Atque illum ambiguum novus insuper nuntius contumeliæ exstimulat :  quippe egressus Armenia Tigranes Adiabenos, conterminam nationem, latius ac diutius quam per latrocinia vastaverat, idque primores gentium ægre tolerabant :  « eo contemptionis descensum, ut ne duce quidem Romano incursarentur, sed temeritate obsidis tot per annos inter mancipia habiti. »  Accendebat dolorem eorum Monobazus quem penes Adiabenum regimen, quod præsidium aut unde peteret rogitans :  « jam de Armenia concessum, proxima trahi ;  et nisi defendant Parthi, levius servitium apud Romanos deditis quam captis esse. »

Tiridates quoque, regni profugus, per silentium aut modice querendo gravior erat :  « non enim ignavia magna imperia contineri ;  virorum armorumque faciendum certamen ;  id in summa fortuna æquius quod validius ;  et sua retinere, privatæ domus — de alienis certare, regiam, laudem esse. »

[15.1]  Meanwhile {(a.D. 61)}, the Parthian king, Vologæses, hearing of Corbulo’s feats and of the alien-born Tigranes having been made king of Armenia — and simultaneously wishing to embark on avenging the Arsacid paramountcy insulted, as it had been, by the expulsion of his brother Tiridates —, was torn between opposing concerns due to the immense power of Rome and his 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.

On top of this, as he was wavering, fresh tidings of humiliation goaded him to action.  Tigranes, leaving Armenia, had ravaged the Adiabeni — a tribe on its border — too extensively and continuously for mere plundering raids.  This infuriated the tribal leaders:  they had descended to a level of contempt, they said, where they were being invaded not even by a Roman general but by the audacity of a hostage who for so many years had been numbered among slaves.  Their anger was inflamed by Monobazus, ruler of the Adiabeni, who repeatedly asked what protection he could seek and whence:  “Already,” he said, “Armenia has been given up, and the adjacent lands are being taken;  and unless the Parthians defend us, the conclusion will be that servitude to the Romans is milder for those who surrender than for the conquered.”

Tiridates too, a refugee from his own kingdom, made the deeper impression by his silence or subdued complaints:  “It is not,” he urged, “through cowardice that great empires are maintained;  there has to be a struggle of armed men;  at the summit of power, might is right.  True, for a private household, holding onto one’s own possessions is praiseworthy, but for a king, fighting for those of others is.”

[15.2]  Igitur commotus his Vologæses concilium vocat et proximum sibi Tiridaten constituit atque ita orditur :  “Hunc ego eodem mecum patre genitum, quum mihi, per ætatem, summo nomine concessisset, in possessionem Armeniæ deduxi, qui tertius potentiæ gradus habetur (nam Medos Pacorus ante ceperat), videbarque contra vetera fratrum odia et certamina familiæ nostræ penates rite composuisse.  Prohibent Romani, et pacem nunquam ipsis prospere lacessitam, nunc quoque in exitium suum abrumpunt.  Non ibo infitias :  æquitate quam sanguine, causa quam armis retinere parta majoribus malueram.  Si cunctatione deliqui, virtute corrigam.  Vestra quidem vis et gloria in integro est, addita modestiæ fama quæ neque summis mortalium spernenda est et a dis æstimatur.”

Simul diademate caput Tiridatis evinxit, promptam equitum manum quæ regem ex more sectatur, Monæsi nobili viro tradidit, adjectis Adiabenorum auxiliis, mandavitque Tigranen Armenia exturbandum, dum ipse, positis adversus Hyrcanos discordiis, vires intimas molemque belli ciet, provinciis Romanis minitans.

[15.2]  Moved by these considerations Vologæses called a council, placed Tiridates by his side, and began to speak as follows:  “This man before you, born from the same father as I, given that because of my seniority he had yielded to me in respect of the highest title, I placed in possession of Armenia — he who is considered the third rank of power.  (For Pacorus had already taken over the Medes.)  And I thought to myself that, contrary to the inveterate fraternal hatreds and strife in our family, I had appropriately settled our domestic affairs.  The Romans are preventing it, and though they have never disturbed the peace with benefit to themselves, they are now again breaking it to their own destruction.  I am not going to deny the fact that I had preferred to retain the gains made by our ancestors equitably rather than through bloodshed, through negotiation rather than arms.  If I have sinned through irresolution, I shall rectify it by valor.  Assuredly your strength and renown are undiminished, with the added renown of moderation which is not to be spurned by the highest of mortals, and which is esteemed by the gods.”

At the same time, he crowned Tiridates’ head with a diadem, and to Monæses, a noble, he committed a ready body of cavalry which normally accompanies the king, adding some auxiliaries from the Adiabeni, and ordered him to drive Tigranes out of Armenia.  Meanwhile he would himself settle his feud with the Hyrcanians, raise a domestic force and summon up the machine of war, menacing the Roman provinces.

[15.3]  Quæ ubi Corbuloni certis nuntiis audita sunt, legiones duas cum Verulano Severo et Vettio Bolano subsidium Tigrani mittit, occulto præcepto, compositius cuncta quam festinantius agerent.  Quippe bellum habere quam gerere malebat, scripseratque Cæsari proprio duce opus esse, qui Armeniam defenderet :  Syriam ingruente Vologæse acriore in discrimine esse.  Atque interim reliquas legiones pro ripa Euphratis locat, tumultuariam provincialium manum armat, hostiles ingressus præsidiis intercipit.  Et quia egena aquarum regio est, castella fontibus imposita ;  quosdam rivos congestu harenæ abdidit.

[15.3]  When Corbulo heard all this from reliable messengers, 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 hastily, as he would prefer to keep the war on hold rather than wage it.  And indeed he had written to the emperor that a separate general was needed for the defense of Armenia, and that Syria, with Vologæses making inroads, 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 blocked off the enemy’s approaches with garrisons.  And as the country was deficient in water, he established forts to guard the wellsprings and concealed some of the streams with heaps of sand.

[15.4]  Ea dum a Corbulone tuendæ Syriæ parantur, acto raptim agmine Monæses, ut famam sui præiret — non ideo nescium aut incautum Tigranen offendit.  Occupaverat Tigranocertam, urbem copia defensorum et magnitudine mœnium validam.  Ad hoc Nicephorius amnis haud spernenda latitudine partem murorum ambit, et ducta ingens fossa qua fluvio diffidebatur.  Inerantque milites, et provisi ante commeatus — quorum subvectu pauci, avidius progressi et repentinis hostibus circumventi, ira magis quam metu ceteros accenderant.

Sed Partho ad exsequendas obsidiones nulla comminus audacia :  raris sagittis ;  neque clausos exterret, et semet frustratur.  Adiabeni, quum promovere scalas et machinamenta inciperent, facile detrusi, mox erumpentibus nostris cæduntur.

[15.4]  While Corbulo was thus preparing for the defense of Syria {(a.D. 62)}, Monæses, though haven driven his forces rapidly to head off word of his advance, still did not 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 size of its walls.  In addition, the river Nicephorius, of a width not to be spurned, circled a portion of its walls, and a huge moat had been drawn where there was mistrust of the river.  There were some {(Roman)} soldiers too, and supplies previously provided.  As these were being brought up a few men had rushed out too greedily and were suddenly surrounded by the enemy, which inspired the others with rage rather than fear.

But the Parthian does not have the daring in close combat needed for executing sieges.  There were a few arrowshots, but he did not strike fear into those inside, and only deluded 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.

[15.5]  Corbulo tamen, quamvis secundis rebus suis, moderandum fortunæ ratus misit ad Vologæsen, qui expostularent vim provinciæ illatam :  « socium amicumque regem, cohortes Romanas circumsederi.  Omitteret potius obsidionem, aut se quoque in agro hostili castra positurum. »

Casperius centurio in eam legationem delectus apud oppidum Nisibin, septem et triginta milibus passuum a Tigranocerta distantem, adit regem et mandata ferociter edidit.  Vologæsi vetus et penitus infixum erat arma Romana vitandi, nec præsentia prospere fluebant.  Irritum obsidium, tutus manu et copiis Tigranes, fugati qui expugnationem sumpserant, missæ in Armeniam legiones, et aliæ pro Syria paratæ ultro irrumpere ;  sibi imbecillum equitem pabuli inopia ;  nam exorta vi locustarum aberat quicquid herbidum aut frondosum.

Igitur metu abstruso mitiora obtendens, missurum ad imperatorem Romanum legatos super petenda Armenia et firmanda pace respondet ;  Monæsen omittere Tigranocertam jubet, ipse retro concedit.

[15.5]  Corbulo, however, notwithstanding his successes, thought he must use his good fortune with moderation, and sent men to Vologæses to complain about the violence done to the province:  “An allied and friendly king and Roman cohorts were being blockaded.  He had better give up the siege or he, Corbulo, too would encamp in enemy territory.”

Casperius, a centurion selected for this mission, went to the king at the town of Nisibis, thirty-seven miles distant from Tigranocerta, and delivered the message fiercely.  With Vologæses it was an old and deep conviction that he should avoid armed conflict with Rome.  Nor was the present going smoothly with him.  The siege was a failure;  Tigranes was safe with his troops and supplies;  those who had undertaken the storming had been routed;  legions had been sent into Armenia, and other legions were on the border of Syria ready to launch an offensive, while his own cavalry was weakened by lack of forage.  For with a suddenly appearing host of locusts, every blade of grass and every leaf was gone.

And so, hiding his fear and pretending a more conciliatory attitude, he replied that he would send envoys to the Roman emperor for the possession of Armenia and the consolidation of peace.  He ordered Monæses to leave Tigranocerta, and he himself withdrew.

[15.6]  Hæc plures ut formidine regis et Corbulonis minis patrata ac magnifica extollebant.  Alii occulte pepigisse interpretabantur ut, omisso utrimque bello et abeunte Vologæse, Tigranes quoque Armenia abscederet.  « ¿ Cur enim exercitum Romanum a Tigranocertis deductum ?  ¿ Cur deserta per otium quæ bello defenderant ?  ¿ An melius hibernavisse in extrema Cappadocia, raptim erectis tuguriis, quam in sede regni modo retenti ?  Dilata prorsus arma, ut Vologæses cum alio quam cum Corbulone certaret, Corbulo meritæ tot per annos gloriæ non ultra periculum faceret. »  Nam, ut rettuli, proprium ducem tuendæ Armeniæ poposcerat, et adventare Cæsennius Pætus audiebatur.

Jamque aderat, copiis ita divisis, ut Quarta et Duodecima Legiones, addita Quinta quæ recens e Mœsis excita erat, simul Pontica et Galatarum Cappadocumque auxilia, Pæto obœdirent ;  Tertia et Sexta et Decima Legiones priorque Syriæ miles apud Corbulonem manerent ;  cetera ex rerum usu sociarent partirenturve.  Sed neque Corbulo æmuli patiens, et Pætus, cui satis ad gloriam erat si proximus haberetur, despiciebat gesta, « nihil cædis aut prædæ, usurpatas nomine tenus “urbium expugnationes” » dictitans :  « se tributa ac leges et, pro umbra regis, Romanum jus victis impositurum. »

[15.6]  Many spoke highly of these results as due to the king’s fear and Corbulo’s threats, and as splendid successes.  Others explained them as a secret understanding that, with the cessation of war on both sides and the departure of Vologæses, Tigranes too was to leave 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 in the bordering regions of Cappadocia in hastily constructed shacks than in the capital of a kingdom lately recovered?  To get to the point:  operations had been postponed so that Vologæses might fight someone else 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 Armenia to have its own general for protection, and it was heard that Cæsennius Pætus was on his way.

And now he was there, and the army was divided thus:  the Fourth and Twelfth Legions, with the Fifth which had lately been raised among the Mœsians and the auxiliaries from Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia, were under the command of Pætus, while the Third, Sixth, and Tenth Legions and the original soldiery of Syria remained with Corbulo.  All else they were to share or divide between them depending on circumstances.  But Corbulo could not tolerate a rival, and Pætus, for whom being second in command should have been glorious enough, disparaged the results of the war, saying repeatedly that there had been no bloodshed or spoil, that the quoted “stormings of cities” were sieges in name only, and that on the conquered he would soon impose tribute and laws and, instead of a ghost of a king, Roman jurisdiction.

[15.7]  Sub idem tempus legati Vologæsis, quos ad principem missos memoravi, revertere irriti, bellumque propalam sumptum a Parthis.  Nec Pætus detrectavit, sed duabus legionibus, quarum Quartum Funisulanus Vettonianus eo in tempore, Duodecimam Calavius Sabinus regebant, Armeniam intrat tristi omine.  Nam in transgressu Euphratis, quem ponte tramittebant, nulla palam causa, turbatus equus qui consularia insignia gestabat retro evasit ;  hostiaque, quæ muniebantur hibernaculis assistens, semifacta opera fuga perrupit seque vallo extulit ;  et pila militum arsere, magis insigni prodigio, quia Parthus hostis missilibus telis decertat.

[15.7]  About the same time the envoys of Vologæses, who had been sent, as I have related, to the emperor, returned without success, and the Parthians made open war.  Nor did Pætus decline the challenge, but with two legions, the Fourth and Twelfth — the first of which was then commanded by Funisulanus Vettonianus and the second by Calavius Sabinus —, entered Armenia accompanied by a grim omen.  In the passage of the Euphrates, which they crossed by means of a bridge, a horse carrying the consular insignia took fright without any apparent cause and fled back.  A sacrificial animal, too, standing next to the winter quarters under construction, broke through the half-finished works in flight and escaped from the palisade.  In addition, the soldiers’ javelins glowed with {(St. Elmo’s)} fire, a prodigy all the more significant because the Parthian fights with missiles.

[15.8]  Ceterum Pætus, spretis ominibus, necdum satis firmatis hibernaculis, nullo rei frumentariæ provisu, rapit exercitum trans montem Taurum, recuperandis, ut ferebat, Tigranocertis vastandisque regionibus quas Corbulo integras omisisset.  Et capta quædam castella, gloriæque et prædæ nonnihil partum, si aut gloriam cum modo aut prædam cum cura habuisset :  longinquis itineribus percursando quæ obtineri nequibant, corrupto qui captus erat commeatu et instante jam hieme, reduxit exercitum composuitque ad Cæsarem litteras quasi confecto bello — verbis magnificis, rerum vacuas.

[15.8]  Pætus, however, spurning the omens, and having not yet thoroughly fortified his winter camp, with no provision for the grain supply, hurried his army across the Taurus mountains for the recovery — as he kept saying — of Tigranocerta and the ravaging of the country which Corbulo had left untouched.  Some forts were also taken ;  and a fair amount of glory and plunder would have been gained, if only he had combined his glory with moderation and his plunder with vigilance.  In extended marches he overran areas which could not be held, only to lead back his army when the captured supplies had rotted and the winter was at hand, and wrote a letter to the emperor as if the war had been finished — in magnificent verbiage, but barren of facts.

[15.9]  Interim Corbulo nunquam neglectam Euphratis ripam crebrioribus præsidiis insedit ;  et ne ponti injiciendo impedimentum hostiles turmæ afferrent (jam enim subjectis campis magna specie volitabant), naves magnitudine præstantes, et conexas trabibus, ac turribus auctas agit per amnem, catapultisque et ballistis proturbat barbaros, in quos saxa et hastæ longius permeabant quam ut contrario sagittarum jactu adæquarentur.  Dein pons continuatus, collesque adversi per socias cohortes, post legionum castris occupantur, tanta celeritate et ostentatione virium, ut Parthi omisso paratu invadendæ Syriæ spem omnem in Armeniam verterent, ubi Pætus, imminentium nescius, Quintam Legionem procul in Ponto habebat, reliquas promiscis militum commeatibus infirmaverat, donec adventare Vologæsen magno et infenso agmine auditum.

[15.9]  Meanwhile Corbulo placed guardposts at closer intervals on the bank of the Euphrates, which he had never neglected.  And to prevent the enemy cavalry (which was already flitting around the adjoining plains in an impressive display) from creating an obstacle to his construction of a bridge, he launched on the river ships of remarkable size, connected by planking and fitted with towers, and with catapults and ballistas he repelled the barbarians.  The stones and spears penetrated too far to be matched by countering arrow shots.  The bridging was then completed, and the hills opposite were occupied by our auxiliary cohorts and subsequently by the legionary camp, with such rapidity and such a display of force that the Parthians, abandoning their preparations for the invasion of Syria, concentrated all their hopes on Armenia.  There Pætus, ignorant of the impending danger, was keeping the Fifth Legion far off in Pontus;  the rest he had weakened by indiscriminate furloughs until news arrived that Vologæses was approaching with a powerful force bent on war.

[15.10]  Accitur Legio Duodecima et, unde famam aucti exercitus speraverat, prodita infrequentia.  Qua tamen retineri castra et eludi Parthus tractu belli poterat, si Pæto aut in suis aut in alienis consiliis constantia fuisset :  verum ubi a viris militaribus adversus urgentes casūs firmatus erat, rursus, ne alienæ sententiæ indigens videretur, in diversa ac deteriora transibat.  Et tunc relictis hibernis non fossam neque vallum sibi, sed corpora et arma in hostem data clamitans, duxit legiones quasi prœlio certaturus.  Deinde amisso centurione et paucis militibus quos visendis hostium copiis præmiserat, trepidus remeavit.  Et quia minus acriter Vologæses institerat, vana rursus fiducia tria milia delecti peditis proximo Tauri jugo imposuit, quo transitum regis arcerent ;  alares quoque Pannonios, robur equitatus, in parte campi locat.  Conjux ac filius castello, cui Arsamosata nomen est, abditi, data in præsidium cohorte ac disperso milite qui, in uno habitus, vagum hostem promptius sustentavisset.

Ægre compulsum ferunt, ut instantem Corbuloni fateretur.  Nec a Corbulone properatum, quo gliscentibus periculis etiam subsidii laus augeretur.  Expediri tamen itineri singula milia ex tribus legionibus et alarios octingentos, parem numerum e cohortibus jussit.

