the granaries, and Corbulo declared that the
Parthians on the other hand were in want of supplies, and would have
abandoned the siege from their fodder being all but exhausted, and
that he was himself only three days' march distant. He further stated
that Paetus had guaranteed by an oath, before the standards, in the
presence of those whom the king had sent to be witnesses, that no
Roman was to enter Armenia until Nero's reply arrived as to whether
he assented to the peace. Though this may have been invented to enhance
our disgrace, yet about the rest of the story there is no obscurity,
that, in a single day Paetus traversed forty miles, leaving his wounded
behind him everywhere, and that the consternation of the fugitives
was as frightful as if they had turned their backs in battle. Corbulo,
as he met them with his forces on the bank of the Euphrates, did not
make such a display of his standards and arms as to shame them by
the contrast. His men, in their grief and pity for the lot of their
comrades, could not even refrain from tears. There was scarce any
mutual salutation for weeping. The spirit of a noble rivalry and the
desire of glory, emotions which stir men in success, had died away;
pity alone survived, the more strongly in the inferior ranks.

Then followed a short conversation between the generals. While Corbulo
complained that his efforts had been fruitless and that the war might
have been ended with the flight of the Parthians, Paetus replied that
for neither of them was anything lost, and urged that they should
reverse the eagles, and with their united forces invade Armenia, much
weakened, as it was, by the departure of Vologeses. Corbulo said that
he had no such instructions from the emperor; it was the peril of
the legions which had stirred him to leave his province, and, as there
was uncertainty about the designs of the Parthians, he should return
to Syria, and, even as it was, he must pray for fortune under her
most favourable aspect in order that the infantry, wearied out with
long marches, might keep pace with the enemy's untiring cavalry, certain
to outstrip him on the plains, which facilitated their movements.
Paetus then went into winter quarters in Cappadocia. Vologeses, however,
sent a message to Corbulo, requiring him to remove the fortresses
on the further bank of the Euphrates, and to leave the river to be,
as formerly, the boundary between them. Corbulo also demanded the
evacuation of Armenia by the garrisons posted throughout it. At last
the king yielded, all the positions fortified by Corbulo beyond the
Euphrates were destroyed, and the Armenians too left without a master.

At Rome meanwhile trophies for the Parthian war, and arches were erected
in the centre of the Capitoline hill; these had been decreed by the
Senate, while the war was yet undecided, and even now they were not
given up, appearances being consulted, in disregard of known facts.
And to hide his anxious fears about foreign affairs, Nero threw the
people's corn, which was so old as to be spoilt, into the Tiber, with
the view of keeping up a sense of security about the supplies. There
was no addition to the price, although about two hundred ships were
destroyed in the very harbour by a violent storm, and one hundred
more, which had sailed up the Tiber, by an accidental fire. Nero next
appointed three ex-consuls, Lucius Piso, Ducennius Geminus, and Pompeius
Paulinus, to the management of the public revenues, and inveighed
at the same time against former emperors whose heavy expenditure had
exceeded their legitimate income. He himself, he said, made the state
an annual present of sixty million sesterces. 

A very demoralizing custom had at this time become rife, of fictitious
adoptions of children, on the eve of the elections or of the assignment
of the provinces, by a number of childless persons, who, after obtaining
along with real fathers praetorships and provinces, forthwith dismissed
from paternal control the sons whom they had adopted. An appeal was
made to the Senate under a keen sense of wrong. Parents pleaded natural
rights and the anxieties of nurture against fraudulent evasions and
the brief ceremony of adoption. "It was," they argued, "sufficient
reward for the childless to have influence and distinction, everything,
in short, easy and open to them, without a care and without a burden.
For themselves, they found that the promises held out by the laws,
for which they had long waited, were turned into mockery, when one
who knew nothing of a parent's solicitude or of the sorrows of bereavement
could rise in a moment to the level of a father's long deferred hopes."

On this, a decree of the Senate was passed that a fictitious adoption
should be of no avail in any department of the public service, or
even hold good for acquiring an inheritance. 

Next came the prosecution of Claudius Timarchus of Crete, on such
charges as often fall on very influential provincials, whom immense
wealth has emboldened to the oppression of the weak. But one speech
of his had gone to the extremity of a gross insult to the Senate;
for he had repeatedly declared that it was in his power to decide
whether the proconsuls who had governed Crete should receive the thanks
of the province. Paetus Thrasea, turning the occasion to public advantage,
after having stated his opinion that the accused ought to be expelled
from Crete, further spoke as follows:- 

"It is found by experience, Senators, that admirable laws and right
precedents among the good have their origin in the misdeeds of others.
Thus the license of advocates resulted in the Cincian bill; the corrupt
practices of candidates, in the Julian laws; the rapacity of magistrates,
in the Calpurnian enactments. For, in point of time, guilt comes before
punishment, and correction follows after delinquency. And therefore,
to meet the new insolence of provincials, let us adopt a measure worthy
of Roman good faith and resolution, whereby our allies may lose nothing
of our protection, while public opinion may cease to say of us, that
the estimate of a man's character is to found anywhere rather than
in the judgment of our citizens. 

"Formerly, it was not only a praetor or a consul, but private persons
also, who were sent to inspect the provinces, and to report what they
thought about each man's loyalty. And nations were timidly sensitive
to the opinion of individuals. But now we court foreigners and flatter
them, and just as there is a vote of thanks at any one's pleasure,
so even more eagerly is a prosecution decided on. Well; let it be
decided on, and let the provincials retain the right of showing their
power in this fashion, but as for false praise which has been extorted
by entreaties, let it be as much checked as fraud or tyranny. More
faults are often committed, while we are trying to oblige than while
we are giving offence. Nay, some virtues are actually hated; inflexible
strictness, for example, and a temper proof against partiality. Consequently,
our magistrates' early career is generally better than its close,
which deteriorates, when we are anxiously seeking votes, like candidates.
If such practices are stopped, our provinces will be ruled more equitably
and more steadily. For as the dread of a charge of extortion has been
a check to rapacity, so, by prohibiting the vote of thanks, will the
pursuit of popularity be restrained." 

This opinion was hailed with great unanimity, but the Senate's resolution
could not be finally passed, as the consuls decided that there had
been no formal motion on the subject. Then, at the emperor's suggestion,
they decreed that no one was to propose to any council of our allies
that a vote of thanks ought to be given in the Senate to propraetors
or proconsuls, and that no one was to discharge such a mission.

During the same consulship a gymnasium was wholly consumed by a stroke
of lightning, and a statue of Nero within it was melted down to a
shapeless mass of bronze. An earthquake too demolished a large part
of Pompeii, a populous town in Campania. And one of the vestal virgins,
Laelia, died, and in her place was chosen Cornelia, of the family
of the Cossi. 

During the consulship of Memmius Regulus and Verginius Rufus, Nero
welcomed with something more than mortal joy the birth of a daughter
by Poppaea, whom he called Augusta, the same title having also been
given to Poppaea. The place of her confinement was the colony of Antium,
where the emperor himself was born. Already had the Senate commended
Poppaea's safety to the gods, and had made vows in the State's name,
which were repeated again and again and duly discharged. To these
was added a public thanksgiving, and a temple was decreed to the goddess
of fecundity, as well as games and contests after the type of the
ceremonies commemorative of Actium, and golden images of the two Fortunes
were to be set up on the throne of Jupiter of the Capitol. Shows too
of the circus were to be exhibited in honour of the Claudian and Domitian
families at Antium, like those at Bovillae in commemoration of the
Julii. Transient distinctions all of them, as within four months the
infant died. Again there was an outburst of flattery, men voting the
honours of deification, of a shrine, a temple, and a priest.

