第96章 A.D.65, 66(3)

She therefore told her father by message that she cast hope aside and yielded to necessity.He was at the same time informed that judicial proceedings in the Senate and a dreadful sentence were hanging over him.Some there were who advised him to name the emperor as his chief heir, and so secure the remainder for his grandchildren.But he spurned the notion, and unwilling to disgrace a life which had clung to freedom by a final act of servility, he bestowed on his slaves all his ready money, and ordered each to convey away for himself whatever he could carry, leaving only three couches for the last scene.Then in the same chamber, with the same weapon, they sundered their veins, and speedily hurried into a bath, covered each, as delicacy required, with a single garment, the father gazing intently on his daughter, the grandmother on her grandchild, she again on both, while with rival earnestness they prayed that the ebbing life might have a quick departure, each wishing to leave a relative still surviving, but just on the verge of death.Fortune preserved the due order; the oldest died first, then the others according to priority of age.They were prosecuted after their burial, and the sentence was that "they should be punished in ancient fashion." Nero interposed his veto, allowing them to die without his interference.Such were the mockeries added to murders already perpetrated.

Publius Gallus, a Roman knight, was outlawed for having been intimate with Faenius Rufus and somewhat acquainted with Vetus.To the freedman who was the accuser, was given, as a reward for his service, a seat in the theatre among the tribune's officers.The month too following April, or Neroneus, was changed from Maius into the name of Claudius, and Junius into that of Germanicus, Cornelius Orfitus, the proposer of the motion, publicly declaring that the month Junius had been passed over because the execution of the two Torquati for their crimes had now rendered its name inauspicious.

A year of shame and of so many evil deeds heaven also marked by storms and pestilence.Campania was devastated by a hurricane, which destroyed everywhere countryhouses, plantations and crops, and carried its fury to the neighbourhood of Rome, where a terrible plague was sweeping away all classes of human beings without any such derangement of the atmosphere as to be visibly apparent.Yet the houses were filled with lifeless forms and the streets with funerals.Neither age nor sex was exempt from peril.Slaves and the free-born populace alike were suddenly cut off, amid the wailings of wives and children, who were often consumed on the very funeral pile of their friends by whom they had been sitting and shedding tears.Knights and senators perished indiscriminately, and yet their deaths were less deplored because they seemed to forestal the emperor's cruelty by an ordinary death.That same year levies of troops were held in Narbon Gaul, Africa and Asia, to fill up the legions of Illyricum, all soldiers in which, worn out by age or ill-health, were receiving their discharge.Lugdunum was consoled by the prince for a ruinous disaster by a gift of four million sesterces, so that what was lost to the city might be replaced.Its people had previously offered this same amount for the distresses of Rome.

In the consulship of Caius Suetonius and Lucius Telesinus, Antistius Sosianus, who, as I have stated, had been punished with exile for repeated satires on Nero, having heard that there was such honour for informers and that the emperor was so partial to bloodshed, being himself too of a restless temper and quick to seize opportunities, made a friend of a man in like condition with himself, one Pammenes, an exile in the same place, noted for his skill as an astrologer, and consequently bound to many in close intimacy.He thought there must be a meaning in the frequent messages and the consultations, and he learnt at the same time that an annual payment was furnished him by Publius Anteius.He knew too that Anteius was hated by Nero for his love of Agrippina, and that his wealth was sufficiently conspicuous to provoke cupidity, and that this was the cause of the destruction of many.Accordingly he intercepted a letter from Anteius, and having also stolen some notes about the day of his nativity and his future career, which were hidden away among Pammenes' secret papers, and having further discovered some remarks on the birth and life of Ostorius Scapula, he wrote to the emperor that he would communicate important news which would contribute to his safety, if he could but obtain a brief reprieve of his exile.

Anteius and Ostorius were, he hinted, grasping at empire and prying into the destinies of themselves and of the prince.Some swift galleys were then despatched and Sosianus speedily arrived.On the disclosure of his information, Anteius and Ostorius were classed with condemned criminals rather than with men on their trial, so completely, indeed, that no one would attest the will of Anteius, till Tigellinus interposed to sanction it.Anteius had been previously advised by him not to delay this final document.Then he drank poison, but disgusted at its slowness, he hastened death by severing his veins.