[15.10]  The Twelfth Legion was summoned, which then betrayed the numerical weakness of what he had hoped would give the impression of an augmented army.  Yet even so the camp might have been held, and the Parthian outwitted, by protracting the war, if Pætus had been consistent either in his own strategies or those of others.  Instead, just when he had been assured by military advisers against pressing threats, contrarily, he would switch to opposite and worse plans in order not to seem to need the advice of others.  So now, leaving his winter quarters, and exclaiming that neither ditch nor rampart but men’s bodies and weapons were given him for facing the foe, he led out his legions as though about to fight a decisive battle.  Then, after losing a centurion and a few soldiers whom he had sent on in advance to reconnoiter the enemy’s forces, he retreated in alarm.  And because Vologæses had not pressed on in hot pursuit, Pætus, again with false confidence, posted 3000 chosen infantry on an adjacent ridge of the Taurus in order to block the king’s passage.  He also stationed Pannonian horsemen, the main force of his cavalry, on one side of the plain.  His wife and son were hidden in a fortress named Arsamosata, with a cohort for their defense, thus splitting up troops which, if kept together, would have more readily checked the desultory skirmishing of the enemy.

It was difficult, they say, to force him to confess to Corbulo that the enemy was pressing him.  And Corbulo did not rush, his aim being that, with the increase in danger, the glory of the rescue might be enhanced.  Yet he did order a thousand men each from his three legions and eight hundred cavalry, and an equal number from the cohorts, to get ready to march.

[15.11]  At Vologæses, quamvis obsessa a Pæto itinera, hinc peditatu, inde equite, accepisset, nihil mutato consilio, sed vi ac minis alares exterruit, legionarios obtrivit — uno tantum centurione, Tarquitio Crescente, turrim in qua præsidium agitabat defendere auso, factaque sæpius eruptione et cæsis qui barbarorum propius suggrediebantur, donec ignium jactu circumveniretur.

Peditum si quis integer, longinqua et avia, vulnerati castra repetivere, virtutem regis, sævitiam et copias gentium, cuncta metu extollentes, facili credulitate eorum qui eadem pavebant.  Ne dux quidem obniti adversis, sed cuncta militiæ munia deseruerat, missis iterum ad Corbulonem precibus, « veniret propere, signa et aquilas et nomen reliquum infelicis exercitus tueretur :  se fidem interim, donec vita suppeditet, retenturos. »

[15.11]  Vologæses meanwhile, though he had heard that the roads were blocked by Pætus, here with infantry, there with cavalry, did not alter his plan but struck panic into the cavalry with feints and crushed the legionaires with force — while only one centurion, Tarquitius Crescens, dared to defend a tower in which he was keeping guard.  He often sallied out and cut to pieces those of the barbarians who came up closer to the walls, until he was overwhelmed with volleys of firebrands.

Every infantryman still unwounded fled to distant and trackless areas, and the wounded retreated to the camp, exaggerating in their terror the king’s valor, the savagery and numbers of his tribes — everything in short — to the easy credulity of those who had the same fear.  Not even the general made a stand against the reverses.  He had indeed wholly abandoned all the duties of a soldier, and had again sent an appeal to Corbulo to come fast and save the standards and eagles and what was left of the name of the unfortunate army;  they meantime, he said, would hold to their fidelity while life lasted.

[15.12]  Ille interritus, et parte copiarum apud Syriam relicta ut munimenta Euphrati imposita retinerentur, qua proximum (et commeatibus non egenum) regionem Commagenam, exim Cappadociam, inde Armenios petivit.  Comitabantur exercitum præter alia sueta bello, magna vis camelorum onusta frumenti, ut simul hostem famemque depelleret.  Primum e perculsis Paccium primipili centurionem obvium habuit, dein plerosque militum ;  quos diversas fugæ causas obtendentes redire ad signa et clementiam Pæti experiri monebat :  se nisi victoribus immitem esse.

Simul suas legiones adire, hortari, priorum admonere, novam gloriam ostendere.  « Non vicos aut oppida Armeniorum, sed castra Romana duasque in eis legiones pretium laboris peti.  Si singulis manipularibus præcipua servati civis corona imperatoria manu tribueretur, ¡ quod illud, et quantum, decus, ubi par eorum numerus apisceretur qui attulissent salutem, et qui accepissent ! »

His atque talibus in commune alacres (et erant quos pericula fratrum aut propinquorum propriis stimulis incenderent) continuum diu noctuque iter properabant.

[15.12]  Corbulo, perfectly fearless, left part of his forces in Syria to hold the forts built on the Euphrates and, taking the nearest route (and one not deficient in supplies), made for the Commagene region, then Cappadocia, and thence Armenia.  Beside the other usual gear of war, his army was accompanied by a large, grain-laden number of camels to fend off famine as well as the enemy.  The first of the defeated army he met was Paccius, a first-rank centurion {(= a major)}, then the majority of the soldiers whom, when they gave various excuses for their flight, he admonished to return to their standards and throw themselves on the mercy of Pætus.  “For himself,” he said, “he was ruthless except to victors.”

As he spoke, he went up to his legions, cheering them on, reminding them of their earlier feats and pointing to comng glory.  “They were heading not for the villages or towns of Armenia, but for a Roman camp with two legions in it, a goal worth their efforts.  If the distinguished crown for saving a citizen was bestowed on individual soldiers by the hand of the emperor, how great and how much the honor where those bringing and those seeking rescue were equal in number!”

Inspired as a body by these and like words (and there were some whom the dangers to brothers or relatives inflamed with their own incitements), they hurried on day and night in their uninterrupted march.

[15.13]  Eoque intentius Vologæses premere obsessos, modo vallum legionum, modo castellum quo imbellis ætas defendebatur, appugnare, propius incedens quam mos Parthis, si ea temeritate hostem in prœlium eliceret.  At illi vix contuberniis extracti, nec aliud quam munimenta propugnabant, pars jussu ducis, et alii propria ignavia aut Corbulonem opperientes ac, vis si ingrueret, provisis exemplis Caudinæ Numantinæque cladis :  « neque eandem vim Samnitibus aut Hispanis quæ Romani imperii æmulis.  Validam quoque et laudatam antiquitatem, quotiens fortuna contra daret, saluti consuluisse. »

Qua desperatione exercitus dux subactus, primas tamen litteras ad Vologæsen non supplices, sed in modum querentis composuit, quod pro Armeniis semper Romanæ dicionis aut subjectis regi quem imperator delegisset hostilia faceret :  « pacem ex æquo utilem.  Ne præsentia tantum spectaret :  ipsum adversus duas legiones totis regni viribus advenisse ;  at Romanis orbem terrarum reliquum, quo bellum juvarent. »

[15.13]  Vologæses pressed the besieged all the more vigorously , now attacking the legions’ entrenchments, now the fortress where those of noncombatant age were being defended.  He advanced closer than is the Parthian practice to see whether he could lure the enemy into battle by such temerity.  They, however, could hardly be dragged out of their barracks and did nothing but defend the fortifications, some following the general’s order, others through personal cowardice or waiting for Corbulo and, if a violent attack was oncoming, with the precedents of the Caudine and Numantian disasters before their eyes — and the military power of the Samnites or Spaniards was hardly the same as that of the Roman empire’s rivals!  Whenever luck had turned against them, the stalwart and praiseworthy Romans of old had devised a way to save themselves.

The general, although overcome by the despair of his army, first wrote a letter to Vologæses, not a pleading one, but in a tone of complaint against the committing of hostile acts on behalf of the Armenians, who had always been under Roman dominion or subject to a king chosen by the emperor.  Peace, he reminded him, was equally in the interest of both, and he should look not 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.

[15.14]  Ad ea Vologæses nihil pro causa, sed « opperiendos sibi fratres Pacorum ac Tiridaten » rescripsit ;  « illum locum tempusque consilio destinatum, quid de Armenia cernerent ;  adjecisse deos — dignum Arsacidarum — simul ut de legionibus Romanis statuerent. »  Missi posthac Pæto nuntii, et regis colloquium petitum, qui Vasacen præfectum equitatus ire jussit.  Tum Pætus Lucullos, Pompejos et si qua Cæsares obtinendæ donandæve Armeniæ egerant, Vasaces imaginem retinendi largiendive penes nos, vim penes Parthos memorat.  Et multum invicem disceptato, Monobazus Adiabenus in diem posterum testis eis quæ pepigissent adhibetur.  Placuitque liberari obsidio legiones et decedere omnem militem finibus Armeniorum, castellaque et commeatus Parthis tradi, quibus perpetratis copia Vologæsi fieret mittendi ad Neronem legatos.

[15.14]  To this Vologæses replied nothing of relevance, but merely that he had to wait for his brothers Pacorus and Tiridates, that it was there and then that had been designated for what they would decide about Armenia, and that the gods had added the further honor — well worthy of the Arsacids — of simultaneously determining the fate of the Roman legions.  Messengers were then sent by Pætus, and an interview was requested with the king who ordered Vasaces, commander of the cavalry, to go.  Pætus then recalled the Luculli, the Pompeji, and everything that the Caesars had done for the maintaining or bestowing of Armenia, while Vasaces declared that we had the mere appearance of possession and of bestowing, but the Parthians, the real power.  After much arguing on both sides, Monobazus of the Adiabeni was called in the next day to be a witness to the stipulations into which they had entered.  It was agreed that the legions should be relieved of the blockade, that all the troops should quit Armenian territory, and that the forts and supplies should be surrendered to the Parthians and, once these things were done, Vologæses was to be given permission to send envoys to Nero.

[15.15]  Interim flumini Arsaniæ (is castra præfluebat) pontem imposuit, specie sibi illud iter expedientis, sed Parthi quasi documentum victoriæ jusserant ;  namque eis usui fuit, nostri per diversum iere.  Addidit rumor sub jugum missas legiones et alia ex rebus infaustis quorum simulacrum ab Armeniis usurpatum est.  Namque et munimenta ingressi sunt, antequam agmen Romanum excederet, et circumstetere vias, captiva olim mancipia aut jumenta agnoscentes abstrahentesque ;  raptæ etiam vestes, retenta arma, pavido milite et concedente, ne qua prœlii causa exsisteret.  Vologæses, armis et corporibus cæsorum aggeratis quo cladem nostram testaretur, visu fugientium legionum abstinuit :  fama moderationis quærebatur postquam superbiam expleverat.  Flumen Arsaniam elephanto insidens, proximus quisque regem, vi equorum perrupere, quia rumor incesserat pontem cessurum oneri dolo fabricantium ;  sed qui ingredi ausi sunt, validum et fidum intellexere.

[15.15]  Meanwhile Pætus threw a bridge over the river Arsanias, which flowed by the camp, seemingly to expedite the route for himself.  It was the Parthians, however, who had ordered this, as an evidence of their victory;  for the bridge was of use to them, while our men went in an opposite direction.  Rumor added that the legions had been passed under the yoke, with other luckless events, an imitation of which the Armenians were now making use.  For they entered the fortifications before the Roman column could leave and stood around the streets recognizing and removing slaves or beasts of burden that had been captured earlier.  Even clothing was seized and arms taken, the frightened soldiers yielding them so there would be no cause for a fight.  Vologæses, with the arms and bodies of the slain piled up as testimony to our defeat, abstained from watching the fleeing legions.  Now that he had satisfied his pride, it was a reputation for moderation that was being sought.  He charged through the river Arsanias seated on an elephant, while those closest to the king did so on their powerful horses;  for a rumor had gained ground that the bridge would give way due to the trickery of its builders.  But those who were bold enough to go on it found it to be sturdy and trustworthy.

[15.16]  Ceterum obsessis adeo suppeditavisse rem frumentariam constitit ut horreis ignem injicerent, contraque prodiderit Corbulo Parthos inopes copiarum et pabulo attrito relicturos oppugnationem — neque se plus tridui itinere afuisse.  Adjicit jure jurando Pæti cautum apud signa, astantibus eis quos testificando rex misisset, neminem Romanum Armeniam ingressurum donec referrentur litteræ Neronis an paci annueret.  Quæ ut augendæ infamiæ composita, sic reliqua non in obscuro habentur :  una die quadraginta milium spatium emensum esse Pætum, desertis passim sauciis ;  neque minus deformem illam fugientium trepidationem quam si terga in acie vertissent.

Corbulo, cum suis copiis apud ripam Euphratis obvius, non eam speciem insignium et armorum prætulit ut diversitatem exprobraret :  mæsti manipuli ac vicem commilitonum miserantes ne lacrimis quidem temperare ;  vix præ fletu usurpata consalutatio.  Decesserat certamen virtutis et ambitio gloriæ, felicium hominum affectus :  sola misericordia valebat, et apud minores magis.

[15.16]  As for the rest of the story, it is clear that the besieged had so much grain that they set fire to the granaries;  and Corbulo let it be known that on the other hand the Parthians, in want of provisions and with their pasturage nearly exhausted, would have abandoned the siege — and that he himself was only three days’ march distant.  He adds that Pætus 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.  Even if this was invented to increase the man’s disgrace, about the rest of it there is no doubt:  that, in a single day, Pætus traversed forty miles, abandoning the wounded everywhere;  and that the panic of the fleeing men was no less disgraceful than if they had turned tail in battle.

Corbulo, meeting them with his forces on the bank of the Euphrates, did not make such a display of his standards and arms as to humiliate them with the contrast.  His men, in their grief and pity for the lot of their comrades, could not even refrain from tears.  There was scarcely any mutual salutation for weeping.  The rivalry in courage and the desire of glory, the emotions of the successful, had died away;  pity alone survived, more strongly in the inferior ranks.

[15.17]  Ducum inter se brevis sermo secutus est, hoc conquerente irritum laborem, potuisse bellum fuga Parthorum finiri ;  ille integra utrique cuncta respondit :  converterent aquilas et juncti invaderent Armeniam abscessu Vologæsis infirmatam.

Non ea imperatoris habere mandata, Corbulo :  periculo legionum commotum e provincia egressum ;  quando in incerto habeantur Parthorum conatus, Syriam repetiturum.  Sic quoque optimam Fortunam orandam ut pedĕs, confectus spatiis itinerum, alacrem et facilitate camporum prævenientem equitem assequeretur.

Exin Pætus per Cappadociam hibernavit.  At Vologæsi ad Corbulonem missi nuntii, detraheret castella trans Euphraten amnemque, ut olim, medium faceret ;  ille Armeniam quoque diversis præsidiis vacuam fieri expostulabat.  Et postremo concessit rex ;  dirutaque quæ Euphraten ultra communiverat Corbulo, et Armenii sine arbitro relicti sunt.

[15.17]  There followed a short conversation between the generals.  Corbulo complained that his efforts had been fruitless:  the war could have been ended with the flight of the Parthians.  Pætus replied that everything remained undiminished for both of them:  they should turn the eagles around and jointly invade an Armenia weakened by the departure of Vologæses.

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 ;  given his uncertainty about the aims of the Parthians, he was going to return to Syria ;  even so, he would have to pray to most propitious Lady Luck that his infantry, wearied from its stretches on the march, might keep pace with the enemy’s energetic cavalry thither which, given the easy terrain of the plains, could outrun them.

Pætus then spent the winter in quarters throughout Cappadocia.  Vologæses, however, sent a message to Corbulo, telling him to dismantle the fortresses across the Euphrates and make the river, as before, the boundary between them.  Corbulo demanded that Armenia as well be cleared of enemy garrisons.  The king finally yielded;  all the positions fortified by Corbulo beyond the Euphrates were demolished, and the Armenians were left without an overlord.

[15.18]  At Romæ tropæa de Parthis arcusque medio Capitolini montis sistebantur, decreta ab Senatu integro adhuc bello neque tum omissa, dum aspectui consulitur, spreta conscientia.  Quin et dissimulandis rerum externarum curis Nero frumentum plebis vetustate corruptum in Tiberim jecit, quo securitatem annonæ sustentaret.  Cujus pretio nihil additum est, quamvis ducentas ferme naves portu in ipso violentia tempestatis, et centum alias Tiberi subvectas fortuitus ignis, absumpsisset.

Tres dein consulares, L. Pisonem, Ducenium Geminum, Pompejum Paulinum vectigalibus publicis præposuit cum insectatione priorum principum qui gravitate sumptuum justos reditus anteissent :  se annuum sescenties sestertium {(600 * H$100,000 = H$60,000,000)} Rei Publicæ largiri.

[15.18]  At Rome meanwhile victory monuments for the Parthian war and arches were erected in the center of the Capitoline hill;  these had been decreed by the Senate while the war was still undecided, and even now they were not given up, appearances being considered of primary importance despite common knowledge of the facts.  And to hide his anxieties about foreign affairs, Nero threw the people’s grain, rotten with age, into the Tiber, in order to maintain confidence in its provisioning.  There was no increase in price, even though a violent storm had destroyed about two hundred ships in the harbor itself, and an accidental fire a hundred more that had sailed up the Tiber.

Nero next appointed three ex-consuls, Lucius Piso, Ducennius Geminus and Pompejus Paulinus, to head the public revenues, while criticizing earlier emperors for having exceeded the lawful income with heavy expenditures.  He himself, he said, was making the state an annual present of sixty million sesterces {(600 * H$100,000 = H$60,000,000)}.

[15.19]  Percrebuerat et tempestate pravus mos quum, propinquis comitiis aut sorte provinciarum, plerique orbi, fictis adoptionibus asciscerent filios, præturasque et provincias inter patres sortiti, statim emitterent manu quos adoptaverant — magna cum invidia.  Senatum adeunt qui jus naturæ, labores educandi adversus fraudem et artes et brevitatem adoptionis enumerant.  « Satis pretii esse orbis quod multa securitate, nullis oneribus, gratiam, honores, cuncta prompta et obvia haberent.  Sibi promissa legum diu exspectata in ludibrium verti, quando quis sine sollicitudine parens, sine luctu orbus, longa patrum vota repente adæquaret. »  Factum ex eo Senatus consultum, ne simulata adoptio in ulla parte muneris publici juvaret ac ne usurpandis quidem hereditatibus prodesset.