The emperor, too, was as excessive in his grief as he had been in
his joy. It was observed that when all the Senate rushed out to Antium
to honour the recent birth, Thrasea was forbidden to go, and received
with fearless spirit an affront which foreboded his doom. Then followed,
as rumour says, an expression from the emperor, in which he boasted
to Seneca of his reconciliation with Thrasea, on which Seneca congratulated
him. And now henceforth the glory and the peril of these illustrious
men grew greater. 

Meanwhile, in the beginning of spring, Parthian envoys brought a message
from king Vologeses, with a letter to the same effect. "He did not,"
it was said, "repeat his former and frequent claims to the holding
of Armenia, since the gods who ruled the destinies of the most powerful
nations, had handed over its possession to the Parthians, not without
disgrace to Rome. Only lately, he had besieged Tigranes; afterwards,
he let Paetus and his legions depart in safety when he could have
destroyed them. He had tried force with a satisfactory result; he
had also given clemency a trial. Nor would Tiridates refuse a journey
to Rome to receive the crown, were he not detained at home by the
duties of a sacred office. He was ready to go to the emperor's image
in the Roman headquarters, and there in the presence of the legions
inaugurate his reign." 

As Paetus's despatch contradicted this letter from Vologeses and implied
that matters were unchanged, the centurion who had arrived with the
envoys was questioned as to the state of Armenia. He replied that
all the Romans had quitted it. Then was perceived the mockery of the
barbarians in petitioning for what they had wrested from us, and Nero
consulted with the chief men of the State whether they should accept
a dangerous war or a disgraceful peace. There was no hesitation about
war. Corbulo, who had known our soldiers and the enemy for so many
years, was appointed to conduct it, that there might be no more blunders
through any other officer's incapacity; for people were utterly disgusted
with Paetus. 

So the envoys were sent back without an answer, but with some presents,
in order to inspire a hope that Tiridates would not make the same
request in vain, if only he presented his petition in person. The
administration of Syria was intrusted to Caius Itius, and the military
forces to Corbulo, to which was added the fifteenth legion, under
the leadership of Marius Celsus, from Pannonia. Written orders were
sent to the tetrarchs, the tributaries, kings, prefects and procurators,
and all the praetors who governed the neighbouring provinces, to obey
Corbulo's commands, as his powers were enlarged on much the same scale
as that which the Roman people had granted to Cneius Pompeius on the
eve of his war against the Pirates. When Paetus returned and dreaded
something worse, the emperor thought it enough to reproach him with
a jest, to the effect that he pardoned him at once, lest one so ready
to take fright might sink under prolonged suspense. 

Corbulo meantime transferred to Syria the fourth and twelfth legions,
which, from the loss of their bravest men and the panic of the remainder,
seemed quite unfit for battle, and led thence into Armenia the third
and sixth legions, troops in thorough efficiency, and trained by frequent
and successful service. And he added to his army the fifth legion,
which, having been quartered in Pontus, had known nothing of disaster,
with men of the fifteenth, lately brought up, and picked veterans
from Illyricum and Egypt, and all the allied cavalry and infantry,
and the auxiliaries of the tributary princes, which had been concentrated
at Melitene, where he was preparing to cross the Euphrates. Then,
after the due lustration of his army, he called them together for
an harangue, and began with grand allusions to the imperial auspices,
and to his own achievements, while he attributed their disasters to
the incapacity of Paetus. He spoke with much impressiveness, which
in him, as a military man, was as good as eloquence. 

He then pursued the route opened up in former days by Lucius Lucullus,
clearing away the obstructions of long years. Envoys who came to him
from Tiridates and Vologeses about peace, he did not repulse, but
sent back with them some centurions with a message anything but harsh.
"Matters," he said, "have not yet gone so far as to require the extremity
of war. Many successes have fallen to the lot of Rome, some to that
of Parthia, as a warning against pride. Therefore, it is to the advantage
of Tiridates to accept as a gift a kingdom yet unhurt by the ravages
of war, and Vologeses will better consult the welfare of the Parthian
people by an alliance with Rome than by mutual injuries. I know how
much there is of internal discord, and over what untamably fierce
tribes he reigns. My emperor, on the other hand, has undisturbed peace
all around him, and this is his only war." 

In an instant Corbulo backed up his advice by a menacing attitude.
He drove from their possessions the nobles of Armenia, who had been
the first to revolt from us, destroyed their fortresses, and spread
equal panic throughout the plain and the hill country, among the strong
and among the weak. 

Against the name of Corbulo no rage, nothing of the hatred of an enemy,
was felt by the barbarians, and they therefore thought his advice
trustworthy. Consequently Vologeses was not implacable to the uttermost,
and he even asked a truce for some divisions of his kingdom. Tiridates
demanded a place and a day for an interview. The time was to be soon,
the place that in which Paetus and his legions had been lately besieged,
for this was chosen by the barbarians in remembrance for their more
prosperous fortune. Corbulo did not refuse, resolved that a widely
different issue should enhance his renown. Nor did the disgrace of
Paetus trouble him, as was clearly proved by the fact that he commanded
Paetus' son, who was a tribune, to take some companies with him and
cover up the relics of that ill-starred battle-field. On the day appointed,
Tiberius Alexander, a distinguished Roman knight, sent to assist in
the campaign, and Vinianus Annius, Corbulo's son-in-law, who, though
not yet of a senator's age, had the command of the fifth legion as
"legatus," entered the camp of Tiridates, by way of compliment to
him, and to reassure him against treachery by so valuable a pledge.
Each then took with him twenty horsemen. The king, seeing Corbulo,
was the first to dismount, and Corbulo hesitated not a moment, but
both on foot joined their right hands. 

Then the Roman commended the young prince for abandoning rash courses,
and adopting a safe and expedient policy. Tiridates first dwelt much
on the nobility of his race, but went on to speak in a tone of moderation.
He would go to Rome, and bring the emperor a new glory, a suppliant
Arsacid, while Parthia was prosperous. It was then agreed that Tiridates
should lay down his royal crown before Caesar's image, and resume
it only from the hand of Nero. The interview then ended with a kiss.
After an interval of a few days there was a grand display on both
sides; on the one, cavalry ranged in squadrons with their national
ensigns; on the other, stood the columns of our legions with glittering
eagles and standards and images of deities, after the appearance of
a temple. In the midst, on a tribunal, was a chair of state, and on
the chair a statue of Nero. To this Tiridates advanced, and having
slain the customary victims, he removed the crown from his head, and
set it at the foot of the statue; whereupon all felt a deep thrill
of emotion, rendered the more intense by the sight which yet lingered
before their eyes, of the slaughter or siege of Roman armies. "But
now," they thought, "the calamity is reversed; Tiridates is about
to go, a spectacle to the world, little better than a prisoner."

To military glory Corbulo added courtesy and hospitality. When the
king continually asked the reason of whatever he noticed which was
new to him, the announcements, for example, by a centurion of the
beginnings of each watch, the dismissal of the guests by the sound
of a trumpet, and the lighting by a torch from beneath of an altar
in front of the headquarters, Corbulo, by exaggerating everything,
filled him with admiration of our ancient system. Next day Tiridates
begged for time which, as he was about to enter on so long a journey,
might suffice for a previous visit to his brothers and his mother.
Meanwhile he gave up his daughter as a hostage, and prepared a suppliant
letter to Nero. 

