第147章 A.D.32-37(13)

And so Domitius and Marsus prolonged their lives, Domitius, preparing his defence, Marsus, having apparently resolved on starvation.Arruntius, when his friends advised delay and temporising, replied that "the same conduct was not becoming in all persons.He had had enough of life, and all he regretted was that he had endured amid scorn and peril an old age of anxious fears, long detested by Sejanus, now by Macro, always, indeed, by some powerful minister, not for any fault, but as a man who could not tolerate gross iniquities.Granted the possibility of passing safely through the few last days of Tiberius.How was he to be secure under the youth of the coming sovereign? Was it probable that, when Tiberius with his long experience of affairs was, under the influence of absolute power, wholly perverted and changed, Caius Caesar, who had hardly completed his boyhood, was thoroughly ignorant and bred under the vilest training, would enter on a better course, with Macro for his guide, who having been selected for his superior wickedness, to crush Sejanus had by yet more numerous crimes been the scourge of the State? He now foresaw a still more galling slavery, and therefore sought to flee alike from the past and from the impending future."While he thus spoke like a prophet, he opened his veins.What followed will be a proof that Arruntius rightly chose death.

Albucilla, having stabbed herself with an ineffectual wound, was by the Senate's order carried off to prison.Those who had ministered to her profligacy, Carsidius Sacerdos, an ex-praetor, and Pontius Fregellanus were sentenced, respectively, to transportation to an island and to loss of a senator's rank.A like punishment was adjudged in the case of Laelius Balbus, and, indeed, with intense satisfaction, as Balbus was noted for his savage eloquence and his eagerness to assail the innocent.

About the same time Sextus Papinius, who belonged to a family of consular rank, chose a sudden and shocking death, by throwing himself from a height.The cause was ascribed to his mother who, having been repeatedly repulsed in her overtures, had at last by her arts and seductions driven him to an extremity from which he could find no escape but death.She was accordingly put on her trial before the Senate, and, although she grovelled at the knees of the senators and long urged a parent's grief, the greater weakness of a woman's mind under such an affliction and other sad and pitiful pleas of the same painful kind, she was after all banished from Rome for ten years, till her younger son would have passed the frail period of youth.

Tiberius's bodily powers were now leaving him, but not his skill in dissembling.There was the same stern spirit; he had his words and looks under strict control, and occasionally would try to hide his weakness, evident as it was, by a forced politeness.After frequent changes of place, he at last settled down on the promontory of Misenum in a country-house once owned by Lucius Lucullus.There it was noted, in this way, that he was drawing near his end.There was a physician, distinguished in his profession, of the name of Charicles, usually employed, not indeed to have the direction of the emperor's varying health, but to put his advice at immediate disposal.

This man, as if he were leaving on business his own, clasped his hand, with a show of homage, and touched his pulse.Tiberius noticed it.