[15.19]  A perverse custom had at this time become rife, of fictitious adoptions of children on the eve of elections or of the allotment of provinces, by a number of childless individuals who, after — amidst the real fathers — obtaining by lot prætorships and provinces, immediately emancipated those whom they had adopted — all to great resentment.  An appeal was made to the Senate by men who detailed the rights of nature and the difficulties of rearing as opposed to the deceit and artificiality of the brief adoptions :  “It was,” they argued, “enough of a reward for the childless to have influence, distinction — everything, in short, ready and available to them, with considerable unconcern and without a burden.  For themselves, they found that the long-awaited promises of the laws were being turned into mockery when someone who had become a parent without solicitude, childless without grief, could suddenly match the long-standing aspirations of fathers.”  On this, a decree of the Senate was passed that a fictitious adoption should be of no avail in any department of public service, or even for acquiring an inheritance.

[15.20]  Exim Claudius Timarchus Cretensis reus agitur, ceteris criminibus ut solent prævalidi provincialium et opibus nimiis ad injurias minorum elati, una vox ejus usque ad contumeliam Senatus penetraverat :  quod dictitasset « in sua potestate situm, an proconsulibus qui Cretam obtinuissent grates agerentur. »  Quam occasionem Pætus Thrasea ad bonum publicum vertens, postquam de reo censuerat provincia Creta depellendum, hæc addidit :

“Usu probatum est, patres conscripti, leges egregias, exempla honesta apud bonos ex delictis aliorum gigni.  Sic oratorum licentia Cinciam rogationem, candidatorum ambitus Julias leges, magistratuum avaritia Calpurnia scita pepererunt ;  nam culpa quam pœna tempore prior, emendari quam peccare posterius est.  Ergo adversus novam provincialium superbiam dignum fide constantiaque Romana capiamus consilium quo tutelæ sociorum nihil derogetur, nobis opinio decedat, qualis quisque habeatur, alibi quam in civium judicio esse.

[15.20]  Next came the prosecution of Claudius Timarchus of Crete, besides the other charges that overly powerful provincials are accused of whom immense wealth has emboldened to the oppression of lesser people, 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.  Pætus Thrasea, turning the occasion to public advantage, after having stated his opinion that the accused ought to be expelled from Crete, added this:

“It is found by experience, Senators, that admirable laws and honorable precedents among the good have their origin in the misdeeds of others.  Thus the license of advocates resulted in the Cincian bill;  the electoral bribery 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 wrongdoing.  And therefore, to meet the recent insolence of provincials, let us adopt a measure worthy of Roman reliability and steadfastness, whereby our allies may lose nothing of our protection and public opinion of us may cease to be that what each man is held to be like rests elsewhere than in the judgment of his fellow citizens.

[15.21]  “Olim quidem non modo prætor aut consul, sed privati etiam mittebantur qui provincias viserent et quid de cujusque obsequio videretur referrent, trepidabantque gentes de æstimatione singulorum ;  at nunc colimus externos et adulamur — et quomodo ad nutum alicujus grates, ita promptius accusatio decernitur.

“Decernaturque, et maneat provincialibus jus potentiam suam tali modo ostentandi ;  sed laus falsa et precibus expressa perinde cohibeatur quam malitia, quam crudelitas.  Plura sæpe peccantur dum demeremur quam dum offendimus.  Quædam immo virtutes odio sunt :  severitas obstinata, invictus adversum gratiam animus.  Inde initia magistratuum nostrorum meliora ferme — et finis inclinat, dum in modum candidatorum suffragia conquirimus ;  quæ si arceantur, æquabilus atque constantius provinciæ regentur.  Nam ut metu repetundarum infracta avaritia est, ita vetita gratiarum actione ambitio cohibebitur.”

[15.21]  “Formerly, it was not only a prætor or a consul, but private persons also who were sent to inspect the provinces and to report what they thought about each man’s compliance.  And nations trembled over appraisals by individuals.  But now we court and flatter foreigners — and just as, at the nod of one of them, a vote of thanks is decreed, so even more readily is an impeachment.

“Let it be decreed!  And let provincials keep the prerogative of exhibiting their power in such a way!  But let praise which is false and extorted by demands be restrained in the same way as wickedness and cruelty.  Often more wrongs are committed while we are trying to please than while giving offence.  In fact some virtues are actually hated:  inflexible strictness, a character impervious to favors.  Consequently, the debuts of our magistrates are generally better — and their end deteriorates when, like candidates, we are looking for votes.  If these things could be stopped, our provinces will be ruled more fairly and consistently.  For just as avarice has been terminated by the fear of extortion charges, so, by prohibiting thanksigivings, influence-seeking will be restrained.”

[15.22]  Magno assensu celebrata sententia.  Non tamen Senatus consultum perfici potuit, abnuentibus consulibus ea de re relatum.  Mox auctore principe sanxere ne quis ad concilium sociorum referret agendas apud Senatum pro prætoribus prove consulibus grates, neu quis ea legatione fungeretur.

Eisdem consulibus, gymnasium ictu fulminibus conflagravit, effigies in eo Neronis ad informe æs liquefacta.  Et motu terræ celebre Campaniæ oppidum Pompeji magna ex parte proruit ;  defunctaque virgo Vestalis Lælia, in cujus locum Cornelia ex familia Cossorum capta est.

[15.22]  This opinion was hailed with great unanimity, but the Senate’s resolution could not be finally passed, as the consuls refused to allow that it had been on the official agenda.  Then, at the emperor’s suggestion, they decreed that no one was to propose to any council of our allies that thanks ought to be given in the Senate for the proprætors or proconsuls, or participate in a delegation to do so.

During the same consulship {(a.D. 62)} a gymnasium stricken by lightning burned down, and a statue of Nero within it melted into a shapeless mass of bronze.  Also, an earthquake demolished a large part of Pompeji, a populous town in Campania.  And the vestal virgin Lælia died, and Cornelia, of the Cossi family, was chosen in her place.

[15.23]  Memmio Regulo et Verginio Rufo consulibus, natam sibi ex Poppæa filiam Nero ultra mortale gaudium accepit appelavitque Augustam, dato et Poppææ eodem cognomento.  Locus puerperio colonia Antium fuit, ubi ipse generatus erat.  Jam Senatus uterum Poppææ commendaverat dis, votaque publice susceperat, quæ multiplicata exsolutaque.  Et additæ supplicationes templumque Fecunditatis, et certamen ad exemplar Actiacæ religionis decretum, utque Fortunarum effigies aureæ in solio Capitolini Jovis locarentur, ludicrum circense, ut Juliæ genti apud Bovillas, ita Claudiæ Domitiæque apud Antium ederetur.

Quæ fluxa fuere, quartum intra mensem defuncta infante.  Rursusque exortæ adulationes censentium honorem divæ et pulvinar ædemque et sacerdotem.  Atque ipse ut lætitiæ, ita mæroris immodicus egit.

Annotatum est, omni Senatu Antium sub recentem partum effuso, Thraseam prohibitum — immoto animo prænuntiam imminentis cædis contumeliam excepisse.  Secutam dehinc vocem Cæsaris ferunt, qua reconciliatum se Thraseæ apud Senecam jactaverit, ac Senecam Cæsari gratulatum.  Unde gloria egregiis viris et pericula gliscebant.

[15.23]  During the consulship of Memmius Regulus and Verginius Rufus {(a.D. 63)}, Nero welcomed with something more than mortal joy the birth of a daughter by Poppæa, whom he called Augusta, the same title also being conferred on Poppæa.  The birthplace was the colony of Antium, where the emperor himself had been born.  The Senate had earlier commended Poppæa’s pregnancy to the gods and publicly made vows which were multiplied and fulfilled.  To these was added a public thanksgiving;  and a temple was decreed to the Goddess of Fecundity, as well as games and contests on the model of the ceremonies commemorative of Actium, while golden images of the two Fortunes were to be set up on the throne of the Capitoline Jupiter.  Circus games were to be given in honor of the Claudian and Domitian families at Antium like those at Bovillæ in commemoration of the Julii.

Transient distinctions all, as within four months the infant died.  Again came the sycophancies of men voting the honors of deification, a shrine, a temple and a priest.  The emperor, too, was as immoderate in his grief as he had been in his joy.

It was observed that when all the Senate was rushing out to Antium just after the new birth, Thrasea was forbidden to go — and that he had taken the affront, which foreboded his doom, with composure.  They say that this was followed by a remark of the emperor’s in which he boasted to Seneca that he had reconciled with Thrasea, and that Seneca had congratulated him on it.  And from that point on the glory and the peril of these illustrious men grew greater.

[15.24]  Inter quæ veris principio legati Parthorum mandata regis Vologæsis litterasque in eandem formam attulere :  « se priora et totiens jactata super obtinenda Armenia nunc omittere, quoniam dii, quamvis potentium populorum arbitri, possessionem Parthis non sine ignominia Romana tradidissent.  Nuper clausum Tigranen, post Pætum legionesque, quum opprimere posset, incolumes dimisisse.  Satis approbatam vim ;  datum et lenitatis experimentum.  Nec recusaturum Tiridaten accipiendo diademati in Urbem venire, nisi sacerdotii religione attineretur :  iturum ad signa et effigies principis, ubi legionibus coram regnum auspicaretur. »

[15.24]  Meanwhile, in the beginning of spring, Parthian envoys brought a message from king Vologæses, with a letter to the same effect.  “He was dropping,” it was said, “his former and frequent boasts about possessing 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 Pætus and his legions depart in safety when he could have destroyed them.  There had been enough proof of his power;  a demonstration of his clemency had also been given.  Nor would Tiridates refuse to come to the City to receive his diadem, were he not held back by the taboos of his priesthood.  He would, however, go to the standards and the emperor’s image where, in the presence of the legions, he would inaugurate his reign.”

[15.25]  Talibus Vologæsis litteris, quia Pætus diversa tanquam rebus integris scribebat, interrogatus centurio qui cum legatis advenerat, quo in statu Armenia esset, omnes inde Romanos excessisse respondit.  Tum, intellecto barbarorum irrisu qui peterent quod eripuerant, consuluit inter primores civitatis Nero, bellum anceps an pax inhonesta placeret.  Nec dubitatum de bello.  Et Corbulo, militum atque hostium tot per annos gnarus, gerendæ rei præficitur ne cujus alterius inscitia rursum peccaretur;  quia Pæti piguerat.

Igitur irriti remittuntur — cum donis tamen, unde spes fieret non frustrā eadem oraturum Tiridaten, si preces ipse attulisset.

Syriæque exsecutio C. Cestio, copiæ militares Corbuloni permissæ;  et Quinta Decima Legio ducente Mario Celso e Pannonia adjecta est.  Scribitur tetrarchis ac regibus præfectisque et procuratoribus et qui prætorum finitimas provincias regebant, jussis Corbulonis obsequi, in tantum ferme modum aucta potestate, quem populus Romanus Cn. Pompejo bellum piraticum gesturo dederat.  Regressum Pætum, quum graviora metueret, facetiis insectari satis habuit Cæsar, his ferme verbis :  « ignoscere se statim, ne tam promptus in pavorem longiore sollicitudine ægresceret. »

[15.25]  As Pætus’s dispatch contradicted this letter from Vologæses 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 left it.  It was then that the mockery of the barbarians was perceived in petitioning for what they had wrested from us, and Nero consulted with the chief men of the State about 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 there was utter disgust with Pætus.

So the envoys were sent back without having accomplished anything — but nonetheless with presents in order to inspire the hope that it would not be futile for Tiridates to make the same request, if only he presented his petition in person.

The administration of Syria was intrusted to Gajus Cestius, 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 neighboring provinces, to obey Corbulo’s commands, his power being increased about to the level that the Roman people had given Gnæus Pompejus for waging war against the pirates.  When Pætus returned and dreaded something worse, Cæsar thought it enough to reproach him with a jest, to the effect that he was pardoning him immediately lest a man who took fright so readily get sick under prolonged suspense.

[15.26]  At Corbulo, Quarta et Duodecima Legionibus, quæ fortissimo quoque amisso, et ceteris exterritis, parum habiles prœlio videbantur, in Syriam translatis, Sextam inde ac Tertiam Legiones, integrum militem et crebris ac prosperis laboribus exercitum, in Armeniam ducit.  Addiditque Legionem Quintam quæ, per Pontum agens, expers cladis fuerat, simul Quintadecimanos recens adductos et vexilla delectorum ex Illyrico et Ægypto, quodque alarum cohortiumque, et auxilia regum in unum conducta apud Melitenen, qua tramittere Euphraten parabat.

Tum lustratum rite exercitum ad contionem vocat, orditurque magnifica de auspiciis imperatoris, rebusque a se gestis, adversa in inscitiam Pæti declinans, multa auctoritate quæ viro militari pro facundia erat.

[15.26]  In the meantime, after transferring to Syria the Fourth and Twelfth Legions which, from the loss of their bravest men and the panic of the remainder, seemed insufficiently suitable for battle, Corbulo led thence into Armenia the Third and Sixth Legions, intact troops hardened by frequent and successful work.  And he added the Fifth Legion which, having been quartered in Pontus, had had no part in the disaster, along with men of the recently arrived Fifteenth, and detachments of picked veterans from Illyricum and Egypt, and all the allied cavalry wings and infantry battalions, and the tributary princes’ auxiliaries that had been concentrated into a single body at Melitene, where he was preparing to cross the Euphrates.

Then, after the customary ritual purification of his army, he called it together for a meeting and began speaking proudly about the emperor’s auspices and his own achievements, attributing the reverses to Pætus’ incompetence — all with the imposing authority which in a military man replaces eloquence.

[15.27]  Mox iter L. Lucullo quondam penetratum, apertis quæ vetustas obsæpserat, pergit.  Et venientes Tiridatis Vologæsisque de pace legatos haud aspernatus, adjungit eis centuriones cum mandatis non immitibus :  « nec enim adhuc eo ventum, ut certamine extremo opus esset.  Multa Romanis secunda, quædam Parthis evenisse, documento adversus superbiam.  Proinde et Tiridati conducere intactum vastationibus regnum dono accipere, et Vologæsen melius societate Romana quam damnis mutuis genti Parthorum consulturum.  Scire, quantum intus discordiarum, quamque indomitas et præferoces nationes regeret :  contra imperatori suo immotam ubique pacem et unum id bellum esse. »

Simul consilio terrorem adjicere, et megistanas Armenios, qui primi a nobis defecerant, pellit sedibus, castella eorum exscindit, plana edita, validos invalidosque pari metu complet.

[15.27]  Shortly thereafter he followed the trail once blazed by Lucius Lucullus, opening up what time had blocked off.  And he did not rebuff envoys coming to him from Tiridates and Vologæses about peace, but sent back with them some centurions with instructions that were not intolerable.  “Things,” he said, “have not yet gotten to the point of needing the extremity of war.  Many things had turned out successfully for the Romans, some for the Parthians, as a warning against pride.  Accordingly, it is to the benefit of Tiridates to receive a kingdom undamaged by devastation, and Vologæses will better serve the interests of the Parthian people by an alliance with Rome than by mutual losses.  I know how much internal discord there is, and over what untamably fierce tribes he reigns.  My emperor, on the other hand, has undisturbed peace everywhere, and this is his only war.”

At the same time, he backed up his advice with terror and drove the Armenian chieftains, who had been the first to defect from us, from their headquarters, destroyed their strongholds, and spread equal panic throughout the plain and highlands, among the strong and the weak.

[15.28]  Non infensum nec cum hostili odio Corbulonis nomen etiam barbaris habebatur, eoque consilium ejus fidum credebant.  Ergo Vologæses neque atrox in summam, et quibusdam præfecturis indutias petit :  Tiridates locum diemque colloquio poscit.  Tempus propinquum, locus in quo nuper obsessæ cum Pæto legiones erant, barbaris delectus est ob memoriam lætioris ibi rei, Corbuloni non vitatus, ut dissimilitudo fortunæ gloriam augeret.  Neque infamia Pæti angebatur — quod eo maxime patuit quia filio ejus tribuno ducere manipulos atque operire reliquias malæ pugnæ imperavit.

Die pacta Tiberius Alexander, illustris eques Romanus, minister bello datus, et Vinicianum Annius, gener Corbulonis, nondum senatoria ætate et pro legato Quintæ Legioni impositus, in castra Tiridatis venere, honore ejus ac ne metueret insidias tali pignore ;  viceni dehinc equites assumpti.  Et viso Corbulone rex prior equo desiluit ;  nec cunctatus Corbulo, sed pedes uterque dexteras miscuere.

[15.28]  The barbarians considered Corbulo’s name neither as that of a foe nor with hostile hatred, and they therefore thought his advice trustworthy.  Consequently Vologæses was not inflexible with respect to everything, and he even sought a truce for some prefectures of his kingdom.  Tiridates demanded a place and a day for a meeting.  The time was to be soon, the place that in which Pætus and his legions had been lately besieged, the barbarians choosing this in remembrance of their rather successful operation.  Corbulo did not avoid it, so that the contrast in success would enhance his renown.  Nor did the disgrace of Pætus trouble him, as was made clear all the more especially by the fact that he ordered Pætus’ son, a tribune, to lead the maniples and bury the relics of that baleful battle.

On the day appointed, Tiberius Alexander, a distinguished Roman knight, provided as adminstrator for the war, and Vinicianus Annius, Corbulo’s son-in-law who, though not yet of a senator’s age, was placed over the Fifth Legion in the capacity of legate, entered the camp of Tiridates by way of honoring him and to reassure him against treachery by so valuable a pledge.  Then too, twenty cavalrymen apiece were chosen as escorts.  The king, seeing Corbulo, was the first to dismount, and Corbulo did not hesitate but, on foot, both joined their right hands.

[15.29]  Exin Romanus laudat juvenem omissis præcipitibus tuta et salutaria capessentem.  Ille de nobilitate generis multum præfatus, cetera temperanter adjungit :  « iturum quippe Romam laturumque novum Cæsari decus, non adversis Parthorum rebus, supplicem Arsaciden. »  Tum placuit Tiridaten ponere apud effigiem Cæsaris insigne regium, nec nisi manu Neronis resumere ;  et colloquium osculo finitum.