He then departed, and found Pacorus in Media, and Vologeses at Ecbatana,
who was by no means unconcerned for his brother. In fact, Vologeses
had entreated Corbulo by special messengers, that Tiridates might
not have to endure any badge of slavery, or have to deliver up his
sword, or be debarred the honour of embracing the governors of the
provinces, or have to present himself at their doors, and that he
might be treated at Rome with as much respect as the consuls. Accustomed,
forsooth, to foreign arrogance, he had no knowledge of us, who value
the reality of empire and disregard its empty show. 

That same year the emperor put into possession of the Latin franchise
the tribes of the maritime Alps. To the Roman knights he assigned
places in the circus in front of the seats of the people, for up to
that time they used to enter in a promiscuous throng, as the Roscian
law extended only to fourteen rows in the theatre. The same year witnessed
shows of gladiators as magnificent as those of the past. Many ladies
of distinction, however, and senators, disgraced themselves by appearing
in the amphitheatre. 

In the year of the consulship of Caius Laecanius and Marcus Licinius
a yet keener impulse urged Nero to show himself frequently on the
public stage. Hitherto he had sung in private houses or gardens, during
the juvenile games, but these he now despised, as being but little
frequented, and on too small a scale for so fine a voice. As, however,
he did not venture to make a beginning at Rome, he chose Neapolis,
because it was a Greek city. From this as his starting-point he might
cross into Achaia, and there, winning the well-known and sacred garlands
of antiquity, evoke, with increased fame, the enthusiasm of the citizens.
Accordingly, a rabble of the townsfolk was brought together, with
those whom the excitement of such an event had attracted from the
neighbouring towns and colonies, and such as followed in the emperor's
train to pay him honour or for various objects. All these, with some
companies of soldiers, filled the theatre at Neapolis. 

There an incident occurred, which many thought unlucky, though to
the emperor it seemed due to the providence of auspicious deities.
The people who had been present, had quitted the theatre, and the
empty building then fell in without harm to anyone. Thereupon Nero
in an elaborate ode thanked the gods, celebrating the good luck which
attended the late downfall, and as he was on his way to cross the
sea of Hadria, he rested awhile at Beneventum, where a crowded gladiatorial
show was being exhibited by Vatinius. The man was one of the most
conspicuously infamous sights in the imperial court, bred, as he had
been, in a shoemaker's shop, of a deformed person and vulgar wit,
originally introduced as a butt. After a time he grew so powerful
by accusing all the best men, that in influence, wealth, and ability
to injure, he was pre-eminent even in that bad company. 

While Nero was frequently visiting the show, even amid his pleasures
there was no cessation to his crimes. For during the very same period
Torquatus Silanus was forced to die, because over and above his illustrious
rank as one of the Junian family he claimed to be the great-grandson
of Augustus. Accusers were ordered to charge him with prodigality
in lavishing gifts, and with having no hope but in revolution. They
said further that he had nobles about him for his letters, books,
and accounts, titles all and rehearsals of supreme power. Then the
most intimate of his freedmen were put in chains and torn from him,
till, knowing the doom which impended, Torquatus divided the arteries
in his arms. A speech from Nero followed, as usual, which stated that
though he was guilty and with good reason distrusted his defence,
he would yet have lived, had he awaited the clemency of the judge.

Soon afterwards, giving up Achaia for the present (his reasons were
not certainly known), he returned to Rome, there dwelling in his secret
imaginations on the provinces of the east, especially Egypt. Then
having declared in a public proclamation that his absence would not
be long and that all things in the State would remain unchanged and
prosperous, he visited the temple of the Capitol for advice about
his departure. There he adored the gods; then he entered also the
temple of Vesta, and there feeling a sudden trembling throughout his
limbs, either from terror inspired by the deity or because, from the
remembrance of his crimes, he was never free from fear, he relinquished
his purpose, repeatedly saying that all his plans were of less account
than his love of his country. "He had seen the sad countenances of
the citizens, he heard their secret complainings at the prospect of
his entering on so long a journey, when they could not bear so much
as his brief excursions, accustomed as they were to cheer themselves
under mischances by the sight of the emperor. Hence, as in private
relationships the closest ties were the strongest, so the people of
Rome had the most powerful claims and must be obeyed in their wish
to retain him." 

These and the like sentiments suited the people, who craved amusement,
and feared, always their chief anxiety, scarcity of corn, should he
be absent. The Senate and leading citizens were in doubt whether to
regard him as more terrible at a distance or among them. After a while,
as is the way with great terrors, they thought what happened the worst
alternative. 

Nero, to win credit for himself of enjoying nothing so much as the
capital, prepared banquets in the public places, and used the whole
city, so to say, as his private house. Of these entertainments the
most famous for their notorious profligacy were those furnished by
Tigellinus, which I will describe as an illustration, that I may not
have again and again to narrate similar extravagance. He had a raft
constructed on Agrippa's lake, put the guests on board and set it
in motion by other vessels towing it. These vessels glittered with
gold and ivory; the crews were arranged according to age and experience
in vice. Birds and beasts had been procured from remote countries,
and sea monsters from the ocean. On the margin of the lake were set
up brothels crowded with noble ladies, and on the opposite bank were
seen naked prostitutes with obscene gestures and movements. As darkness
approached, all the adjacent grove and surrounding buildings resounded
with song, and shone brilliantly with lights. Nero, who polluted himself
by every lawful or lawless indulgence, had not omitted a single abomination
which could heighten his depravity, till a few days afterwards he
stooped to marry himself to one of that filthy herd, by name Pythagoras,
with all the forms of regular wedlock. The bridal veil was put over
the emperor; people saw the witnesses of the ceremony, the wedding
dower, the couch and the nuptial torches; everything in a word was
plainly visible, which, even when a woman weds darkness hides.

A disaster followed, whether accidental or treacherously contrived
by the emperor, is uncertain, as authors have given both accounts,
worse, however, and more dreadful than any which have ever happened
to this city by the violence of fire. It had its beginning in that
part of the circus which adjoins the Palatine and Caelian hills, where,
amid the shops containing inflammable wares, the conflagration both
broke out and instantly became so fierce and so rapid from the wind
that it seized in its grasp the entire length of the circus. For here
there were no houses fenced in by solid masonry, or temples surrounded
by walls, or any other obstacle to interpose delay. The blaze in its
fury ran first through the level portions of the city, then rising
to the hills, while it again devastated every place below them, it
outstripped all preventive measures; so rapid was the mischief and
so completely at its mercy the city, with those narrow winding passages
and irregular streets, which characterised old Rome. Added to this
were the wailings of terror-stricken women, the feebleness of age,
the helpless inexperience of childhood, the crowds who sought to save
themselves or others, dragging out the infirm or waiting for them,
and by their hurry in the one case, by their delay in the other, aggravating
the confusion. Often, while they looked behind them, they were intercepted
by flames on their side or in their face. Or if they reached a refuge
close at hand, when this too was seized by the fire, they found that,
even places, which they had imagined to be remote, were involved in
the same calamity. At last, doubting what they should avoid or whither
betake themselves, they crowded the streets or flung themselves down
in the fields, while some who had lost their all, even their very
daily bread, and others out of love for their kinsfolk, whom they
had been unable to rescue, perished, though escape was open to them.
And no one dared to stop the mischief, because of incessant menaces
from a number of persons who forbade the extinguishing of the flames,
because again others openly hurled brands, and kept shouting that
there was one who gave them authority, either seeking to plunder more
freely, or obeying orders. 

Nero at this time was at Antium, and did not return to Rome until
the fire approached his house, which he had built to connect the palace
with the gardens of Maecenas. It could not, however, be stopped from
devouring the palace, the house, and everything around it. However,
to relieve the people, driven out homeless as they were, he threw
open to them the Campus Martius and the public buildings of Agrippa,
and even his own gardens, and raised temporary structures to receive
the destitute multitude. Supplies of food were brought up from Ostia
and the neighbouring towns, and the price of corn was reduced to three
sesterces a peck. These acts, though popular, produced no effect,
since a rumour had gone forth everywhere that, at the very time when
the city was in flames, the emperor appeared on a private stage and
sang of the destruction of Troy, comparing present misfortunes with
the calamities of antiquity. 

At last, after five days, an end was put to the conflagration at the
foot of the Esquiline hill, by the destruction of all buildings on
a vast space, so that the violence of the fire was met by clear ground
and an open sky. But before people had laid aside their fears, the
flames returned, with no less fury this second time, and especially
in the spacious districts of the city. Consequently, though there
was less loss of life, the temples of the gods, and the porticoes
which were devoted to enjoyment, fell in a yet more widespread ruin.
And to this conflagration there attached the greater infamy because
it broke out on the Aemilian property of Tigellinus, and it seemed
that Nero was aiming at the glory of founding a new city and calling
it by his name. Rome, indeed, is divided into fourteen districts,
four of which remained uninjured, three were levelled to the ground,
while in the other seven were left only a few shattered, half-burnt
relics of houses. 

It would not be easy to enter into a computation of the private mansions,
the blocks of tenements, and of the temples, which were lost. Those
with the oldest ceremonial, as that dedicated by Servius Tullius to
Luna, the great altar and shrine raised by the Arcadian Evander to
the visibly appearing Hercules, the temple of Jupiter the Stayer,
which was vowed by Romulus, Numa's royal palace, and the sanctuary
of Vesta, with the tutelary deities of the Roman people, were burnt.
So too were the riches acquired by our many victories, various beauties
of Greek art, then again the ancient and genuine historical monuments
of men of genius, and, notwithstanding the striking splendour of the
restored city, old men will remember many things which could not be
replaced. Some persons observed that the beginning of this conflagration
was on the 19th of July, the day on which the Senones captured and
fired Rome. Others have pushed a curious inquiry so far as to reduce
the interval between these two conflagrations into equal numbers of
years, months, and days. 

Nero meanwhile availed himself of his country's desolation, and erected
a mansion in which the jewels and gold, long familiar objects, quite
vulgarised by our extravagance, were not so marvellous as the fields
and lakes, with woods on one side to resemble a wilderness, and, on
the other, open spaces and extensive views. The directors and contrivers
of the work were Severus and Celer, who had the genius and the audacity
to attempt by art even what nature had refused, and to fool away an
emperor's resources. They had actually undertaken to sink a navigable
canal from the lake Avernus to the mouths of the Tiber along a barren
shore or through the face of hills, where one meets with no moisture
which could supply water, except the Pomptine marshes. The rest of
the country is broken rock and perfectly dry. Even if it could be
cut through, the labour would be intolerable, and there would be no
adequate result. Nero, however, with his love of the impossible, endeavoured
to dig through the nearest hills to Avernus, and there still remain
the traces of his disappointed hope. 

Of Rome meanwhile, so much as was left unoccupied by his mansion,
was not built up, as it had been after its burning by the Gauls, without
any regularity or in any fashion, but with rows of streets according
to measurement, with broad thoroughfares, with a restriction on the
height of houses, with open spaces, and the further addition of colonnades,
as a protection to the frontage of the blocks of tenements. These
colonnades Nero promised to erect at his own expense, and to hand
over the open spaces, when cleared of the debris, to the ground landlords.
He also offered rewards proportioned to each person's position and
property, and prescribed a period within which they were to obtain
them on the completion of so many houses or blocks of building. He
fixed on the marshes of Ostia for the reception of the rubbish, and
arranged that the ships which had brought up corn by the Tiber, should
sail down the river with cargoes of this rubbish. The buildings themselves,
to a certain height, were to be solidly constructed, without wooden
beams, of stone from Gabii or Alba, that material being impervious
to fire. And to provide that the water which individual license had
illegally appropriated, might flow in greater abundance in several
places for the public use, officers were appointed, and everyone was
to have in the open court the means of stopping a fire. Every building,
too, was to be enclosed by its own proper wall, not by one common
to others. These changes which were liked for their utility, also
added beauty to the new city. Some, however, thought that its old
arrangement had been more conducive to health, inasmuch as the narrow
streets with the elevation of the roofs were not equally penetrated
by the sun's heat, while now the open space, unsheltered by any shade,
was scorched by a fiercer glow. 

Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was
to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the
Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to
Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons,
first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence
water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess.
And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married
women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor,
and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief
that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to
get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most
exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called
Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands
of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous
superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only
in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all
things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their
centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of
all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude
was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of
hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths.
Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished,
or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt,
to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show
in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a
charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who
deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of
compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but
to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

Meanwhile Italy was thoroughly exhausted by contributions of money,
the provinces were ruined, as also the allied nations and the free
states, as they were called. Even the gods fell victims to the plunder;
for the temples in Rome were despoiled and the gold carried off, which,
for a triumph or a vow, the Roman people in every age had consecrated
in their prosperity or their alarm. Throughout Asia and Achaia not
only votive gifts, but the images of deities were seized, Acratus
and Secundus Carinas having been sent into those provinces. The first
was a freedman ready for any wickedness; the latter, as far as speech
went, was thoroughly trained in Greek learning, but he had not imbued
his heart with sound principles. Seneca, it was said, to avert from
himself the obloquy of sacrilege, begged for the seclusion of a remote
rural retreat, and, when it was refused, feigning ill health, as though
he had a nervous ailment, would not quit his chamber. According to
some writers, poison was prepared for him at Nero's command by his
own freedman, whose name was Cleonicus. This Seneca avoided through
the freedman's disclosure, or his own apprehension, while he used
to support life on the very simple diet of wild fruits, with water
from a running stream when thirst prompted. 

During the same time some gladiators in the town of Praeneste, who
attempted to break loose, were put down by a military guard stationed
on the spot to watch them, and the people, ever desirous and yet fearful
of change, began at once to talk of Spartacus, and of bygone calamities.
Soon afterwards, tidings of a naval disaster was received, but not
from war, for never had there been so profound a peace. Nero, however,
had ordered the fleet to return to Campania on a fixed day, without
making any allowance for the dangers of the sea. Consequently the
pilots, in spite of the fury of the waves, started from Formiae, and
while they were struggling to double the promontory of Misenum, they
were dashed by a violent south-west wind on the shores of Cumae, and
lost, in all directions, a number of their triremes with some smaller
vessels. 

At the close of the year people talked much about prodigies, presaging
impending evils. Never were lightning flashes more frequent, and a
comet too appeared, for which Nero always made propitiation with noble
blood. Human and other births with two heads were exposed to public
view, or were discovered in those sacrifices in which it is usual
to immolate victims in a pregnant condition. And in the district of
Placentia, close to the road, a calf was born with its head attached
to its leg. Then followed an explanation of the diviners, that another
head was preparing for the world, which however would be neither mighty
nor hidden, as its growth had been checked in the womb, and it had
been born by the wayside. 