Dein paucis diebus interjectis magna utrimque specie inde eques compositus per turmas et insignibus patriis, hinc agmina legionum stetere, fulgentibus aquilis signisque et simulacris deum in modum templi :  medio, tribunal sedem curulem, et sedes effigiem Neronis sustinebat.  Ad quam progressus Tiridates, cæsis ex more victimis, sublatum capiti diadema imagini subjecit, magnis apud cunctos animorum motibus, quos augebat insita adhuc oculis exercituum Romanorum cædes aut obsidio.  « At nunc versos casus :  iturum Tiridaten ostentui gentibus, ¿ quanto minus quam captivum ? »

[15.29]  Then the Roman commended the young prince for abandoning rash actions and adopting a safe and salutary policy.  After a long preamble about the nobility of his race, Tiridates went on to speak in a tone of moderation.  He would go to Rome, and bring the emperor a novel honor — a suppliant Arsacid, without the Parthians having suffered any reverses.  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 magnificent display on both sides;  on the opposite side, cavalry arranged in squadrons with their tribal ensigns;  on this side stood the columns of our legions with gleaming eagles and standards and images of deities, in the manner 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 were deeply moved, an emotion rendered all the more intense by the vision still lingering before their eyes, of the slaughter or siege of Roman armies.  “But now,” they thought, “our fortunes are reversed;  Tiridates is about to go on display to the world — how little short of being a captive!”

[15.30]  Addidit gloriæ Corbulo comitatem epulasque ;  et rogitante rege causas, quotiens novum aliquid adverterat — ut initia vigiliarum per centurionem nuntiari, convivium bucina dimitti et structam ante augurale aram subdita face accendi —, cuncta in majus attolens admiratione prisci moris affecit.

Postero die spatium oravit quo tantum itineris aditurus fratres ante matremque viseret ;  obsidem interea filiam tradit litterasque supplices ad Neronem.

[15.30]  Corbulo enhanced his glory with courtesy and a banquet.  When the king continually asked for reasons whenever he noticed something new to him — like the centurion announcing the beginnings of the night watches, the dismissal of the banquet guests via the sound of a trumpet, and lighting the altar built in front of the headquarters by torch from underneath —, Corbulo, by exaggerating everything, filled him with admiration of our ancient customs.

The next day Tiridates begged for time to visit his brothers and mother before undertaking such a long journey.  Meanwhile he handed over his daughter as a hostage, and prepared a suppliant letter to Nero.

[15.31]  Et digressus Pacorum apud Medos, Vologæsen Ecbatanis repperit, non incuriosum fratris :  quippe et propriis nuntiis a Corbulone petierat ne quam imaginem servitii Tiridates præferret neu ferrum traderet aut complexu provincias obtinentium arceretur foribusve eorum assisteret, tantusque ei Romæ quantus consulibus honor esset.  Scilicet externæ superbiæ sueto non inerat notitia nostri apud quos vis imperii valet, inania tramittuntur.

[15.31]  He then departed, and found Pacorus in Media, and Vologæses at Ecbatana, who was by no means unconcerned about his brother.  In fact, Vologæses had entreated Corbulo by special messengers that Tiridates not present any appearance of servitude or that he hand over his sword or be prevented from embracing provincial governors or be kept standing at their doors, and that he be shown as much honor at Rome as the consuls were.  Accustomed, obviously, to his foreign arrogance, he had no knowledge of us to whom only absolute power matters;  empty trappings are disregarded.

[15.32]  Eodem anno Cæsar nationes Alpium maritimarum in jus Latii transtulit.  Equitum Romanorum locos sedilibus plebis anteposuit apud circum ;  namque ad eam diem indiscreti inibant, quia lex Roscia nihil nisi de quattuordecim ordinibus sanxit.  Spectacula gladiatorum idem annus habuit pari magnificentia ac priora ;  sed feminarum illustrium senatorumque plures per arenam fœdati sunt.

[15.32]  That same year Cæsar conferred Latin rights on 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 go in indiscriminately, since the Roscian law authorized only the “fourteen rows” {(in the theater, not the circus)}.  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 arena.

[15.33]  C. Læcanio M. Licinio consulibus, acriore in dies cupidine adigebatur Nero promiscas scænas frequentandi.  Nam adhuc per domum aut hortos cecinerat Juvenalibus Ludis, quos ut parum celebres et tantæ voci angustos spernebat.  Non tamen Romæ incipere ausus, Neapolim quasi Græcam urbem delegit ;  inde initium fore ut, transgressus in Achajam insignesque et antiquitus sacras coronas adeptus, majore fama studia civium eliceret.  Ergo contractum oppidanorum vulgus et quos e proximis coloniis et municipiis ejus rei fama civerat, quique Cæsarem per honorem aut varios usus sectantur, etiam militum manipuli, theatrum Neapolitanorum complent.

[15.33]  In the year of the consulship of Gajus Læcanius and Marcus Licinius {(a.D. 64)} Nero was driven by a daily increasing urge to appear on the public stage.  Hitherto he had sung in his palace or the gardens during the Juvenalian Games, which he was now disdaining as too sparsely attended and too confining for so fine a voice.  But not daring to begin at Rome, he selected Naples as more or less Greek city.  The starting point would be from there so that, after passing over to Achaia and winning its distinguished and age-hallowed crowns, he would with all the greater fame win the acclaim of his citizens.  Accordingly, a rabble of the townsfolk was brought together, along with those whom talk of the event had attracted from the neighboring towns and colonies, as well as those who followed Cæsar to pay him honor or for various services — including even maniples of soldiers —, and they filled the theater at Naples.

[15.34]  Illic, plerique ut arbitrabantur, triste, ut ipse, providum potius et secundis numinibus evenit :  nam egresso qui affuerat populo, vacuum et sine ullius noxa theatrum collapsum est.  Ergo per compositos cantus grates dis atque ipsam recentis casus fortunam celebrans, petiturusque maris Hadriæ trajectus, apud Beneventum interim consedit, ubi gladiatorium munus a Vatinio celebre edebatur.  Vatinius inter fœdissima ejus aulæ ostenta fuit, sutrinæ tabernæ alumnus, corpore detorto, facetiis scurrilibus ;  primo in contumelias assumptus, dehinc optimi cujusque criminatione eo usque valuit, ut gratia, pecunia, vi nocendi etiam malos præmineret.

[15.34]  There an incident occurred which most thought unlucky, though to the emperor it seemed due to the providence of auspicious deities.  For after the people who had been attending had gone, the empty building fell down without harm to anyone.  Thereupon Nero in specially written songs thanked the gods, celebrating the very luck of the recent collapse and, on his way to the crossings over the Adriatic Sea, made an interim stop at Beneventum where a heavily attended gladiatorial show was being exhibited by Vatinius.  Vatinius was one of the most repugnant monstrosities of the imperial court, reared in a shoemaker’s shop, with a deformed body and vulgar wit.  Originally brought in as a butt of ridicule, after a time he grew so powerful by accusing all the upper-class men, that in influence, wealth, and ability to injure he outclassed even the worst.

[15.35]  Ejus munus frequentanti Neroni ne inter voluptates quidem a sceleribus cessabatur.  Eisdem quippe illis diebus Torquatus Silanus mori adigitur, quia super Juniæ familiæ claritudinem divum Augustum abavum ferebat.  Jussi accusatores objicere prodigum largitionibus, neque aliam spem quam in rebus novis esse ;  quin ignobiles habere, quos “Ab Epistulis” et “Libellis” et “Rationibus” appellet, nomina summæ curæ et meditamenta.  Tum intimus quisque libertorum vincti abreptique ;  et quum damnatio instaret, bracchiorum venas Torquatus interscidit.  Secutaque Neronis oratio ex more, quamvis sontem et defensioni merito diffisum victurum tamen fuisse, si clementiam judicis exspectasset.

[15.35]  For Nero, while attending the latter’s show, there was no letup in criminality even amid these pleasures.  In fact, during those very same days Torquatus Silanus was forced to die because, over and above the fame of his Junian family, he claimed the divine Augustus as his great-great-grandfather.  Accusers were ordered to charge him with prodigality in lavishing gifts, and with having no hope other than in revolution.  Indeed, they said, he had low-class types whom he titled “For Correspondence” and “For Petitions” and “For Accounts,” designations of supreme office — and rehearsals for it.  His closest freedmen were then put in chains and swept off until, with his doom impending, Torquatus cut open the arteries in his arms.  Nero’s usual speech followed, stating that however guilty and rightly diffident of any defense he may have been, he would nevertheless have lived had he waited for the judge’s clemency.

[15.36]  Nec multo post omissa in præsens Achaja (causæ in incerto fuere) Urbem revisit, provincias Orientis, maxime Ægyptum, secretis imaginationibus agitans.  Dehinc, edicto testificatus non longam sui absentiam et cuncta in Re Publica perinde immota ac prospera fore, super eā profectione adiit Capitolium.  Illic veneratus deos, quum Vestæ quoque templum inisset, repente cunctos per artus tremens, seu numine exterrente, seu facinorum recordatione nunquam timore vacuus, deseruit inceptum, cunctas sibi curas amore patriæ leviores dictitans.  « Vidisse mæstos civium vultus, audire secretas querimonias quod tantum itineris aditurus esset, cujus ne modicos quidem egressus tolerarent, sueti adversum fortuita aspectu principis refoveri.  Ergo — ut in privatis necessitudinibus proxima pignora prævalerent, ita populum Romanum apud se vim plurimam habere — parendumque retinenti. »

Hæc atque talia plebi volentia fuere, voluptatum cupidine et, quæ præcipua cura est, rei frumentariæ angustias, si abesset, metuenti.  Senatus et primores in incerto erant procul an coram atrocior haberetur ;  dehinc — quæ natura magnis timoribus — deterius credebant quod evenerat.

[15.36]  Not long after, having given up Achaia for the time being (his reasons were unclear), he returned to the City, in secret imaginings focussed on the provinces of the East, especially Egypt.  Then, after declaring in a public proclamation that his absence would not be long and that everything in the State would remain just as undisturbed as it was prosperous, he went to the Capitol about that trip.  Having worshipped the gods there, after also entering the temple of Vesta he suddenly trembled in all his limbs, whether seized with terror by the divine will or because he was never free from fear due to the memory of his crimes, he abandoned his plans, repeatedly saying that all of his cares were less important than his love of the fatherland.  “He had seen the sad looks of the citizens, heard their silent protests that he was about to embark on such a long journey — he, whose even brief excursions they could not bear, accustomed as they were to being reassured against the blows of fate by the sight of the emperor.  Hence, just as in private relationships the closest ties were the most important, so also the people of Rome had the strongest claim on him and must be obeyed when they wanted to retain him.”

These and similar statements were welcome to the people, who loved entertainment and feared — their chief anxiety — a reduced grain supply if he were to be absent.  The Senate and leading citizens were in doubt as to whether to regard him as more terrible when away or present.  Subsequently — such is the nature of great fear — they thought that what actually happened was worse.

[15.37]  Ipse, quo fidem acquireret nihil usquam perinde lætum sibi, publicis locis struere convivia totaque Urbe quasi domo uti.  Et celeberrimæ luxu famaque epulæ fuere, quas a Tigellino paratas ut exemplum referam, ne sæpius eadem prodigentia narranda sit.  Igitur in stagno Agrippæ fabricatus est ratem, cui superpositum convivium navium aliarum tractu moveretur.  Naves auro et ebore distinctæ, remigesque exoleti per ætates et scientiam libidinum componebantur.  Volucres et feras diversis e terris et animalia maris Oceano abusque petiverat.  Crepidinibus stagni lupanaria astabant, illustribus feminis completa, et contra scorta visebantur nudis corporibus.  Jam gestus motusque obsceni ;  et postquam tenebræ incedebant, quantum juxta nemoris et circumjecta tecta consonare cantu et luminibus clarescere.  Ipse per licita atque illicita fœdatus nihil flagitii reliquerat, quo corruptior ageret, nisi paucos post dies uni ex illo contaminatorum grege (nomen Pythagoræ fuit) in modum sollemnium conjugiorum denupsisset.  Inditum imperatori flammeum, admissi auspices ;  dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales, cuncta denique spectata quæ etiam in femina nox operit.

[15.37]  Nero, to gain the reputation that nowhere else was as enjoyable for him, threw banquets in public places and used the whole City more or less as his own house.  And the party most celebrated for its prodigality and notoriety was one thrown by Tigellinus, which I will report as an illustration so that I may not have to narrate the same extravagance again and again.  On Agrippa’s lake he constructed a raft on which he placed the banquet and which was moved along towed by other vessels.  The vessels were ornamented with gold and ivory;  the oarsmen were male prostitutes arranged according to age and expertise in lust.  He had imported birds and beasts from remote countries and sea creatures all the way from the ocean.  On the docks of the lake stood brothels crowded with highborn women, and on the opposite bank whores were to be seen with naked bodies.  Already there were obscene gestures and movements.  And after darkness began to approach, all the adjacent grove and surrounding buildings resounded with song and began to shine brilliantly with lights.  Nero, defiled by acts both licit and illicit, had not left out a single abomination in which he could act with greater depravity, until a few days afterwards he took one of that herd of perverts (his name was Pythagoras) in the fashion of a solemn espousal to be his husband:  a bridal veil was placed over the emperor, the augurs were admitted, there was a dowry, a marriage-bed and wedding torches.  Everything, in short, was put on display that night shrouds even when the bride is female.

[15.38]  Sequitur clades, forte an dolo principis incertum (nam utrumque auctores prodidere), sed omnibus quæ huic Urbi per violentiam ignium acciderunt gravior atque atrocior.  Initium in ea parte circi ortum, quæ Palatino Cælioque montibus contigua est, ubi per tabernas, quibus id mercimonium inerat, quo flamma alitur, simul cœptus ignis et statim validus ac vento citus longitudinem circi corripuit.  Neque enim domus munimentis sæptæ vel templa muris cincta aut quid aliud moræ interjacebat.  Impetu pervagatum incendium plana primum, deinde in edita assurgens et rursus inferiora populando, anteiit remedia velocitate mali et obnoxia Urbe artis itineribus hucque et illuc flexis atque enormibus vicis, qualis vetus Roma fuit.

Ad hoc lamenta paventium feminarum, fessa ætate aut rudis pueritiæ ætas, quique sibi quique aliis consulebat, dum trahunt invalidos aut opperiuntur, pars mora, pars festinans, cuncta impediebant.  Et sæpe, dum in tergum respectant, lateribus aut fronte circumveniebantur, vel si in proxima evaserant, illis quoque igni correptis, etiam quæ longinqua crediderant in eodem casu reperiebant.  Postremo, quid vitarent, quid peterent ambigui, complere vias, sterni per agros ;  quidam, amissis omnibus fortunis — diurni quoque victus —, alii caritate suorum quos eripere nequiverant, quamvis patente effugio, interiere.

Nec quisquam defendere audebat, crebris multorum minis restinguere prohibentium, et quia alii palam faces jaciebant atque esse sibi auctorem vociferabantur, sive ut raptus licentius exercerent seu jussu.

[15.38]  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 Cælian hills, where, amid the shops containing inflammable wares, the conflagration both broke out and instantly became so fierce and whipped up by the wind that it engulfed the entire length of the circus.  For here, there were no houses fenced in by firewalls or wall-surrounded temples or any other obstacle to interpose delay.  In its virulence the blaze ran first through the level portions of the city, then, rising up over the hills and down again to devastate the lower portions, it outstripped all preventive measures with the rapidity of its lethality, and with the City vulnerable due to its narrow lanes winding hither and thither and its irregular housing blocks, such as old Rome was.

Added to this, the wailings of terror-stricken women, the fatigue of old age, the helpless inexperience of childhood, in addition to those looking after themselves and those looking after others as they dragged the infirm or waited for them, some delaying, others hurrying — impeded everything.  And often, while looking back, they would be surrounded on the sides or in front;  or, if they had escaped into neighboring areas, with these too being engulfed by the fire, they would find even areas they had thought distant to be in the same situation.  Finally, uncertain as to what to avoid or where to go, they crowded the streets or flung themselves down in the fields ;  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, even though escape was open to them.

And no one dared to fight the fire because of the numerous threats of many who forbade quenching it, and because others were openly hurling firebrands and yelling that they were authorized — either so that they could engage in looting more freely, or in fact under orders.

[15.39]  Eo in tempore Nero Antii agens non ante in Urbem regressus est, quam domui ejus, qua Palatium et Mæcenatis hortos continuaverat, ignis propinquaret.  Neque tamen sisti potuit quin et Palatium et domus et cuncta circum haurirentur.  Sed solacium populo exturbato ac profugo campum Martis ac monumenta Agrippæ, hortos quin etiam suos patefacit et subitaria ædificia exstruxit, quæ multitudinem inopem acciperent ;  subvectaque utensilia ab Ostia et propinquis municipiis, pretiumque frumenti minutum usque ad ternos nummos {(H$3)}.  Quæ quanquam popularia in irritum cadebant, quia pervaserat rumor ipso tempore flagrantis Urbis inisse eum domesticam scænam et cecinisse Trojanum excidium, præsentia mala vetustis cladibus assimulantem.

[15.39]  At that time Nero was at Antium, and did not return to the City until the fire approached his palace, which he had built to connect the Palatium with the gardens of Mæcenas.  But it could not be stopped from devouring the Palatium, the palace and everything around it.  However, to relieve the evicted and fugitive people, he threw open to them the Campus Martius and the public buildings of Agrippa, in fact even his own gardens, and erected makeshift structures to receive the destitute multitude.  Provisions were brought up from Ostia and the neighboring towns, and the price of grain was reduced to three sesterces {(H$3)} a peck.  These acts, though popular, proved unavailing, since a rumor had spread everywhere that, at the very time the city was in flames, the emperor had mounted his private stage and sung of the destruction of Troy {(i.e., recited his own poem Trojæ halosis)}, comparing the present tragedies with the calamities of antiquity.

[15.40]  Sexto demum die apud imas Esquilias finis incendio factus, prorutis per immensum ædificiis ut continuæ violentiæ campus et velut vacuum cælum occurreret.  Necdum positus metus aut redierat plebi spes:  rursum grassatus ignis, patulis magis Urbis locis ;  eoque strages hominum minor :  delubra deum et porticus amœnitati dicatæ latius procidere.  Plusque infamiæ id incendium habuit, quia prædiis Tigellini Æmilianis proruperat, videbaturque Nero condendæ Urbis novæ et cognomento suo appellandæ gloriam quærere.