Silius Nerva and Atticus Vestinus then entered on the consulship,
and now a conspiracy was planned, and at once became formidable, for
which senators, knights, soldiers, even women, had given their names
with eager rivalry, out of hatred of Nero as well as a liking for
Caius Piso. A descendant of the Calpurnian house, and embracing in
his connections through his father's noble rank many illustrious families,
Piso had a splendid reputation with the people from his virtue or
semblance of virtue. His eloquence he exercised in the defence of
fellow-citizens, his generosity towards friends, while even for strangers
he had a courteous address and demeanour. He had, too, the fortuitous
advantages of tall stature and a handsome face. But solidity of character
and moderation in pleasure were wholly alien to him. He indulged in
laxity, in display, and occasionally in excess. This suited the taste
of that numerous class who, when the attractions of vice are so powerful,
do not wish for strictness or special severity on the throne.

The origin of the conspiracy was not in Piso's personal ambition.
But I could not easily narrate who first planned it, or whose prompting
inspired a scheme into which so many entered. That the leading spirits
were Subrius Flavus, tribune of a praetorian cohort, and Sulpicius
Asper, a centurion, was proved by the fearlessness of their death.
Lucanus Annaeus, too, and Plautius Lateranus, imported into it an
intensely keen resentment. Lucanus had the stimulus of personal motives,
for Nero tried to disparage the fame of his poems and, with the foolish
vanity of a rival, had forbidden him to publish them. As for Lateranus,
a consul-elect, it was no wrong, but love of the State which linked
him with the others. Flavius Scaevinus and Afranius Quintianus, on
the other hand, both of senatorian rank, contrary to what was expected
of them, undertook the beginning of this daring crime. Scaevinus,
indeed, had enfeebled his mind by excess, and his life, accordingly,
was one of sleepy languor. Quintianus, infamous for his effeminate
vice, had been satirised by Nero in a lampoon, and was bent on avenging
the insult. 

So, while they dropped hints among themselves or among their friends
about the emperor's crimes, the approaching end of empire, and the
importance of choosing some one to rescue the State in its distress,
they associated with them Tullius Senecio, Cervarius Proculus, Vulcatius
Araricus, Julius Augurinus, Munatius Gratus, Antonius Natalis, and
Marcius Festus, all Roman knights. Of these Senecio, one of those
who was specially intimate with Nero, still kept up a show of friendship,
and had consequently to struggle with all the more dangers. Natalis
shared with Piso all his secret plans. The rest built their hopes
on revolution. Besides Subrius and Sulpicius, whom I have already
mentioned, they invited the aid of military strength, of Gavius Silvanus
and Statius Proximus, tribunes of praetorian cohorts, and of two centurions,
Maximus Scaurus and Venetus Paulus. But their mainstay, it was thought,
was Faenius Rufus, the commander of the guard, a man of esteemed life
and character, to whom Tigellinus with his brutality and shamelessness
was superior in the emperor's regard. He harassed him with calumnies,
and had often put him in terror by hinting that he had been Agrippina's
paramour, and from sorrow at her loss was intent on vengeance. And
so, when the conspirators were assured by his own repeated language
that the commander of the praetorian guard had come over to their
side, they once more eagerly discussed the time and place of the fatal
deed. It was said that Subrius Flavus had formed a sudden resolution
to attack Nero when singing on the stage, or when his house was in
flames and he was running hither and thither, unattended, in the darkness.
In the one case was the opportunity of solitude; in the other, the
very crowd which would witness so glorious a deed, had roused a singularly
noble soul; it was only the desire of escape, that foe to all great
enterprises, which held him back. 

Meanwhile, as they hesitated in prolonged suspense between hope and
fear, a certain Epicharis (how she informed herself is uncertain,
as she had never before had a thought of anything noble) began to
stir and upbraid the conspirators. Wearied at last of their long delay,
she endeavoured, when staying in Campania, to shake the loyalty of
the officers of the fleet at Misenum, and to entangle them in a guilty
complicity. She began thus. There was a captain in the fleet, Volusius
Proculus, who had been one of Nero's instruments in his mother's murder,
and had not, as he thought, been promoted in proportion to the greatness
of his crime. Either, as an old acquaintance of the woman, or on the
strength of a recent intimacy, he divulged to her his services to
Nero and their barren result to himself, adding complaints, and his
determination to have vengeance, should the chance arise. He thus
inspired the hope that he could be persuaded, and could secure many
others. No small help was to be found in the fleet, and there would
be numerous opportunities, as Nero delighted in frequent enjoyment
of the sea off Puteoli and Misenum. 

Epicharis accordingly said more, and began the history of all the
emperor's crimes. "The Senate," she affirmed, "had no power left it;
yet means had been provided whereby he might pay the penalty of having
destroyed the State. Only let Proculus gird himself to do his part
and bring over to their side his bravest soldiers, and then look for
an adequate recompense." The conspirators' names, however, she withheld.
Consequently the information of Proculus was useless, even though
he reported what he had heard to Nero. For Epicharis being summoned
and confronted with the informer easily silenced him, unsupported
as he was by a single witness. But she was herself detained in custody,
for Nero suspected that even what was not proved to be true, was not
wholly false. 

The conspirators, however, alarmed by the fear of disclosure, resolved
to hurry on the assassination at Baiae, in Piso's villa, whither the
emperor, charmed by its loveliness, often went, and where, unguarded
and without the cumbrous grandeur of his rank, he would enjoy the
bath and the banquet. But Piso refused, alleging the odium of an act
which would stain with an emperor's blood, however bad he might be,
the sanctity of the hospitable board and the deities who preside over
it. "Better," he said, "in the capital, in that hateful mansion which
was piled up with the plunder of the citizens, or in public, to accomplish
what on the State's behalf they had undertaken." 

So he said openly, with however a secret apprehension that Lucius
Silanus might, on the strength of his distinguished rank and the teachings
of Caius Cassius, under whom he had been trained, aspire to any greatness
and seize an empire, which would be promptly offered him by all who
had no part in the conspiracy, and who would pity Nero as the victim
of a crime. Many thought that Piso shunned also the enterprising spirit
of Vestinus, the consul, who might, he feared, rise up in the cause
of freedom, or, by choosing another emperor, make the State his own
gift. Vestinus, indeed, had no share in the conspiracy, though Nero
on that charge gratified an old resentment against an innocent man.

At last they decided to carry out their design on that day of the
circus games, which is celebrated in honour of Ceres, as the emperor,
who seldom went out, and shut himself up in his house or gardens,
used to go to the entertainments of the circus, and access to him
was the easier from his keen enjoyment of the spectacle. They had
so arranged the order of the plot, that Lateranus was to throw himself
at the prince's knees in earnest entreaty, apparently craving relief
for his private necessities, and, being a man of strong nerve and
huge frame, hurl him to the ground and hold him down. When he was
prostrate and powerless, the tribunes and centurions and all the others
who had sufficient daring were to rush up and do the murder, the first
blow being claimed by Scaevinus, who had taken a dagger from the Temple
of Safety, or, according to another account, from that of Fortune,
in the town of Ferentum, and used to wear the weapon as though dedicated
to some noble deed. Piso, meanwhile, was wait in the sanctuary of
Ceres, whence he was to be summoned by Faenius, the commander of the
guard, and by the others, and then conveyed into the camp, accompanied
by Antonia, the daughter of Claudius Caesar, with a view to evoke
the people's enthusiasm. So it is related by Caius Pliny. Handed down
from whatever source, I had no intention of suppressing it, however
absurd it may seem, either that Antonia should have lent her name
at her life's peril to a hopeless project, or that Piso, with his
well-known affection for his wife, should have pledged himself to
another marriage, but for the fact that the lust of dominion inflames
the heart more than any other passion. 