Quippe in regiones quattuordecim Romam dividitur, quarum quattuor integræ manebant, tres solo tenus dejectæ, septem reliquis pauca tectorum vestigia supererant, lacera et semiusta.

[15.40]  At last, on the sixth day, an end was put to the conflagration at the bottom of the Esquiliæ {(between the Esquilinus and Viminalis hills)} by demolishing buildings over a widespread area so that a field and, so to speak, an empty sky would block the unremitting violence.  But fear had not yet been subdued nor had hope returned to the people ;  again the fire spread, more in the spacious districts of the city.  Consequently there was less loss of life:  it was the temples of the gods and the arcades built as amenities which suffered more widespread ruin.  And this particular conflagration generated yet more unpopularity because it had spread out from the Æmilian estates of Tigellinus, and it seemed that Nero was aiming at the glory of founding a new City and calling it by his own name {(“Neropolis”)}.

As it happens, Rome is divided into fourteen districts, four of which remained uninjured, three were levelled to the ground, while a few structural remains survived of the other seven, mangled and half-burnt.

[15.41]  Domuum et insularum et templorum quæ amissa sunt, numerum inire haud promptum fuerit ;  sed vetustissimă religione — quod Servius Tullius Lunæ, et Magna Ara fanumque quæ Præsenti Herculi Arcas Evander sacraverat, ædesque Statoris Jovis vota Romulo, Numæque regia et delubrum Vestæ cum penatibus populi Romani — exusta ;  jam opes tot victoriis quæsitæ et Græcarum artium decŏra, exim monumenta ingeniorum antiqua et incorrupta ut, quamvis in tanta resurgentis Urbis pulchritudine, multa seniores meminerint quæ reparari nequibant.

Fuere qui annotarent XIIII Kalendas Sextiles principium incendii hujus ortum, quo et Senones captam Urbem inflammaverint.  Alii eo usque cura progressi sunt, ut totidem annos, mensesque et dies inter utraque incendia numerent.

[15.41]  It would not be easy to enter into a computation of the private houses, tenement blocks, and temples which were lost.  But those oldest in religious veneration — as what Servius Tullius dedicated to Luna, the Great Altar and shrine consecrated by the Arcadian Evander to the Personally Appearing Hercules, the temple of Jupiter the Stayer, which was vowed by Romulus, Numa’s 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 authenic historical monuments of men of genius, and, notwithstanding the striking splendor 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 {(in 390 B.C.)} the Senones captured and fired Rome.  Others have gone so far in their interest as to calculate that between these two conflagrations there were equal numbers of years, months, and days {(i.e., 390 B.C. + A.D. 64 = 454 years = 418 years + 418 months [34.83 years] + 418 days [1.14 year], in the Julian calendar)}.

[15.42]  Ceterum, Nero usus est patriæ ruinis exstruxitque domum in qua haud proinde gemmæ et aurum miraculo essent (solita pridem, et luxu vulgata), quam arva et stagna et in modum solitudinum hinc silvæ, inde aperta spatia et prospectus, magistris et machinatoribus Severo et Celere quibus ingenium et audacia erat, etiam quæ natura denegavisset, per artem temptare et viribus principis illudere.  Namque ab lacu Averno navigabilem fossam usque ad ostia Tiberina depressuros promiserant squalenti litore aut per montes adversos.  Neque enim aliud umidum gignendis aquis occurrit quam Pomptinæ paludes :  cetera abrupta aut arentia ac, si perrumpi possent, intolerandus labor nec satis causæ.  Nero tamen, ut erat incredibilium cupitor, effodere proxima Averno juga conisus est, manentque vestigia irritæ spei.

[15.42]  Nero meanwhile availed himself of his fatherland’s desolation and erected a mansion in which the marvels were not so much jewels and gold (long familiar objects, made commonplace by our extravagance), as fields and pools and, in resemblance of wilderness, with woods here and open spaces and vistas there.  The directors and engineers of the work were Severus and Celer, who had the genius and audacity to attempt by technology even what nature had refused, and to sport with the emperor’s resources.  For they had promised to sink a navigable canal from Lake Avernus all the way to the mouths of the Tiber along the barren coastline or directly through the hills, encountering no aquifer for a water supply other than the Pomptine marshes.  The rest of the country is steep or arid.  Even if it could be cut through, the labor would be intolerable and the justification insufficient.  Nero, however, with his love of the incredible, did his utmost to dig through the ridges nearest to Avernus, and there still remain the traces of his thwarted hope.

[15.43]  Ceterum Urbis quæ domui supererant non, ut post Gallica incendia, nulla distinctione nec passim erecta, sed dimensis vicorum ordinibus et latis viarum spatiis cohibitaque ædificiorum altitudine ac patefactis areis additisque porticibus quæ frontem insularum protegerent.  Eas porticus Nero sua pecunia exstructurum purgatasque areas dominis traditurum pollicitus est.  Addidit præmia pro cujusque ordine et rei familiaris copiis, finivitque tempus intra quod effectis domibus aut insulis apiscerentur.

Ruderi accipiendo Ostienses paludes destinabat, utique naves quæ frumentum Tiberi subvectavissent onustæ rudere decurrerent, ædificiaque ipsa certā sui parte sine trabibus saxo Gabino Albanove solidarentur, quod is lapis ignibus impervius est ;  jam aqua privatorum licentia intercepta — quo largior et pluribus locis in publicum flueret — custodes ;  et subsidia reprimendis ignibus in propatulo quisque haberet ;  nec communione parietum, sed propriis quæque muris ambirentur.  Ea ex utilitate accepta decorem quoque novæ Urbi attulere.  Erant tamen qui crederent veterem illam formam salubritati magis conduxisse, quoniam angustiæ itinerum et altitudo tectorum non perinde solis vapore perrumperentur :  at nunc patulam latitudinem et nulla umbra defensam graviore æstu ardescere.

[15.43]  Meanwhile, the part of Rome remaining after his palace-building was not developed, as after its burning by the Gauls {(in 390 B.C.)}, indiscriminately and built on just anywhere, but with properly surveyed tenement rows, with broad thoroughfares, with a restriction on the height of houses, with open areas and the further addition of colonnades to protect the façades of the tenement blocks.  Nero promised to erect these colonnades at his own expense and to hand over the areas, cleaned up, to the ground landlords.  He also offered rewards proportionate to each person’s class and family resources and prescribed a time limit within which they could win them upon completing the houses or tenement buildings.

He fixed on the marshes of Ostia for the reception of the rubble, and arranged that the ships which had brought grain up the Tiber should sail back down loaded with this rubble.  The buildings themselves, to a specified height, were to be built solid, without wooden beams, of stone from Gabii or Alba because that stone is fireproof.  And there were to be guards so that the water illicitly intercepted by individuals might flow in greater abundance and in more places for the public use;  and in his front yard everyone was to keep fire-extinguishing materials.  Every building, too, was to be enclosed by its own proper wall, not by one shared with others.  These changes, welcome for their utility, also added beauty to the renovated City.  Some, however, thought that its old arrangement had been more conducive to health, since the narrowness of the lanes and the height of the buildings were not penetrated as much by the blaze of the sun;  but now the open expanses, unshielded by any shade, sweltered under a more intolerable heat.

[15.44]  Et hæc quidem humanis consiliis providebantur.  Mox petita a dis piacula aditique Sibyllæ libri, ex quibus supplicatum Volcano et Cereri Proserpinæque, ac propitiata Juno per matronas — primum in Capitolio, deinde apud proximum mare, unde hausta aqua templum et simulacrum deæ perspersum est ;  et sellisternia ac pervigilia celebravere feminæ quibus mariti erant.

Sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum placamentis decedebat infamia quin jussum incendium crederetur.  Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quæsitissimis pœnis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat.  Auctor nominis ejus Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat ;  repressaque in præsens exitiablilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Judæam, originem ejus mali, sed per Urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.

Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt.  Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent aut crucibus affixi ac flammandi, ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur.  Hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat, et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigæ permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens.  Unde quanquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tanquam non utilitate publica, sed in sævitiam unius absumerentur.

[15.44]  These were the measures taken through human prudence.  The next thing was to find out how to propitiate the gods, and the Sibylline books were consulted, following which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina.  Juno, too, was entreated by the married women — first in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast whence water was drawn to sprinkle the temple and statue of the goddess.  And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by women whose husbands were living.

But neither through human efforts nor through the lavish gifts of the emperor or the propitiations of the gods was the subversive idea quelled that the conflagration had been ordered.  Consequently, to get rid of the rumor, Nero framed as guilty, and inflicted the most refined tortures on, a class hated for their abominations — called Chrestians by the masses.  The originator of this name, Christus, had been executed during the reign of Tiberius by the procurator, Pontius Pilatus;  this lethal superstition, temporarily suppressed, broke out again not only in Judæa, the birthplace of the malignancy, but even in the City where everything hideous and shameful from wherever converges and becomes popular.

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of those who confessed;  then, with their revelations, an immense multitude was convicted — not so much of the crime of arson as of hatred against mankind.  Mockeries of every sort were heaped on them as they died.  Covered with the skins of beasts, they died by being torn to pieces by dogs or, affixed to crosses and made flammable, as daylight died they were burned for use as nocturnal illumination.  Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle and put on a circus show, mixing with the people in charioteer costume or standing in his chariot.  Hence, even for those who were guilty and merited the harshest 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 immolated.

[15.45]  Interea conferendis pecuniis pervastata Italia, provinciæ eversæ sociique populi et quæ civitatium liberæ vocantur.  Inque eam prædam etiam dii cessere, spoliatis in Urbe templis egestoque auro, quod triumphis, quod votis omnis populi Romani ætas prospere aut in metu sacraverat.  Enimvero per Asiam atque Achajam non dona tantum, sed simulacra numinum abripiebantur, missis in eas provincias Acrato et Secundo Carrinate.  Ille libertus cuicumque flagitio promptus, hic Græca doctrina ore tenus exercitus, animum bonis artibus non imbuerat.  Ferebatur Seneca, quo invidiam sacrilegii a semet averteret, longinqui ruris secessum oravisse et, postquam non concedebatur, ficta valetudine, quasi æger nervis, cubiculum non egressus.  Tradidere quidam venenum ei per libertum ipsius, cui nomen Cleonicus, paratum jussu Neronis vitatumque a Seneca proditione liberti seu propria formidine, dum persimplici victu et agrestibus pomis ac, si sitis admoneret, profluente aqua vitam tolerat.

[15.45]  Meanwhile Italy was thoroughly impoverished by contributions of money, and the provinces as well as the allied nations and the so-called free states were ruined.  Even the gods fell victim to the plunder, with the temples in the City being despoiled and the gold carried off which, for a triumph or a vow, the Roman people had through the ages consecrated in their prosperity or their fear.  Throughout Asia and Achaia not only votive gifts, but the images of deities were seized, Acratus and Secundus Carrinas having been sent into those provinces.  The first was a freedman ready for whatever dirty trick;  the latter was trained in Greek learning as far as speech went but had not imbued his mind with its virtues.  According to reports, Seneca, to avert from himself the obloquy of sacrilege, requested a retreat in the remote countryside and, when it was refused, feigning ill health as though he had a muscular problem, would not leave his bedroom.  Some writers said that at Nero’s command poison was prepared for him by his own freedman whose name was Cleonicus.  This was avoided by Seneca either through the freedman’s disclosure or his own apprehension, since he used to sustain his life on a very frugal diet of wild fruits and water from a running stream when thirst prompted.

[15.46]  Per idem tempus gladiatores apud oppidum Præneste temptata eruptione præsidio militis qui custos adesset coërciti sunt, jam Spartacum et vetera mala rumoribus ferente populo, ut est novarum rerum cupiens pavidusque.

Nec multo post clades rei navalis accipitur, non bello (quippe haud alias tam immota pax), sed certum ad diem in Campaniam redire classem Nero jusserat, non exceptis maris casibus.  Ergo gubernatores, quamvis sæviente pelago, a Formiis movere ;  et gravi Africo, dum promunturium Miseni superare contendunt, Cumanis litoribus impacti triremium plerasque et minora navigia passim amiserunt.

[15.46]  During the same time some gladiators in the town of Præneste, attempting to break loose, were suppressed by the military guard stationed there, and the people, ever desirous and yet fearful of revolution, began talking of Spartacus and bygone troubles.

Soon afterwards, naval losses were sustained, 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, making no allowance for the dangers of the sea.  Consequently the pilots, in spite of the raging ocean, moved out from Formiæ;  and while they were struggling to round the promontory of Misenum, they were dashed by a violent southwest wind on the shores of Cumæ and lost a great many triremes and some smaller vessels everywhere.

[15.47]  Fine anni vulgantur prodigia, imminentium malorum nuntia :  vis fulgurum non alias crebrior, et sidus cometes, sanguine illustri semper Neroni expiatum ;  bicipites hominum aliorumve animalium partus abjecti in publicum, aut in sacrificiis quibus gravidas hostias immolare mos est, reperti.  Et in agro Placentino viam propter natus vitulus cui caput in crure esset ;  secutaque haruspicum interpretatio, parari rerum humanarum aliud caput, sed non fore validum neque occultum, quin in utero repressum et iter juxta editum sit.

[15.47]  At the close of the year {(a.D. 64)} people talked much about prodigies, presages of impending troubles.  Never were lightning flashes more frequent, and a comet too appeared, always atoned for by Nero with noble blood.  Double-headed human and animal fetuses were discarded in public or discovered in sacrifices in which it is the practice to immolate pregnant victims.  And in the district of Placentia, alongside the road, a calf was born with its head attached to its leg.  Then followed an explanation of the diviners that another head was being readied for the world, which however would be neither powerful nor hidden, as it had been suppressed in the womb and delivered by the roadside.

[15.48]  Ineunt deinde consulatum Silius Nerva et Atticus Vestinus, cœpta simul et aucta conjuratione, in quam certatim nomina dederant senatores, eques, miles, feminæ etiam, quum odio Neronis, tum favore in C. Pisonem.  Is Calpurnio genere ortus, ac multas insignesque familias paterna nobilitate complexus, claro apud vulgum rumore erat per virtutem aut species virtutibus similes.  Namque facundiam tuendis civibus exercebat, largitionem adversum amicos, et ignotis quoque comi sermone et congressu ;  aderant etiam fortuita, corpus procerum, decora facies ;  sed procul gravitas morum aut voluptatum parsimonia :  levitati ac magnificentiæ et aliquando luxu indulgebat.  Idque pluribus probabatur, qui in tanta vitiorum dulcedine summum imperium non restrictum nec præseverum volunt.

[15.48]  Silius Nerva and Atticus Vestinus then entered on the consulship {(a.D. 65)}, when a conspiracy began and simultaneously expanded for which senators, knights, soldiers, even women, had competed to sign up, both out of hatred toward Nero and through a liking for Gajus Piso.  A descendant of the Calpurnian clan, and embracing many illustrious families through his father’s noble rank, Piso had a splendid reputation with the masses for his virtues, or qualities that looked like virtues.  For he displayed eloquence in defending fellow-citizens and generosity towards friends, while even with strangers he was affable in conversation and interaction.  He also had the fortuitous advantages of tall stature and a handsome face.  But gravity of character and restraint in pleasures were quite alien to him.  He indulged in levity, in magnificent display and occasionally in dissipation.  This suited the taste of the majority who, amidst the sweetness of vice, do not wish for austerity or excessive severity on the throne.

[15.49]  Initium conjurationi non a cupidine ipsius fuit ;  nec tamen facile memoraverim, qui primus auctor cujus instinctu concitum sit quod tam multi sumpserunt.  Promptissimos Subrium Flavum tribunum Prætoriæ cohortis et Sulpicium Asprum centurionem exstitisse constantia exitus docuit.  Et Lucanus Annæus Plautiusque Lateranus, consul designatus, vivida odia intulere.  Lucanum propriæ causæ accendebant, quod famam carminum ejus premebat Nero, prohibueratque ostentare, vanus assimulatione :  Lateranum consulem designatum nulla injuria, sed amor Rei Publicæ sociavit.  At Flavius Scævinus et Afranius Quintianus, uterque senatorii ordinis, contra famam sui principium tanti facinoris capessivere :  nam Scævino dissoluta luxu mens et proinde vita somno languida ;  Quintianus, mollitia corporis infamis et a Nerone probroso carmine diffamatus, contumeliam ultum ibat.

[15.49]  The conspiracy did not origininate in Piso’s personal ambition.  But I could not easily say who the initial author was whose prompting incited so many to take it up.  That the readiest were Subrius Flavus, tribune of a Prætorian cohort, and Sulpicius Asper, a centurion, was proved by their resolution in death.  Lucanus Annæus, too, and Plautius Lateranus, introduced mortal hatred into it.  Lucanus was fired by personal motives, for Nero was trying to suppress the fame of his poems and in self-deluding rivalry had forbidden him to publish them.  As for Lateranus, the consul-elect, it was no injustice but patriotism which linked him with the others.  On the other hand, two men of senatorial rank, Flavius Scævinus and Afranius Quintianus, contrary to their reputation, took the lead in this daring crime.  Scævinus had a mind enfeebled by debauchery, and his life was accordingly one of drowsy languor.  Quintianus, infamous for his pederasty, had been satirised by Nero in an offensive poem and was bent on avenging the insult.

[15.50]  Ergo dum scelera principis, et finem adesse imperio, deligendumque qui fessis rebus succurreret, inter se aut inter amicos jaciunt, aggregavere Claudium Senecionem, Cervarium Proculum, Vulcacium Araricum, Julium Augurinum, Munatium Gratum, Antonium Natalem, Marcium Festum, equites Romanos.  (Ex quibus Senecio, e præcipua familiaritate Neronis, speciem amicitiæ etiam tum retinens, eo pluribus periculis conflictabatur ;  Natalis particeps ad omne secretum Pisoni erat ;  ceteris spes ex novis rebus petebatur.)  Ascitæ sunt super Subrium et Sulpicium, de quibus rettuli, militares manus Gavius Silvanus et Statius Proxumus tribuni cohortium Prætoriarum, Maximus Scaurus et Venetus Paulus centuriones.  Sed summum robur in Fænio Rufo præfecto videbatur quem, vita famaque laudatum, per sævitiam impudicitiamque Tigellinus in animo principis anteibat, fatigabatque criminationibus ac sæpe in metum adduxerat quasi adulterum Agrippinæ et desiderio ejus ultioni intentum.

Igitur ubi conjuratis præfectum quoque Prætorii in partes descendisse crebro ipsius sermone facta fides, promptius jam de tempore ac loco cædis agitabant.  Et cepisse impetum Subrius Flavus ferebatur in scæna canentem Neronem aggrediendi, aut quum ardente domo per noctem huc illuc cursaret incustoditus.  Hic occasio solitudinis, ibi ipsa frequentia tanti decoris testis pulcherrima animum exstimulaverunt, nisi impunitatis cupido retinuisset, magnis semper conatibus adversa.

[15.50]  So, while they bandied about among themselves or among their friends the emperor’s crimes, the approaching end of empire, and the importance of choosing some one to rescue the exhausted State, they attracted 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 was a partner in Piso’s every secret.  The rest put their hopes in revolution.)  Besides Subrius and Sulpicius, whom I have already mentioned, they also called in military men — Gavius Silvanus and Statius Proximus, tribunes of Prætorian cohorts, and two centurions, Maximus Scaurus and Venetus Paulus.  But their mainstay, it was thought, was Fænius 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 accusations and had often inspired him with fear by alleging that he had been Agrippina’s adulterer and out of longing for her was intent on vengeance.

And so, when the commander’s own frequently expressed opinions made it clear to the conspirators that he had come over to their side, they began, more seriously now, to work on the time and place of the assassination.  It was said that Subrius Flavus had gotten the sudden idea of attacking Nero while singing on stage, or when his house was in flames and he was running back and forth in the darkness unguarded.  In the latter case the opportunity of privacy, and in the former the crowd itself witnessing so glorious a deed, had inspired his soul, except that the desire for his own safety held him back — that foe of all great enterprises.

[15.51]  Interim cunctantibus prolatantibusque spem ac metum Epicharis quædam — incertum quonam modo sciscitata (neque illi ante ulla rerum honestarum cura fuerat) — accendere et arguere conjuratos ;  ac postremum, lentitudinis eorum pertæsa et in Campania agens, primores classiariorum Misenensium labefacere et conscientia illigare conisa est tali initio.

Erat navarchus in ea classe, Volusius Proculus, occidendæ matris Neroni inter ministros, non ex magnitudine sceleris provectus, ut rebatur.  Is mulieri olim cognitus, seu recens orta amicitia, dum merita erga Neronem sua et quam in irritum cecidissent aperit, adjicitque questus et destinationem vindictæ, si facultas oreretur, spem dedit posse impelli et plures conciliare :  nec leve auxilium in classe, crebras occasiones, quia Nero multo apud Puteolos et Misenum maris usu lætabatur.

Ergo Epicharis plura ;  et omnia scelera principis orditur, « neque Senatui quicquam manere.  Sed provisum, quonam modo pœnas eversæ Rei Publicæ daret :  accingeretur modo navare operam et militum acerrimos ducere in partes, ac digna pretia exspectaret. »

Nomina tamen conjuratorum reticuit.  Unde Proculi indicium irritum fuit, quamvis ea quæ audierat ad Neronem detulisset.  Accita quippe Epicharis et cum indice composita nullis testibus innisum facile confutavit.  Sed ipsa in custodia retenta est, suspectante Nerone haud falsa esse etiam quæ vera non probabantur.

[15.51]  Meanwhile, as they vacillated and prolonged their hope and fear, a certain Epicharis — it being uncertain how she gained the information (nor had she ever before concerned herself with anything honorable) — began to incite and upbraid the conspirators.  But finally, fed up with their long delay, she endeavored, while spending time in Campania, to destabilize the officers of the fleet at Misenum and involve them as co-conspirators, beginning as follows.

There was a ship commander in the fleet, Volusius Proculus, one of the agents in the killing of Nero’s mother, who had not, as he thought, been promoted in proportion to the magnitude of the crime.  Whether he had long been known to the woman, or their friendship had recently come about, while revealing to her his services to Nero and how they had availed him nothing, he added complaints and his determination to take revenge should the chance arise, thereby inspiring in her the hope that he could be pushed further, and could win over others.  The assistance of the fleet would not be trival, and there would be quite a few opportunities, since Nero greatly enjoyed seafaring off Puteoli and Misenum.

Epicharis went further, starting in with all the emperor’s crimes.  “Even for the Senate,” she affirmed, “nothing was left;  but measures had been taken to ensure that he would pay for his destruction of the State.  Only let Proculus gird himself to take vigorous action and enlist his bravest soldiers in the cause, and then look for a worthy reward.”

The conspirators’ names, however, she withheld.  Consequently Proculus’ double-cross of her was futile, even though he had betrayed what he had heard to Nero.  For when Epicharis had been summoned and confronted with the informer, she easily refuted him, unsupported as he was by any witnesses.  But she was herself detained in custody, for Nero suspected that even what was not proved to be true, was not wholly false.

[15.52]  Conjuratis tamen, metu proditionis permotis, placitum maturare cædem apud Bajas in villa Pisonis, cujus amœnitate captus Cæsar crebro ventitabat balneasque et epulas inibat, omissis excubiis et fortunæ suæ mole.  Sed abnuit Piso, invidiam prætendens, si sacra mensæ diique hospitales cæde qualiscunque principis cruentarentur :  « melius apud Urbem in illa invisa et spoliis civium exstructa domo vel in publico patraturos quod pro Re Publica suscepissent. »

Hæc in commune, ceterum timore occulto, ne L. Silanus eximia nobilitate disciplinaque C. Cassii, apud quem educatus erat, ad omnem claritudinem sublatus imperium invaderet — prompte daturis qui a conjuratione integri essent quique miserarentur Neronem tanquam per scelus interfectum.  Plerique Vestini quoque consulis acre ingenium vitavisse Pisonem crediderunt, ne ad libertatem oreretur vel, delecto imperatore alio, sui muneris Rem Publicam faceret.  Etenim expers conjurationis erat, quamvis super eo crimine Nero vetus adversum insontem odium expleverit.

[15.52]  The conspirators, however, alarmed by the fear of disclosure, resolved to accelerate the assassination at Baiæ, in Piso’s villa, whither the emperor, charmed by its loveliness, often went and where, unguarded and without the encumbrances of his position, he would enjoy the bath and the banquet.  But Piso refused, alleging the antipathy aroused if the rituals of table and the gods of hospitality were bloodied by the assassination of an emperor of any type.  “Better,” he said, “in the capital, in that detested mansion built through the pillage of the citizens, or in public, to accomplish what they had undertaken on behalf of the State.”

This he said to others, while his secret fear was that Lucius Silanus, who had been raised to the summit of fame on the strength of his distinguished rank and his education under Gajus Cassius in whose house he had been reared, might usurp power — which would be promptly offered him by those who had no part in the conspiracy as well as by those who would pity Nero as having been murdered criminally.  A great many thought that Piso was also taking precautions against the energetic personality of Vestinus, the consul, who might, he feared, rise up in the cause of freedom or, by choosing another emperor, make the State his to give.  Vestinus, indeed, had no share in the conspiracy, though it was on that charge that Nero gave vent to an old resentment against the innocent man.

[15.53]  Tandem statuere circensium ludorum die qui Cereri celebratur exsequi destinata, quia Cæsar rarus egressu domoque aut hortis clausus ad ludicra circi ventitabat, promptioresque aditus erant lætitiā spectaculi.  Ordinem insidiis composuerant, ut Lateranus, quasi subsidium rei familiari oraret, deprecabundus et genibus principis accidens prosterneret incautum premeretque, animi validus et corpore ingens ;  tum jacentem et impeditum tribuni et centuriones et ceterorum ut quisque audentiæ habuisset, accurrerent, trucidarentque, primas sibi partes expostulante Scævino, qui pugionem templo Salutis in Etruria — sive, ut alii tradidere, Fortunæ Frentano in oppido — detraxerat gestabatque velut magno operi sacrum.  Interim Piso apud ædem Cereris opperiretur, unde eum præfectus Fænius et ceteri accitum ferrent in castra, comitante Antonia, Claudii Cæsaris filia, ad eliciendum vulgi favorem, quod C. Plinius memorat.

Nobis quoquo modo traditum non occultare in animo fuit, quamvis absurdum videretur, aut inanem ad spem Antoniam nomen et periculum commodavisse, aut Pisonem, notum amore uxoris, alii matrimonio se obstrinxisse, nisi si cupido dominandi cunctis affectibus flagrantior est.

[15.53]  At last they decided to carry out their design on the day of the circus games which is celebrated in honor of Ceres, since 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 due to his enjoyment of the spectacle.  They had set up the sequence of the ambush so that Lateranus, as though pleading for support for his financial situation, was to throw himself, begging, at the prince’s knees and, being a man of strong nerve and huge frame, throw the unsuspecting man down and hold him there.  When he was prostrate and immobilized, the tribunes and centurions and all the others who had sufficient daring were to rush up and murder him, the first blow being claimed by Scævinus, who had taken a dagger from the Temple of Safety in Etruria — or, according to others, from that of Fortune in a Frentane town — and was carrying it about as if consecrated for some great task.  Piso, meanwhile, was to wait in the sanctuary of Ceres, whence he was to be summoned by Fænius, the commander of the guard, and by the others, and then conveyed into the camp, accompanied by Antonia, the daughter of Claudius Caesar, in order to win the support of the masses.  So it is related by Gajus Pliny.

I had no intention to suppress what has been passed down in whatever way, even though it does seem odd either that Antonia should have committed her name and the risk of her life to a vain hope, or that Piso, well-known for his affection for his wife, should have pledged himself to another marriage — unless it happens that the lust for power is more ardent than all other passions.

[15.54]  Sed mirum quam inter diversi generis ordinis, ætatis sexus, dites, pauperes taciturnitate omnia cohibita sint, donec proditio cœpit e domo Scævini.  Qui, pridie insidiarum multo sermone cum Antonio Natale, dein regressus domum, testamentum obsignavit, promptum vagina pugionem de quo supra rettuli vetustate obtusum increpans, asperari saxo et in mucronem ardescere jussit, eamque curam liberto Milicho mandavit.  Simul affluentius solito convivium initum, servorum carissimi libertate et alii pecunia donati ;  atque ipse mæstus et magnæ cogitationis manifestus erat, quamvis lætitiam vagis sermonibus simularet.  Postremo vulneribus ligamenta quibusque sistitur sanguis dispertiebat atque eadem Milichum monet, sive gnarum conjurationis et illuc usque fidum, seu nescium et tunc primum arreptis suspicionibus, ut plerique tradidere.

{De sequentibus constat.}  Nam quum secum servilis animus præmia perfidiæ reputavit, simulque immensa pecunia et potentia obversabantur, cessit fas et salus patroni et acceptæ libertatis memoria.  Etenim uxoris quoque consilium assumpserat — muliebre ac deterius :  quippe, ultro metum intentabat, « multosque astitisse libertos ac servos qui eadem viderint ;  nihil profuturum unius silientium, at præmia penes unum fore qui indicio prævenisset. »

[15.54]  It was however amazing how among people of different class, rank, age, sex, among rich and poor, everything was kept in secrecy until the betrayal began from the house of Scævinus.  The day before the ambush, after a long conversation with Antonius Natalis, he returned home and sealed his will;  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 whetstone to a shining point and assigned this task to his freedman Milichus.  At the same time sat down to a banquet more sumptuous than usual and gave his favorite slaves their freedom and money to others.  He was himself depressed, and manifestly deep in thought, however much he feigned cheerfulness in desultory conversation.  Finally he began to sort out bandages for wounds and dressings for stopping bleeding, and he warned Milichus to do the same, the man either being aware of the conspiracy and hitherto reliable or else ignorant and only then seizing on suspicion for the first time (as several have transmitted).

{About the sequel there is agreement.}  For when his servile mind dwelt on the rewards of betrayal, and at the same moment boundless wealth and power hovered before him, his sense of responsibility and the safety of his patron, along with the memory of the freedom he had received, vanished.  For he had also taken his wife’s advice — that of a woman and so all the worse:  indeed, in addition she inspired him with fear, that many had been present, both freedmen and slaves, who had seen the same things he had;  that one man’s silence would be of no benefit at all, whereas the rewards would be for him alone who turned informer first.

[15.55]  Igitur cœpta luce Milichus in hortos Servilianos pergit ;  et quum foribus arceretur, magna et atrocia afferre dictitans, deductusque ab janitoribus ad libertum Neronis Epaphroditum, mox ab eo ad Neronem, urgens periculum, graves conjuratos et cetera quæ audiverat conjectaverat, docet ;  telum quoque in necem ejus paratum ostendit, accirique reum jussit.

Is raptus per milites et defensionem orsus, « ferrum cujus argueretur, olim religione patria cultum et in cubiculo habitum ac fraude liberti subreptum respondit.  Tabulas testamenti sæpius a se, et incustodita dierum observatione, signatas.  Pecunias et libertates servis et ante dono datas, sed ideo tunc largius, quia tenui jam re familiari et instantibus creditoribus testamento diffideret.  Enimvero liberales semper epulas struxisse ;  vita amœna et duris judicibus parum probata.  Fomenta vulneribus nulla jussu suo sed, quia cetera palam vana objecisset, adjungere crimen cujus se pariter indicem et testem faceret. »

Adjicit dictis constantiam ;  incusat ultro intestabilem et consceleratum, tanta vocis ac vultus securitate ut labaret indicium, nisi Milichum uxor admonuisset Antonium Natalem multa cum Scævino ac secreta collocutum, et esse utrosque C. Pisonis intimos.

[15.55]  Accordingly, at daybreak Milichus went to the Servilian gardens and, when he was stopped at the door, repeatedly saying that he was bringing important and frightening news, he was conducted by the gatekeepers to one of Nero’s freedmen, Epaphroditus, then by him to Nero, whom he informed of the urgent danger, the formidable conspirators, and the rest that he had heard or inferred.  He also showed him the weapon prepared for his assassination and bade him summon the accused.

Scævinus on being arrested by the soldiers began his defense with the reply that the dagger about which he was accused had long been honored with a religious veneration deriving from his homeland, that it had been kept in his bedchamber and been stolen through the knavery of his freedman.  He had often, he said, signed the tablets of his will with careless inattention to the dates.  He had also previously given presents of money as well as freedom to his slaves, only on this occasion he gave more freely because, as his means were now impoverished and his creditors were pressing him, he had little confidence in his will.  To be sure, he had always been liberal in setting up banquets, his life being a pleasant one and scarcely approved of by hard judges.  As to the bandages for wounds, none had been prepared at his order, but because all the man’s other charges were patently groundless, he was adding an accusation in which he might make himself both informer and witness.

He backed up his words with firmness.  Turning on his accuser, he denounced him as a detestable and depraved wretch, with such sureness of voice and look that the betrayal was beginning to collapse, when Milichus was reminded by his wife that Antonius Natalis had had a long and secret conversation with Scævinus, and that both were intimates of Gaius Piso.

[15.56]  Ergo accitur Natalis, et diversi interrogantur, quisnam is sermo, qua de re fuisset.  Tum exorta suspicio quia non congruentia responderant, inditaque vincla.  Et tormentorum aspectum ac minas non tulere :  prior tamen Natalis, totius conspirationis magis gnarus, simul purgandi imperitior, de Pisone primum fatetur, deinde adjicit Annæum Senecam (sive internuntius inter eum Pisonemque fuit, sive ut Neronis gratiam pararet qui, infensus Senecæ, omnes ad eum opprimendum artes conquirebat).  Tum cognito Natalis indicio Scævinus quoque pari imbecillitate — an cuncta jam patefacta credens nec ullum silentii emolumentum — edidit ceteros.  Ex quibus Lucanus Quintianusque et Senecio diu abnuere :  post, promissa impunitate corrupti, quo tarditatem excusarent Lucanus Aciliam matrem suam, Quintianus Glitium Gallum, Senecio Annium Pollionem, amicorum præcipuos, nominavere.

[15.56]  Natalis was therefore summoned, and they were separately asked what the conversation was, and what its subject was.  Then a suspicion arose because their answers did not agree, and they were put in irons.  They could not endure the sight and threats of torture.  Natalis however, was the first, being more knowledgeable of the whole conspiracy and at the same time more unskilled in exculpation, first confessed about Piso, then added the name of Annæus Seneca (either as an intermediary between him and Piso, or else in order to gain influence with Nero who, hostile to Seneca, had been searching for every means to destroy him.  Then Scævinus too, learning of the disclosure of Natalis, with like weakness — or under the impression that everything had now been divulged and that there could be no advantage in silence — gave away the others.  Of these, Lucanus, Quintianus, and Senecio long persisted in denial;  at the end, bribed by the promise of impunity, in order to excuse their reluctance Lucanus named his own mother Acilia, while Quintianus gave the name of Glitius Gallus and Senecio that of Annius Pollio, their chief friends.

[15.57]  Atque interim Nero, recordatus Volusii Proculi indicio Epicharin attineri, ratusque muliebre corpus impar dolori, tormentis dilacerari jubet.  At illam non verbera, non ignes, non ira eo acrius torquentium ne a femina spernerentur, pervicere quin objecta denegaret.  Sic primus quæstionis dies consumptus.  Postero quum ad eosdem cruciatus retraheretur gestamine sellæ (nam dissolutis membris insistere nequibat), vinclo fasciæ quam pectori detraxerat in modum laquei ad arcum sellæ restricto, indidit cervicem et, corporis pondere conisa, tenuem jam spiritum expressit, clariore exemplo libertina mulier in tanta necessitate alienos ac prope ignotos protegendo, quum ingenui et viri et equites Romani senatoresque intacti tormentis carissima suorum quisque pignorum proderent.