It was however wonderful how among people of different class, rank,
age, sex, among rich and poor, everything was kept in secrecy till
betrayal began from the house of Scaevinus. The day before the treacherous
attempt, after a long conversation with Antonius Natalis, Scaevinus
returned home, sealed his will, and, drawing from its sheath the dagger
of which I have already spoken, and complaining that it was blunted
from long disuse, he ordered it to be sharpened on a stone to a keen
and bright point. This task he assigned to his freedman Milichus.
At the same time sat down to a more than usually sumptuous banquet,
and gave his favourite slaves their freedom, and money to others.
He was himself depressed, and evidently in profound thought, though
he affected gaiety in desultory conversation. Last of all, he directed
ligatures for wounds and the means of stanching blood to be prepared
by the same Milichus, who either knew of the conspiracy and was faithful
up to this point, or was in complete ignorance and then first caught
suspicions, as most authors have inferred from what followed. For
when his servile imagination dwelt on the rewards of perfidy, and
he saw before him at the same moment boundless wealth and power, conscience
and care for his patron's life, together with the remembrance of the
freedom he had received, fled from him. From his wife, too, he had
adopted a womanly and yet baser suggestion; for she even held over
him a dreadful thought, that many had been present, both freedmen
and slaves, who had seen what he had; that one man's silence would
be useless, whereas the rewards would be for him alone who was first
with the information. 

Accordingly at daybreak Milichus went to the Servilian gardens, and,
finding the doors shut against him, said again and again that he was
the bearer of important and alarming news. Upon this he was conducted
by the gatekeepers to one of Nero's freedmen, Epaphroditus, and by
him to Nero, whom he informed of the urgent danger, of the formidable
conspiracy, and of all else which he had heard or inferred. He showed
him too the weapon prepared for his destruction, and bade him summon
the accused. 

Scaevinus on being arrested by the soldiers began his defence with
the reply that the dagger about which he was accused, had of old been
regarded with a religious sentiment by his ancestors, that it had
been kept in his chamber, and been stolen by a trick of his freedman.
He had often, he said, signed his will without heeding the observance
of particular days, and had previously given presents of money as
well as freedom to some of his slaves, only on this occasion he gave
more freely, because, as his means were now impoverished and his creditors
were pressing him, he distrusted the validity of his will. Certainly
his table had always been profusely furnished, and his life luxurious,
such as rigid censors would hardly approve. As to the bandages for
wounds, none had been prepared at his order, but as all the man's
other charges were absurd, he added an accusation in which he might
make himself alike informer and witness. 

He backed up his words by an air of resolution. Turning on his accuser,
he denounced him as an infamous and depraved wretch, with so fearless
a voice and look that the information was beginning to collapse, when
Milichus was reminded by his wife that Antonious Natalis had had a
long secret conversation with Scaevinus, and that both were Piso's
intimate friends. 

Natalis was therefore summoned, and they were separately asked what
the conversation was, and what was its subject. Then a suspicion arose
because their answers did not agree, and they were both put in irons.
They could not endure the sight and the threat of torture. Natalis
however, taking the initiative, knowing as he did more of the whole
conspiracy, and being also more practised in accusing, first confessed
about Piso, next added the name of Annaeus Seneca, either as having
been a messenger between him and Piso, or to win the favour of Nero,
who hated Seneca and sought every means for his ruin. Then Scaevinus
too, when he knew the disclosure of Natalis, with like pusillanimity,
or under the impression that everything now divulged, and that there
could be no advantage in silence, revealed the other conspirators.
Of these, Lucanus, Quintianus, and Senecio long persisted in denial;
after a time, when bribed by the promise of impunity, anxious to excuse
their reluctance, Lucanus named his mother Atilla, Quintianus and
Senecio, their chief friends, respectively, Glitius Gallus and Annius
Pollio. 

Nero, meanwhile, remembering that Epicharis was in custody on the
information of Volusius Proculus, and assuming that a woman's frame
must be unequal to the agony, ordered her to be torn on the rack.
But neither the scourge nor fire, nor the fury of the men as they
increased the torture that they might not be a woman's scorn, overcame
her positive denial of the charge. Thus the first day's inquiry was
futile. On the morrow, as she was being dragged back on a chair to
the same torments (for with her limbs all dislocated she could not
stand), she tied a band, which she had stript off her bosom, in a
sort of noose to the arched back of the chair, put her neck in it,
and then straining with the whole weight of her body, wrung out of
her frame its little remaining breath. All the nobler was the example
set by a freedwoman at such a crisis in screening strangers and those
whom she hardly knew, when freeborn men, Roman knights, and senators,
yet unscathed by torture, betrayed, every one, his dearest kinsfolk.
For even Lucanus and Senecio and Quintianus failed not to reveal their
accomplices indiscriminately, and Nero was more and more alarmed,
though he had fenced his person with a largely augmented guard.

Even Rome itself he put, so to say, under custody, garrisoning its
walls with companies of soldiers and occupying with troops the coast
and the river-banks. Incessantly were there flying through the public
places, through private houses, country fields, and the neighbouring
villages, horse and foot soldiers, mixed with Germans, whom the emperor
trusted as being foreigners. In long succession, troops of prisoners
in chains were dragged along and stood at the gates of his gardens.
When they entered to plead their cause, a smile of joy on any of the
conspirators, a casual conversation, a sudden meeting, or the fact
of having entered a banquet or a public show in company, was construed
into a crime, while to the savage questionings of Nero and Tigellinus
were added the violent menaces of Faenius Rufus, who had not yet been
named by the informers, but who, to get the credit of complete ignorance,
frowned fiercely on his accomplices. When Subius Flavus at his side
asked him by a sign whether he should draw his sword in the middle
of the trial and perpetrate the fatal deed, Rufus refused, and checked
the man's impulse as he was putting his hand to his sword-hilt.

Some there were who, as soon as the conspiracy was betrayed, urged
Piso, while Milichus' story was being heard, and Scaevinus was hesitating,
to go to the camp or mount the Rostra and test the feelings of the
soldiers and of the people. "If," said they, "your accomplices join
your enterprise, those also who are yet undecided, will follow, and
great will be the fame of the movement once started, and this in any
new scheme is all-powerful. Against it Nero has taken no precaution.
Even brave men are dismayed by sudden perils; far less will that stageplayer,
with Tigellinus forsooth and his concubines in his train, raise arms
against you. Many things are accomplished on trial which cowards think
arduous. It is vain to expect secrecy and fidelity from the varying
tempers and bodily constitutions of such a host of accomplices. Torture
or reward can overcome everything. Men will soon come to put you also
in chains and inflict on you an ignominious death. How much more gloriously
will you die while you cling to the State and invoke aid for liberty.
Rather let the soldiers fail, the people be traitors, provided that
you, if prematurely robbed of life, justify your death to your ancestors
and descendants." 

Unmoved by these considerations, Piso showed himself a few moments
in public, then sought the retirement of his house, and there fortified
his spirit against the worst, till a troop of soldiers arrived, raw
recruits, or men recently enlisted, whom Nero had selected, because
he was afraid of the veterans, imbued, though they were, with a liking
for him. Piso expired by having the veins in his arms severed. His
will, full of loathsome flatteries of Nero, was a concession to his
love of his wife, a base woman, with only a beautiful person to recommend
her, whom he had taken away from her husband, one of his friends.
Her name was Atria Galla; that of her former husband, Domitius Silus.
The tame spirit of the man, the profligacy of the woman, blazoned
Piso's infamy. 

In quick succession Nero added the murder of Plautius Lateranus, consul-elect,
so promptly that he did not allow him to embrace his children or to
have the brief choice of his own death. He was dragged off to a place
set apart for the execution of slaves, and butchered by the hand of
the tribune Statius, maintaining a resolute silence, and not reproaching
the tribune with complicity in the plot. 