[15.57]  Nero, meanwhile, remembering that Epicharis was in custody on the denunciation of Volusius Proculus, and assuming that a woman’s body was unequal to pain, ordered her to be torn on the rack.  But neither the scourge nor fire, nor the fury of the henchmen (all the worse, lest they be defeated by a woman), kept her from denying the charge.  Thus was the first day of the inquisition passed.  On the morrow, as she was being dragged back in a sedan-chair to the same torments (for with her limbs all dislocated she could not stand), after tying a band which she had pulled off of her bosom in a sort of noose to the canopy of the chair, she put her neck in it, and then straining with the whole weight of her body, squeezed out of herself the little breath remaining in her.  All the nobler was this example set by a freedwoman in such distress in protecting strangers and those whom she hardly knew, while freeborn men, Roman knights and senators, still unscathed by torture, betrayed, every one, his dearest kinsfolk.

[15.58]  Non enim omittebant Lucanus quoque et Senecio et Quintianus passim conscios edere, magis magisque pavido Nerone, quanquam multiplicatis excubiis semet sæpsisset.  Quin et Urbem per manipulos occupatis mœnibus, insesso etiam mari et amne, velut in custodiam dedit.  Volitabantque per fora, per domos, rura quoque et proxima municipiorum pedites equitesque, permixti Germanis, quibus fidebat princeps quasi externis.  Continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adjacēre.  Atque ubi dicendam ad causam introissent, non merita tantum erga conjuratos, sed fortuitus sermo et subiti occursus, si convivium, si spectaculum simul inissent, pro crimine accipi quum, super Neronis ac Tigellini sævas percontationes, Fænius quoque Rufus violenter urgueret, nondum ab indicibus nominatus et quo fidem inscitiæ pararet, atrox adversus socios.  Īdem Subrio Flavo assistenti annuentique, an inter ipsam cognitionem destringeret gladium cædemque patraret, renuit infregitque impetum jam manum ad capulum referentis.

[15.58]  For Lucanus as well, and Senecio and Quintianus, did not cease revealing their accomplices indiscriminately, to the greater and greater alarm of Nero, even though he had surrounded himself with a redoubled guard.  In fact, he virtually put the City under arrest, its walls taken over by companies of soldiers and with even the sea and the river occupied.  Foot soldiers and cavalry were running through the forums, houses, even the countryside and nearby towns, interspersed with Germans, whom the emperor trusted as being foreigners.  Unbroken, manacled lines were dragged from those places and lay at the gates of the gardens.  And when they entered to plead their case, it was not only services for the conspirators, but a chance conversation or unplanned encounters — if they had gone in together at a party or spectacle — that were interpreted as criminal since, in addition to the savage inquiries of Nero and Tigellinus, Fænius Rufus too was hounding them violently, having not yet been named by the informants and, to generate belief in his ignorance, behaving frighteningly toward his accomplices.  (Likewise, as Subrius Flavus was standing there and querying with a motion of his head whether he should draw his sword and accomplish the assassination during the investigation itself, Rufus shook his own head and checked the attack as the man’s hand was already reaching for his hilt.)

[15.59]  Fuere qui prodita conjuratione, dum auditur Milichus, dum dubitat Scævinus, hortarentur Pisonem pergere in castra aut rostra escendere studiaque militum et populi temptare.  « Si conatibus ejus conscii aggregarentur, secuturos etiam integros ;  magnamque motæ rei famam, quæ plurimum in novis consiliis valeret.  Nihil adversum hæc Neroni provisum.  Etiam fortes viros subitis terreri, nedum ille scænicus, Tigellino scilicet cum pælicibus suis comitante, arma contra cieret.  Multa experiendo confieri quæ segnibus ardua videantur.  Frustra silentium et fidem in tot consciorum animis et corporibus sperare ;  cruciatui aut præmio cuncta pervia esse.  Venturos qui ipsum quoque vincirent, postremo indigna nece afficerent.  ¡ Quanto laudabilius periturum, dum amplectitur Rem Publicam, dum auxilia libertati invocat !  Miles potius deesset et plebes desereret, dum ipse majoribus, dum posteris, si vita præriperetur, mortem approbaret. »

Immotus his et paululum in publico versatus, post domi secretus animum adversum suprema firmabat, donec manus militum adveniret quos Nero tirones aut stipendiis recentes delegerat ;  nam vetus miles timebatur tanquam favore imbutus.  Obiit abruptis bracchiorum venis.  Testamentum fœdis adversus Neronem adulationibus amori uxoris dedit, quam degenerem et sola corporis forma commendatam amici matrimonio abstulerat.  Nomen mulieri Satria Galla, priori marito Domitius Silus :  hic patientiā, illa impudică Pisonis infamiam propagavere.

[15.59]  There were some who, as soon as the conspiracy was betrayed, urged Piso, while Milichus’ story was being heard and Scævinus was hesitating, to go to the camp or mount the Rostra and sound out the inclinations of the soldiers and of the people.  “If,” they said, “our accomplices join your enterprise, the uninvolved will follow;  the publicity of the movement, once started, will be great, and in any new scheme this is all-important.  Against it Nero has taken no precaution.  Even brave men are unnerved by the unexpected;  far less will that stage-actor — unquestionably accompanied by Tigellinus with his concubines — take up arms against you.  Many things are accomplished by action which seem difficult to sluggards.  It is useless to expect secrecy and loyalty of the minds and bodies of so many accomplices.  Everything is accessible to torture or bribes.  Men will come to put you too in chains and in the end to inflict an ignominious death on you.  How much more glorious will it be for you to die embracing the Republic and invoking aid for liberty!  Rather, let the soldiers absent themselves, let the people abandon you, provided only that you yourself, if prematurely robbed of life, justify your death to your ancestors and descendants.”

Unmoved by these considerations, Piso spent a short while in public, then, having closeted himself at home, fortified his mind against the end until a unit of soldiers arrived whom Nero had chosen as being recruits or new to the service (his veteran soldiery was feared as being tainted by sympathy).  Piso died by severing the veins in his arms.  His will, full of disgusting flatteries of Nero, he produced out of love for his wife, an ignoble woman, with only a good-looking body in her favor, whom he had stolen from her marriage to his friend.  Her name was Atria Galla;  that of her former husband, Domitius Silus.  The latter’s allowing that, and that shameless woman, made Piso’s disrepute long-lasting.

[15.60]  Proximam necem Plautii Laterani consulis designati Nero adjungit, adeo propere, ut non complecti liberos, non illud breve mortis arbitrium permitteret.  Raptus in locum servilibus pœnis sepositum manu Statii tribuni trucidatur, plenus constantis silentii nec tribuno objiciens eandem conscientiam.

Sequitur cædes Annæi Senecæ, lætissima principi, non quia conjurationis manifestum compererat, sed ut ferro grassaretur quando venenum non processerat.  Solus quippe Natalis et hactenus prompsit, missum se ad ægrotum Senecam, uti viseret conquerereturque, cur Pisonem aditu arceret :  melius fore, si amicitiam familiari congressu exercuissent.  Et respondisse Senecam sermones mutuos et crebra colloquia neutri conducere ;  ceterum salutem suam incolumitate Pisonis inniti.  Hæc ferre Gavius Silvanus tribunus Prætoriæ cohortis, et an dicta Natalis suaque responsa nosceret percunctari Senecam jubetur.  Is, forte an prudens, ad eum diem ex Campania remeaverat quartumque apud lapidem suburbano rure substiterat.  Illo propinquā vesperā tribunus venit et villam globis militum sæpsit ;  tum ipsi cum Pompeja Paulina uxore et amicis duobus epulanti mandata imperatoris edidit.

[15.60]  The next murder added by Nero was that of Plautius Lateranus, consul-elect, so promptly that he did not allow him to embrace his children or to have the usual brief choice of 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 the same complicity in the plot.

Then followed the killing of Annæus Seneca, a special joy to the emperor, not because he had convicted him of the conspiracy, but to victimize him with the sword when poison had not worked.  In fact, only Natalis had brought him up, and only to the point that he had been sent to Seneca when ailing to see him and raise the complaint about why he was denying Piso access to him, when it would have been better to have kept up their friendship with sociable get-togethers.  Seneca’s reply had been that mutual conversations and frequent interviews benefited neither;  in other respects his own well-being depended on Piso’s safety.  Gavius Silvanus, tribune of a Prætorian cohort, was ordered to bear this news and to find out from Seneca whether he acknowledged Natalis’s statements and his answer.  Either by chance or purposely Seneca had returned from Campania that day, and had stopped at a country estate at the fourth milestone.  Near evening the tribune arrived and surrounded the house with groups of soldiers;  then, while the man was dining with his wife Pompeia Paulina and two friends, he gave him the emperor’s message.

[15.61]  Seneca « missum ad se Natalem conquestumque nomine Pisonis, quod a visendo eo prohiberetur, seque rationem valetudinis et amorem quietis excusavisse » respondit.  « Cur salutem privati hominis incolumitati suæ anteferret, causam non habuisse ;  nec sibi promptum in adulationes ingenium.  Idque nulli magis gnarum quam Neroni, qui sæpius libertatem Senecæ quam servitium expertus esset. »

Ubi hæc a tribuno relata sunt Poppæa et Tigellino coram, quod erat sævienti principi intimum consiliorum, interrogat an Seneca voluntariam mortem pararet.  Tum tribunus nulla pavoris signa, nihil triste in verbis ejus aut vultu deprensum confirmavit.  Ergo regredi et indicere mortem jubetur.  Tradit Fabius Rusticus non eo quo venerat intinere reditum, sed flexisse ad Fænium præfectum et expositis Cæsaris jussis an obtemperaret interrogavisse, monitumque ab eo ut exsequeretur, fatali omnium ignavia.  Nam et Silvanus inter conjuratos erat, augebatque scelera in quorum ultionem consenserat.  Voci tamen et aspectui pepercit, intromisitque ad Senecam unum ex centurionibus qui necessitatem ultimam denuntiaret.

[15.61]  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 his desire for rest.  “He had no reason,” he said, for “preferring the well-being of any private citizen to his own safety, nor was it his nature to be prone to flattery.  No one knew this better than Nero, who had experienced Seneca’s freespokenness more often than his servility.”

When the tribune reported this answer in the presence of Poppæa and Tigellinus, the emperor’s closest advisers in his madness, he asked whether Seneca was getting ready to commit suicide.  The tribune then stated that he had caught no signs of fear, no sadness in his words or in his looks.  So he was ordered to go back and deliver the death sentence.  Fabius Rusticus tells us that he did not return the way he came, but made a detour to Fænius, the commander of the guard and, having explained the emperor’s orders and asked whether he should obey them, was told by him to carry them out, universal cowardice now being a matter of fate.  For Silvanus too was among the conspirators, and he was now increasing the crimes which he had united with them to avenge.  He did, however, spare himself from saying or seeing anything, and instead sent in to Seneca one of his centurions to announce to him his compulsory doom.

[15.62]  Ille interritus poscit testamenti tabulas ;  ac denegante centurione conversus ad amicos, « quando meritis eorum referre gratiam prohiberetur, quod unum jam et tamen pulcherrimum habeat, imaginem vitæ suæ relinquere testatur ;  cujus si memores essent bonarum artium, famam tam constantis amicitiæ laturos. »  Simul lacrimas eorum modo sermone, modo intentior in modum coërcentis ad firmitudinem revocat, rogitans « ¿ ubi præcepta sapientiæ, ubi tot per annos meditata ratio adversum imminentia ?  ¿ Cui enim ignaram fuisse sævitiam Neronis ?  Neque aliud superesse post matrem fratremque interfectos quam ut educatoris præceptorisque necem adjiceret. »

[15.62]  The latter, 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 render thanks for their services, he was bequeathing to them the pattern of his life, the only thing — but still the finest thing — he had;  if they remembered its good qualities, they would reap the renown of their steadfast friendship.  At the same time he called them back from their tears to manly resolution, now in conversation, and now with the sterner language of rebuke.  “Where,” he asked repeatedly, “are the maxims of philosophy, where the rationality studied for so many years against impending evils?  For who was ignorant of Nero’s savagery?  After killing his mother and brother, nothing is left but to add the murder of his guardian and teacher.”

[15.63]  Ubi hæc atque talia velut in commune disseruit, complectitur uxorem et, paululum adversus præsentem formidinem mollitus, rogat oratque temperaret dolori, ne æternum susciperet sed, in contemplatione vitæ per virtutem actæ, desiderium mariti solaciis honestis toleraret.  Illa contra sibi quoque destinatam mortem asseverat, manumque percussoris exposcit.

Tum Seneca, gloriæ ejus non adversus, simul amore ne sibi unice dilectam ad injurias relinqueret, “Vitæ,” inquit, “delenimenta monstraveram tibi, tu mortis decus mavis :  non invidebo exemplo.  Sit hujus tam fortis exitus constantia penes utrosque par, claritudinis plus in tuo fine.”  Post quæ, eodem ictu bracchia ferro exsolvunt.  Seneca, quoniam senile corpus et parco victu tenuatum lenta effugia sanguini præbebat, crurum quoque et poplitum venas abrumpit ;  sævisque cruciatibus defessus, ne dolore suo animum uxoris infringeret atque ipse visendo ejus tormenta ad impatientiam delaberetur, suadet in aliud cubiculum abscedere.  Et novissimo quoque momento, suppeditante eloquentia, advocatis scriptoribus pleraque tradidit quæ in vulgus edita meis verbis invertere supersedeo.

[15.63]  After saying these and similar things as it were as general remarks, he embraced his wife;  then, softening for a moment in the face of her manifest terror, he asked and begged her to moderate her grief and not make it permanent but, by contemplating a life lived in virtue, to endure her husband’s loss with that noble consolation.  In reply, she declared that she too had decided to die, and demanded for herself the blow of the executioner.

Thereupon Seneca, unopposed to her noble ambition, and at the same time out of love lest he abandon the one woman he had loved to maltreatment, replied:  “I have shown you ways to make life tolerable;  you prefer the glory of dying.  I will not begrudge you such a noble example.  Let the fortitude of so courageous an end be the same in both of us, but with greater brilliance in your demise.”  Then by one and the same stroke they sliced their arms with a knife.  Seneca, because his body, old and emaciated by his frugal diet, produced only slow bleeding, cut the arteries of his legs and the backs of his knees as well.  Worn down by the torturous agony, he persuaded his wife to go into another room lest his own pain break her resolve and he himself, seeing her suffering, should sink into indecision.  Even at the last moment his eloquence did not fail him;  he summoned his secretaries and dictated much to them which, as it has been published for all readers, I am refraining from paraphrasing in my words.

[15.64]  At Nero nullo in Paulinam proprio odio, ac ne glisceret invidia crudelitas, jubet inhiberi mortem.  Hortantibus militibus servi libertique obligant bracchia, premunt sanguinem, incertum an ignaræ.  (Nam, ut est vulgus ad deteriora promptum, non defuere qui crederent, donec implacabilem Neronem timuerit, famam sociatæ cum marito mortis petivisse, deinde, oblata mitiore spe, blandimentis vitæ evictam ;  cui addidit paucos postea annos, laudabili in maritum memoria et ore ac membris in eum pallorem albentibus ut ostentui esset multum vitalis spiritus egestum.)

Seneca interim, durante tractu et lentitudine mortis, Statium Annæum, diu sibi amicitiæ fide et arte medicinæ probatum, orat provisum pridem venenum, « quo damnati publico Atheniensium judicio exstinguerentur, » promeret ;  allatumque hausit frustra, frigidus jam artūs et cluso corpore adversum vim veneni.  Postremo stagnum calidæ aquæ introiit, respergens proximos servorum addita voce libare se liquorem illum Jovi Liberatori.  Exim balneo illatus et vapore ejus exanimatus, sine ullo funeris sollemni crematur.  Ita codicillis præscripserat, quum etiam tum prædives et præpotens supremis suis consuleret.

[15.64]  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, it being uncertain whether she was unconscious of it.  (For, as the masses are always ready to think the worst, they did not lack those who believed that as long as she feared that Nero was implacable, she had sought the glory of a death shared with her husband;  but then, after the hope of something milder had been offered, she had given in to the charms of living.  To this she added a few subsequent years in the praiseworthy remembrance of her husband and with her face and limbs blanched to such a degree of pallor that it was obvious that much of her vital energy had been lost.)

Seneca meantime, due to the ongoing sluggishness and slowness of his death, begged Statius Annæus, whom he had long esteemed for his faithful friendship and medical skill, to bring him the poison, prepared some time previously, “with which those condemned by the public court of Athens were executed.”  He drained what was brought to him, but in vain, being already cold throughout his limbs and with his body impervious to the efficacy of the poison.  Finally he entered a pool of hot water, splashing the nearest of his slaves and adding the sentence, “I offer this liquid as a libation to Jupiter the Liberator.”  He was then carried into a bath with whose steam he was asphyxiated and was cremated without any of the usual funeral rites.  He had preordained this in a codicil of his will, when even in the height of his wealth and power he was thinking of his life’s close.

[15.65]  Fama fuit Subrium Flavum cum centurionibus occulto consilio — neque tamen ignorante Seneca — destinavisse ut post occisum operā Pisonis Neronem, Piso quoque interficeretur, tradereturque imperium Senecæ quasi insonti et claritudine virtutum ad summum fastigium delecto.  Quin et verba Flavi vulgabantur, non rēferre dedecori si citharœdus demoveretur et tragœdus succederet.  (Quia ut Nero cithara, ita Piso tragico ornatu canebat.)

[15.65]  There was a rumor 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 without guilt and chosen for the highest office because of the splendor of his virtues.  Even a saying of Flavus was popularly current, that “a harp-player being removed and a tragedic actor replacing him would make no difference in the matter of dishonor.”  (For as Nero used to sing to the harp, so did Piso in the dress of a tragedian.)

[15.66]  Ceterum, militaris quoque conspiratio non ultra fefellit, accensis quoque indicibus ad prodendum Fænium Rufum, quem eundem conscium et inquisitorem non tolerabant.  Ergo instanti minitantique renidens Scævinus neminem ait plura scire quam ipsum, hortaturque ultro redderet tam bono principi vicem.  Non vox adversum ea Fænio, non silentium, sed verba sua præpediens et pavoris manifestus, ceterisque (ac maxime Cervario Proculo equite Romano) ad convincendum eum conisis, jussu imperatoris a Cassio milite, qui ob insigne corporis robur astabat, corripitur vinciturque.

[15.66]  Moreover, the soldiers’ part in the conspiracy no longer escaped notice either, with the informers themselves infuriated into betraying Fænius Rufus, whom they could not tolerate as being both an accomplice and a judge.  Accordingly Scævinus, in answer to his browbeating and menaces, said with a smile that no one knew more than he did, and urged him of his own accord to recompense such a benevolent prince.  Fænius, neither saying anything in reply nor keeping silent, but stuttering out his words and obviously terror-stricken, while the others (and especially the Roman knight Cervarius Proculus) strove to convict him, at the emperor’s command was seized and bound by Cassius, a soldier who because of his extraordinary physical strength was in attendance.

[15.67]  Mox eorundem indicio Subrius Flavus tribunus pervertitur, primo dissimilitudinem morum ad defensionem trahens, neque se armatum cum inermibus et effeminatis tantum facinus consociaturum ;  dein, postquam urgebatur, confessionis gloriam amplexus interrogatusque a Nerone, quibus causis ad oblivionem sacramenti processisset, “Oderam te,” inquit.  “Nec quisquam tibi fidelior militum fuit, dum amari meruisti :  odisse cœpi, postquam parricida matris et uxoris, auriga et histrio et incendiarius exstitisti.”

Ipsa rettuli verba, quia non, ut Senecæ, vulgata erant, nec minus nosci decebat militaris viri sensus incomptos et validos.  Nihil in illa conjuratione gravius auribus Neronis accidisse constitit qui, ut faciendis sceleribus promptus, ita audiendi quæ faceret insolens erat.

Pœna Flavi Vejanio Nigro tribuno mandatur.  Is proximo in agro scrobem effodi jussit quam Flavus, ut humilem et angustam increpans, circumstantibus militibus, “Ne hoc quidem,” inquit, “ex disciplina.”  Admonitusque fortiter protendere cervicem, “¡ Utinam,” ait, “tu tam fortiter ferias !”  Et ille multum tremens, quum vix duobus ictibus caput amputavisset, sævitiam apud Neronem jactavit, sesquiplaga interfectum a se dicendo.

[15.67]  Shortly afterwards, denunciation by the same men brought down Subrius Flavus.  At first he grounded his defense on his difference of character, and that he as an armed man would never have associated himself with unarmed and effeminate types in such a deed.  Then, after being pressed, he embraced the glory of a full confession.  Questioned by Nero about his motives for going to the point of forgetting his oath of allegiance, he replied, “I hated you ;  as long as you deserved our affection, no soldier was more faithful to you ;  I began to hate you after you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, an actor and an arsonist.”

I have given the man’s exact words because although they had not, like Seneca’s, been publicized, the unadorned and strong sentiments of a military man deserve to be no less known.  Throughout the conspiracy nothing, it was certain, fell with greater impact on the ears of Nero who, as eager as he was to perpetrate crimes, was just as unaccustomed to hearing about what he was perpetrating.

The punishment of Flavus was entrusted to Veianius Niger, a tribune.  He ordered a pit to be dug out in a neighboring field.  Flavus, on seeing it, criticized it as too shallow and confined, saying to the soldiers around him, “Not even this is according to code.”  When bidden to stick his neck out resolutely, he said, “If only you would strike just as resolutely!”  After the tribune, trembling greatly, had just barely severed his head with two blows, he boasted of his brutality to Nero, saying that he had slain him with a blow and a half.

[15.68]  Proximum constantiæ exemplum Sulpicius Asper centurio præbuit, percontanti Neroni cur in cædam suam conspiravisset, breviter respondens « non aliter tot flagitiis ejus subveniri potuisse. »  Tum jussam pœnam subiit.  Nec ceteri centuriones in perpetiendis suppliciis degeneravere ;  at non Fænio Rufo par animus, sed lamentationes suas etiam in testamentum contulit.

Opperiebatur Nero, ut Vestinus quoque consul in crimen traheretur, violentum et infensum ratus, sed ex conjuratis consilia cum Vestino non miscuerant quidam, vetustis in eum simultatibus, plures, quia præcipitem et insociabilem credebant.  Ceterum Neroni odium adversus Vestinum ex intima sodalitate cœperat, dum hic ignaviam principis penitus cognitam despicit, ille ferociam amici metuit, sæpe asperis facetiis illusus, quæ ubi multum ex vero traxere, acrem sui memoriam relinquunt.  Accesserat repens causa, quod Vestinus Statiliam Messalinam matrimonio sibi junxerat, haud nescius inter adulteros ejus et Cæsarem esse.

[15.68]  Sulpicius Asper, a centurion, exhibited the next example of fortitude.  To Nero’s question as to why he had conspired to murder him, he replied briefly that there was no other way in which so many infamies could be dealt with.  He then underwent the prescribed punishment.  Nor did the remaining centurions demean themselves when suffering execution.  But Fænius Rufus was not of equal mettle;  he even put his laments into his will.

Nero waited for the consul Vestinus to be dragged into the charge as well, deeming him violent and hostile;  but none of the conspirators had shared their plans with Vestinus, some because of old feuds with him, most because they believed him reckless and impossible to deal with.  Moreover, Nero’s hatred of him had originated in their close relationship during which the latter had come to know thoroughly, and to despise, the emperor’s cowardice, while Nero feared his friend’s arrogance, having often been made the butt of his barbed jokes which, while mostly based on the truth, left a bitter memory of themselves.  Added to this was the recent motive of Vestinus having married Statilia Messalina, without being ignorant of the fact that the emperor was among her paramours too.

[15.69]  Igitur non crimine, non accusatore exsistente, quia speciem judicis induere non poterat, ad vim dominationis conversus Gerellanum tribunum cum cohorte militum immittit.  Jubetque prævenire conatus consulis, occupare velut arcem ejus, opprimere delectam juventutem, quia Vestinus imminentes foro ædes decoraque servitia et pari ætate habebat.

Cuncta eo die munia consulis impleverat conviviumque celebrabat, nihil metuens an dissimulando metu, quum ingressi milites vocari eum a tribuno dixere.  Ille nihil demoratus exsurgit, et omnia simul properantur :  clauditur cubiculo, præsto est medicus, abscinduntur venæ, vigens adhuc balneo infertur, calida aqua mersatur, nulla edita voce qua semet miseraretur.  Circumdati interim custodia qui simul discubuerant, nec nisi provecta nocte omissi sunt, postquam pavorem eorum, ex mensa exitium opperientium, et imaginatus et irridens Nero satis supplicii luisse ait pro epulis consularibus.

[15.69]  As neither accusation nor accuser appeared, Nero, being thus unable to clothe himself in the guise of judge, resorted to his tyrannical power and sent in Gerellanus, a tribune, with a cohort of soldiers.  He ordered him to preëmpt the consul’s attempts, to seize his so-called citadel and overwhelm his handpicked youths.  For Vestinus had a mansion overlooking the Forum, and a host of handsome slaves of the same age.

On that day he had fulfilled all his consular duties and was hosting a banquet, fearing nothing, or perhaps hiding his fears, when the soldiers entered and told him he was summoned by the tribune.  He rose without delay, and everything was rushed simultaneously.  He was shut up in his chamber;  a physician was present;  his veins were cut open;  still fully alive he was carried into a bath and plunged into hot water without uttering a word of self-pity.  Meanwhile the guards surrounded those who had reclined at table with him, and it was only late at night that they were dismissed when Nero, picturing to himself, and laughing over, the terror of those expecting death at the end of the banquet, said that they had suffered enough punishment for a consular banquet.

[15.70]  Exim Annæi Lucani cædem imperat.  Is, profluente sanguine, ubi frigescere pedes manusque et paulatim ab extremis cedere spiritum fervido adhuc et compote mentis pectore intellegit, recordatus carmen a se compositum, quo vulneratum militem per ejusmodi mortis imaginem obisse tradiderat, versus ipsos rettulit, eaque illi suprema vox fuit.  Senecio posthac et Quintianus et Scævinus non ex priore vitæ mollitia, mox reliqui conjuratorum periere, nullo facto dictove memorando.

[15.70]  Next he ordered the slaughter of Marcus Annæus Lucanus.  As the blood flowed freely from him and he felt his feet and hands become cold and his soul gradually leave his extremities while his chest was still warm and in control of his mind, he recalled a poem which he himself had composed in which, in a depiction of the same sort of death, a wounded soldier had died, and he recited those same lines.  And they were his last utterance.  After him Senecio, Quintianus and Scævinus perished, not as expected from the past effeminacy of their lives, and then the remaining conspirators, without any memorable deed or word.

[15.71]  Sed compleri interim Urbs funeribus, Capitoliam victimis ;  alius filio, fratre alius aut propinquo aut amico interfectis, agere grates deis, ornare lauru domum, genua ipsius advolvi et dextram osculis fatigare.  Atque ille, gaudium id credens, Antonii Natalis et Cervarii Proculi festinata indicia impunitate remuneratur.  Milichus, præmiis ditatus, “Conservatoris” sibi nomen Græco ejus rei vocabulo assumpsit.

E tribunis Gavius Silvanus, quamvis absolutus, sua manu cecidit :  Statius Proxumus veniam quam ab imperatore acceperat vanitate exitūs corrupit.  Exuti dehinc tribunatu Pompejus < * * >, Cornelius Martialis, Flavius Nepos, Statius Domitius, quasi principem non quidem odissent, sed tamen existimarentur.  Novio Prosco per amicitiam Senecæ, et Glitio Gallo atque Annio Pollioni, infamatis magis quam convictis, data exilia.  Priscum Artoria Flaccilla conjux comitata est, Gallum Egnatia Maximilla — magnis primum et integris opibus, post ademptis ;  quæ utraque gloriam ejus auxere.

Pellitur et Rufrius Crispinus occasione conjurationis, sed Neroni invisus, quod Poppæam quondam matrimonio tenuerat.  Verginium Flavum et Musonium Rufum claritudo nominis expulit :  nam Verginius studia juvenum eloquentia, Musonius præceptis sapientiæ fovebat.  Cluvidieno Quieto, Julio Agrippæ, Blitio Catulino, Petronio Prisco, Julio Altino, velut in agmen et numerum, Ægæi maris insulæ permittuntur.  At Cædicia, uxor Scævini, et Cæsennius Maximus Italia prohibentur — reos fuisse se tantum pœna experti.  Acilia, mater Annæi Lucani, sine absolutione, sine supplicio dissimulata.

[15.71]  This whole time the City was thronged with funerals, the Capitol with animal sacrifices.  One after another, on the killing of a brother, a kinsman or a friend, would return thanks to the gods, deck the Palace 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 revelations of Antonius Natalis and Cervarius Proculus.  Milichus was enriched with gifts and took as his name the Greek word for “Savior” {(Σωτήρ [Sōtēr])}.

Of the tribunes, Gavius Silvanus, though acquitted, perished by his own hand;  Statius Proximus vitiated the pardon he had received from the emperor by a vainglorious suicide.  Pompeius < * * >, Cornelius Martialis, Flavius Nepos, Statius Domitius were then stripped of the tribuneship on the ground, not of actually hating the emperor, but of being believed to do so.  Exile was imposed on Novius Priscus for being Seneca’s friend, and on Glitius Gallus and Annius Pollio because they were smeared with suspicion rather than convicted.  Priscus was followed by his wife Artoria Flaccilla and Gallus by his wife, Egnatia Maximilla whose great wealth, originally untouched, was subsequently confiscated, both of which circumstances enhanced her renown.

Rufius Crispinus too was banished — on the opportune pretext of the conspiracy, but in fact hated by Nero because he had once been Poppæa’s husband.  Verginius Flavus and Musonius Rufus were driven into exile by the fame of their names.  For Verginius encouraged our youth’s desire for education by his eloquence, Rufus through indoctrination in philosophy.  Cluvidienus Quietus, Julius Agrippa, Blitius Catulinus, Petronius Priscus, Julius Altinus — as though to fill up the ranks and the quota —, were assigned islands in the Ægean Sea.  But Cædicia, the wife of Scævinus, and Cæsonius Maximus were forbidden to live in Italy — discovering only through their punishment that they had been prosecuted.  Acilia, the mother of Annæus Lucanus, without either acquittal or punishment, was simply ignored.

[15.72]  Quibus perpetratis Nero et contione militum habita bina nummum milia {(H$2,000)} viritim manipularibus divisit, addiditque sine pretio frumentum quo ante ex modo annonæ utebantur.  Tum quasi gesta bello expositurus, vocat Senatum et triumphale decus Petronio Turpiliano consulari, Coccejo Nervæ prætori designato, Tigellino præfecto prætorii tribuit, Tigellinum et Nervam ita extollens ut, super triumphales in foro imagines, apud Palatium quoque effigies eorum sisteret.  Consularia insignia Nymphidio Sabino decreta sunt.  De {Nymphidio} — quia nunc primum oblatus est — pauca repetam ;  nam et ipse pars Romanarum cladium erit.  Igitur, matre libertina ortus quæ corpus decorum inter servos libertosque principum vulgaverat, ex C. Cæsare se genitum ferebat, quoniam forte quadam habitu procerus et torvo vultu erat — sive C. Cæsar, scortorum quoque cupiens, etiam matri ejus illusit.  * * *

[15.72]  Once all this was finished, Nero assembled the troops and distributed two thousand sesterces {(H$2,000)} to every common soldier, and he added free the grain that they were previously getting at the market rate.  Then, as if about to announce achievements in war, he summoned the Senate, and awarded triumphal honors to Petronius Turpilianus, an ex-consul, to Coccejus Nerva, praetor-elect, and Tigellinus, commander of the Prætorians.  He honored Tigellinus and Nerva to such an extent that, besides triumphal pictures of them in the Forum, he placed their statues on the Palatine.  He granted consular insignia to Nymphidius Sabinus.  Regarding Nymphidius — since he has now been introduced for the first time — I will go back over a few things.  For he too will be a part of Rome’s calamities.  Sprung from a freedwoman mother who had made her beautiful body publicly available among the slaves and freedmen of principes, he maintained that he was the offspring of C. Cæsar {= Caligula}, because by some chance he was of tall stature and had a grim-looking face — or else C. Cæsar, who liked whores as well, had sported with the man’s mother too.  * * *

[15.73]  Sed Nero, vocato Senatu, oratione inter patres habita, edictum apud populum et collata in libros indicia confessionesque damnatorum adjunxit.  Etenim crebro vulgi rumore lacerabatur, tanquam viros claros et insontes ob invidiam aut metum exstinxisset.  Ceterum cœptam, adultamque et revictam conjurationem neque tunc dubitavere quibus verum noscendi cura erat, et fatentur qui post interitum Neronis in Urbem regressi sunt.

At in Senatu cunctis, ut cuique plurimum mæroris, in adulationem demissis, Junium Gallionem, Senecæ fratris morte pavidum et pro sua incolumitate supplicem, increpuit Salienus Clemens, hostem et parricidam vocans, donec consensu patrum deterritus est ne publicis malis abuti ad occasionem privati odii videretur, neu composită aut oblitterată mansuetudine principis novam ad sævitiam retraheret.

[15.73]  Nero meanwhile, having summoned the Senate and addressed them in a speech, added a proclamation to the people, together with the evidence and the confessions of the condemned collected into book form.  For he was being deeply wounded by the widespread talk of the masses to the effect that, out of jealousy or fear, he had executed men perfectly innocent.  However, that a conspiracy had begun, matured, and been conclusively proved was not doubted at the time by those who were interested in the truth, and is admitted by those who returned to the City after Nero’s death.

But with every one in the Senate — especially the greater his grief was — abasing himself in flattery, Salienus Clemens denounced Junius Gallio, who was terrorized by his brother Seneca’s death and pleading for his life.  He called him an enemy and traitor to the State, until the unanimous voice of the senators deterred him:  he should not give the appearance of exploiting public tragedies as an opportunity to satisfy personal animosities — nor should he drag into renewed savagery what had been quieted or forgotten through the emperor’s clemency.

[15.74]  Tum dona et grates deis decernuntur, propriusque honos Soli cui est vetus ædes apud circum in quo facinus parabatur, qui occulta conjurationis numine retexisset ;  utque circensium Cerialium ludicrum pluribus equorum cursibus celebraretur, mensisque Aprilis Neronis cognomentum acciperet, templum Saluti exstrueretur ejus loco, quo Scævinus ferrum prompserat.  Ipse eum pugionem apud Capitolium sacravit, inscripsitque “Jovi Vindici” :  in præsens haud animadversum, post arma Julii Vindicis ad auspicium et præsagium futuræ ultionis trahebatur.

Reperio in commentariis Senatus Cerialem Anicium consulem designatum pro sententia dixisse, ut templum divo Neroni quam maturrime publica pecunia poneretur.  Quod quidem ille decernebat tanquam mortale fastigium egresso et venerationem hominum merito, sed ipse prohibuit ne interpretatione quorundam ad omen dolendum maturi sui exitus verteretur :  nam deum honor principi non ante habetur quam agere inter homines desierit.

[15.74]  Then offerings and thanksgivings to the gods were decreed, with special honors to the Sun who, with an ancient temple in the circus where the crime was planned, “had by his divine power revealed the secrets of the conspiracy.”  The circus games of Ceres were also to be celebrated with more horse races, and the month of April was to take the name of Nero.  A temple to Safety also was to be erected at his place where Scævinus had taken out the knife.  The emperor himself dedicated the dagger on the Capitol and inscribed on it, “To Jupiter the Avenger.”  This passed without notice at the moment, but after the armed revolt of Julius Vindex {(“Avenger”)} it was construed as an omen and foretoken of future vengeance.

I find in the records of the Senate that Cerialis Anicius, consul-elect, motioned that a temple to the Divine Nero be built as soon as possible at public expense.  Admittedly he implied by this proposal that the prince had transcended all mortal grandeur and deserved the adoration of mankind.  But the man himself prevented it, lest in the interpretation of certain people it should turn into an ill-omened sign of his own premature exit.  For the honor of divinity is not given to an emperor until he has ceased to dwell among men.