Then followed the destruction of Annaeus Seneca, a special joy to
the emperor, not because he had convicted him of the conspiracy, but
anxious to accomplish with the sword what poison had failed to do.
It was, in fact, Natalis alone who divulged Seneca's name, to this
extent, that he had been sent to Seneca when ailing, to see him and
remonstrate with him for excluding Piso from his presence, when it
would have been better to have kept up their friendship by familiar
intercourse; that Seneca's reply was that mutual conversations and
frequent interviews were to the advantage of neither, but still that
his own life depended on Piso's safety. Gavius Silvanus, tribune of
a praetorian cohort, was ordered to report this to Seneca and to ask
him whether he acknowledged what Natalis said and his own answer.
Either by chance or purposely Seneca had returned on that day from
Campania, and had stopped at a countryhouse four miles from Rome.
Thither the tribune came next evening, surrounded the house with troops
of soldiers, and then made known the emperor's message to Seneca as
he was at dinner with his wife, Pompeia Paulina, and two friends.

Seneca replied that Natalis had been sent to him and had complained
to him in Piso's name because of his refusal to see Piso, upon which
he excused himself on the ground of failing health and the desire
of rest. "He had no reason," he said, for "preferring the interest
of any private citizen to his own safety, and he had no natural aptitude
for flattery. No one knew this better than Nero, who had oftener experienced
Seneca's freespokenness than his servility." When the tribune reported
this answer in the presence of Poppaea and Tigellinus, the emperor's
most confidential advisers in his moments of rage, he asked whether
Seneca was meditating suicide. Upon this the tribune asserted that
he saw no signs of fear, and perceived no sadness in his words or
in his looks. He was accordingly ordered to go back and to announce
sentence of death. Fabius Rusticus tells us that he did not return
the way he came, but went out of his course to Faenius, the commander
of the guard, and having explained to him the emperor's orders, and
asked whether he was to obey them, was by him admonished to carry
them out, for a fatal spell of cowardice was on them all. For this
very Silvanus was one of the conspirators, and he was now abetting
the crimes which he had united with them to avenge. But he spared
himself the anguish of a word or of a look, and merely sent in to
Seneca one of his centurions, who was to announce to him his last
doom. 

Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which to inscribe his
will, and, on the centurion's refusal, turned to his friends, protesting
that as he was forbidden to requite them, he bequeathed to them the
only, but still the noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern
of his life, which, if they remembered, they would win a name for
moral worth and steadfast friendship. At the same time he called them
back from their tears to manly resolution, now with friendly talk,
and now with the sterner language of rebuke. "Where," he asked again
and again, "are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of so
many years' study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero's cruelty?
After a mother's and a brother's murder, nothing remains but to add
the destruction of a guardian and a tutor." 

Having spoken these and like words, meant, so to say, for all, he
embraced his wife; then softening awhile from the stern resolution
of the hour, he begged and implored her to spare herself the burden
of perpetual sorrow, and, in the contemplation of a life virtuously
spent, to endure a husband's loss with honourable consolations. She
declared, in answer, that she too had decided to die, and claimed
for herself the blow of the executioner. There upon Seneca, not to
thwart her noble ambition, from an affection too which would not leave
behind him for insult one whom he dearly loved, replied: "I have shown
you ways of smoothing life; you prefer the glory of dying. I will
not grudge you such a noble example. Let the fortitude of so courageous
an end be alike in both of us, but let there be more in your decease
to win fame." 

Then by one and the same stroke they sundered with a dagger the arteries
of their arms. Seneca, as his aged frame, attenuated by frugal diet,
allowed the blood to escape but slowly, severed also the veins of
his legs and knees. Worn out by cruel anguish, afraid too that his
sufferings might break his wife's spirit, and that, as he looked on
her tortures, he might himself sink into irresolution, he persuaded
her to retire into another chamber. Even at the last moment his eloquence
failed him not; he summoned his secretaries, and dictated much to
them which, as it has been published for all readers in his own words,
I forbear to paraphrase. 

Nero meanwhile, having no personal hatred against Paulina and not
wishing to heighten the odium of his cruelty, forbade her death. At
the soldiers' prompting, her slaves and freedmen bound up her arms,
and stanched the bleeding, whether with her knowledge is doubtful.
For as the vulgar are ever ready to think the worst, there were persons
who believed that, as long as she dreaded Nero's relentlessness, she
sought the glory of sharing her husband's death, but that after a
time, when a more soothing prospect presented itself, she yielded
to the charms of life. To this she added a few subsequent years, with
a most praise worthy remembrance of her husband, and with a countenance
and frame white to a degree of pallor which denoted a loss of much
vital energy. 

Seneca meantime, as the tedious process of death still lingered on,
begged Statius Annaeus, whom he had long esteemed for his faithful
friendship and medical skill, to produce a poison with which he had
some time before provided himself, same drug which extinguished the
life of those who were condemned by a public sentence of the people
of Athens. It was brought to him and he drank it in vain, chilled
as he was throughout his limbs, and his frame closed against the efficacy
of the poison. At last he entered a pool of heated water, from which
he sprinkled the nearest of his slaves, adding the exclamation, "I
offer this liquid as a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer." He was
then carried into a bath, with the steam of which he was suffocated,
and he was burnt without any of the usual funeral rites. So he had
directed in a codicil of his will, when even in the height of his
wealth and power he was thinking of his life's close. 

There was a rumour that Sabrius Flavus had held a secret consultation
with the centurions, and had planned, not without Seneca's knowledge,
that when Nero had been slain by Piso's instrumentality, Piso also
was to be murdered, and the empire handed over to Seneca, as a man
singled out for his splendid virtues by all persons of integrity.
Even a saying of Flavus was popularly current, "that it mattered not
as to the disgrace if a harp-player were removed and a tragic actor
succeeded him." For as Nero used to sing to the harp, so did Piso
in the dress of a tragedian. 

The soldiers' part too in the conspiracy no longer escaped discovery,
some in their rage becoming informers to betray Faenius Rufus, whom
they could not endure to be both an accomplice and a judge. Accordingly
Scaevinus, in answer to his browbeating and menaces, said with a smile
that no one knew more than he did, and actually urged him to show
gratitude to so good a prince. Faenius could not meet this with either
speech or silence. Halting in his words and visibly terror-stricken,
while the rest, especially Cervarius Proculus, a Roman knight, did
their utmost to convict him, he was, at the emperor's bidding, seized
and bound by Cassius, a soldier, who because of his well-known strength
of limb was in attendance. 

Shortly afterwards, the information of the same men proved fatal to
Subrius Flavus. At first he grounded his defence on his moral contrast
to the others, implying that an armed soldier, like himself, would
never have shared such an attempt with unarmed and effeminate associates.
Then, when he was pressed, he embraced the glory of a full confession.
Questioned by Nero as to the motives which had led him on to forget
his oath of allegiance, "I hated you," he replied; "yet not a soldier
was more loyal to you while you deserved to be loved. I began to hate
you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer,
an actor, and an incendiary." I have given the man's very words, because
they were not, like those of Seneca, generally published, though the
rough and vigorous sentiments of a soldier ought to be no less known.

Throughout the conspiracy nothing, it was certain, fell with more
terror on the ears of Nero, who was as unused to be told of the crimes
he perpetrated as he was eager in their perpetration. The punishment
of Flavus was intrusted to Veianius Niger, a tribune. At his direction,
a pit was dug in a neighbouring field. Flavus, on seeing it, censured
it as too shallow and confined, saying to the soldiers around him,
"Even this is not according to military rule." When bidden to offer
his neck resolutely, "I wish," said he, "that your stroke may be as
resolute." The tribune trembled greatly, and having only just severed
his head at two blows, vaunted his brutality to Nero, saying that
he had slain him with a blow and a half. 

Sulpicius Asper, a centurion, exhibited the next example of fortitude.
To Nero's question why he had conspired to murder him, he briefly
replied that he could not have rendered a better service to his infamous
career. He then underwent the prescribed penalty. Nor did the remaining
centurions forget their courage in suffering their punishment. But
Faenius Rufus had not equal spirit; he even put his laments into his
will. 

Nero waited in the hope that Vestinus also, the consul, whom he thought
an impetuous and deeply disaffected man, would be involved in the
charge. None however of the conspirators had shared their counsels
with him, some from old feuds against him, most because they considered
him a reckless and dangerous associate. Nero's hatred of him had had
its origin in intimate companionship, Vestinus seeing through and
despising the emperor's cowardice, while Nero feared the high spirit
of his friend, who often bantered him with that rough humour which,
when it draws largely on facts, leaves a bitter memory behind it.
There was too a recent aggravation in the circumstance of Vestinus
having married Statilia Messalina, without being ignorant that the
emperor was one of her paramours. 

As neither crime nor accuser appeared, Nero, being thus unable to
assume the semblance of a judge, had recourse to the sheer might of
despotism, and despatched Gerellanus, a tribune, with a cohort of
soldiers, and with orders to forestall the designs of the consul,
to seize what he might call his fortress, and crush his train of chosen
youths. For Vestinus had a house towering over the Forum, and a host
of handsome slaves of the same age. On that day he had performed all
his duties as consul, and was entertaining some guests, fearless of
danger, or perhaps by way of hiding his fears, when the soldiers entered
and announced to him the tribune's summons. He rose without a moment's
delay, and every preparation was at once made. He shut himself into
his chamber; a physician was at his side; his veins were opened; with
life still strong in him, he was carried into a bath, and plunged
into warm water, without uttering a word of pity for himself. Meanwhile
the guards surrounded those who had sat at his table, and it was only
at a late hour of the night that they were dismissed, when Nero, having
pictured to himself and laughed over their terror at the expectation
of a fatal end to their banquet, said that they had suffered enough
punishment for the consul's entertainment. 

Next he ordered the destruction of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. As the
blood flowed freely from him, and he felt a chill creeping through
his feet and hands, and the life gradually ebbing from his extremities,
though the heart was still warm and he retained his mental power,
Lucanus recalled some poetry he had composed in which he had told
the story of a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death, and
he recited the very lines. These were his last words. After him, Senecio,
Quintianus, and Scaevinus perished, not in the manner expected from
the past effeminacy of their life, and then the remaining conspirators,
without deed or word deserving record. 

Rome all this time was thronged with funerals, the Capitol with sacrificial
victims. One after another, on the destruction of a brother, a kinsman,
or a friend, would return thanks to the gods, deck his house with
laurels, prostrate himself at the knees of the emperor, and weary
his hand with kisses. He, in the belief that this was rejoicing, rewarded
with impunity the prompt informations of Antonius Natalis and Cervarius
Proculus. Milichus was enriched with gifts and assumed in its Greek
equivalent the name of Saviour. Of the tribunes, Gavius Silvanus,
though acquitted, perished by his own hand; Statius Proximus threw
away the benefit of the pardon he had accepted from the emperor by
the folly of his end. Cornelius Martialis, Flavius Nepos, Statius
Domitius were then deprived of the tribuneship, on the ground, not
of actually hating the emperor, but of having the credit of it. Novius
Priscus, as Seneca's friend, Glitius Gallus, and Annius Pollio, as
men disgraced rather than convicted, escaped with sentences of banishment.
Priscus and Gallus were accompanied respectively by their wives, Artoria
Flaccilla and Egnatia Maximilla. The latter possessed at first a great
fortune, still unimpaired, and was subsequently deprived of it, both
which circumstances enhanced her fame. 

Rufius Crispinus too was banished, on the opportune pretext of the
conspiracy, but he was in fact hated by Nero, because he had once
been Poppaea's husband. It was the splendour of their name which drove
Verginius Flavus and Musonius Rufus into exile. Verginius encouraged
the studies of our youth by his eloquence; Rufus by the teachings
of philosophy. Cluvidienus Quietus, Julius Agrippa, Blitius Catulinus,
Petronius Priscus, Julius Altinus, mere rank and file, so to say,
had islands in the Aegean Sea assigned to them. Caedicia, the wife
of Scaevinus, and Caesonius Maximus were forbidden to live in Italy,
their penalty being the only proof they had of having been accused.
Atilla, the mother of Annaeus Lucanus, without either acquittal or
punishment, was simply ignored. 

All this having been completed, Nero assembled the troops and distributed
two thousand sesterces to every common soldier, with an addition of
as much corn without payment, as they had previously the use of at
the market price. Then, as if he was going to describe successes in
war, he summoned the Senate, and awarded triumphal honours to Petronius
Turpilianus, an ex-consul, to Cocceius Nerva, praetor-elect, and to
Tigellinus, commander of the praetorians. Tigellinus and Nerva he
so distinguished as to place busts of them in the palace in addition
to triumphal statues in the Forum. He granted a consul's decorations
to Nymphidius, on whose origin, as he now appears for the first time,
I will briefly touch. For he too will be a part of Rome's calamities.

The son of a freedwoman, who had prostituted a handsome person among
the slaves and freedmen of the emperors, he gave out that he was the
offspring of Caius Caesar, for he happened to be of tall stature and
to have a fierce look, or possibly Caius Caesar, who liked even harlots,
had also amused himself with the man's mother. 

Nero meanwhile summoned the Senate, addressed them in a speech, and
further added a proclamation to the people, with the evidence which
had been entered on records, and the confessions of the condemned.
He was indeed perpetually under the lash of popular talk, which said
that he had destroyed men perfectly innocent out of jealousy or fear.
However, that a conspiracy was begun, matured, and conclusively proved
was not doubted at the time by those who took pains to ascertain the
truth, and is admitted by those who after Nero's death returned to
the capital. When every one in the Senate, those especially who had
most cause to mourn, abased himself in flattery, Salienus Clemens
denounced Junius Gallio, who was terror-stricken at his brother Seneca's
death was pleading for his life. He called him an enemy and traitor
to the State, till the unanimous voice of the senators deterred him
from perverting public miseries into an occasion for a personal resentment,
and thus importing fresh bitterness into what by the prince's clemency
had been hushed up or forgotten. 

Then offerings and thanksgivings to the gods were decreed, with special
honours to the Sun, who has an ancient temple in the circus where
the crime was planned, as having revealed by his power the secrets
of the conspiracy. The games too of Ceres in the circus were to be
celebrated with more horse-races, and the month of April was to be
called after the name of Nero. A temple also was to be erected to
Safety, on the spot whence Scaevinus had taken his dagger. The emperor
himself dedicated the weapon in the temple of the capital, and inscribed
on it, "To Jupiter the Avenger." This passed without notice at the
moment, but after the war of Julius Vindex it was construed as an
omen and presage of impending vengeance. I find in the registers of
the Senate that Cerialis Anicius, consul-elect, proposed a motion
that a temple should as soon as possible be built at the public expense
to the Divine Nero. He implied indeed by this proposal that the prince
had transcended all mortal grandeur and deserved the adoration of
mankind. Some however interpreted it as an omen of his death, seeing
that divine honours are not paid to an emperor till he has ceased
to live among men.