|
Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 2:52 PM
The Senate clamorously interrupted, with an affectation of horror,
but they were penetrated by alarm and amazement at
seeing that a hitherto
cunning prince, who had shrouded his wickedness in
mystery, had waxed so
bold as to remove, so to speak, the walls of his house
and display his
grandson under a centurion's lash, amid the buffetings
of slaves, craving
in vain the last sustenance of life.
Men's grief at all this had not died away when
news was heard of
Agrippina. She had lived on, sustained by hope, I
suppose, after the destruction
of Sejanus, and, when she found no abatement of
horrors, had voluntarily
perished, though possibly nourishment was refused her
and a fiction concocted
of a death that might seem self-chosen. Tiberius, it
is certain, vented
his wrath in the foulest charges. He reproached her
with unchastity, with
having had Asinius Gallus as a paramour and being
driven by his death to
loathe existence. But Agrippina, who could not endure
equality and loved
to domineer, was with her masculine aspirations far
removed from the frailties
of women. The emperor further observed that she died
on the same day on
which Sejanus had paid the penalty of his crime two
years before, a fact,
he said, to be recorded; and he made it a boast that
she had not been strangled
by the halter and flung down the Gemonian steps. He
received a vote of
thanks, and it was decreed that on the seventeenth of
October, the day
on which both perished, through all future years, an
offering should be
consecrated to Jupiter.
Soon afterwards Cocceius Nerva, a man always
at the emperor's side,
a master of law both divine and human, whose position
was secure and health
sound, resolved to die. Tiberius, as soon as he knew
it, sat by him and
asked his reasons, adding intreaties, and finally
protesting that it would
be a burden on his conscience and a blot on his
reputation, if the most
intimate of his friends were to fly from life without
any cause for death.
Nerva turned away from his expostulations and
persisted in his abstinence
from all food. Those who knew his thoughts said that
as he saw more closely
into the miseries of the State, he chose, in anger and
alarm, an honourable
death, while he was yet safe and unassailed on.
Meanwhile Agrippina's ruin, strange to say,
dragged Plancina with
it. Formerly the wife of Cneius Piso, and one who had
openly exulted at
the death of Germanicus, she had been saved, when Piso
fell, by the intreaties
of Augusta, and not less by the enmity of Agrippina.
When hatred and favour
had alike passed away, justice asserted itself.
Pursued by charges universally
notorious, she suffered by her own hand a penalty
tardy rather than
undeserved.
Amid the many sorrows which saddened Rome, one
cause of grief was
the marriage of Julia, Drusus's daughter and Nero's
late wife, into the
humbler family of Rubellius Blandus, whose grandfather
many remembered
as a Roman knight from Tibur. At the end of the year
the death of Aelius
Lamia, who, after being at last released from the
farce of governing Syria,
had become city-prefect, was celebrated with the
honours of a censor's
funeral. He was a man of illustrious descent, and in a
hale old age; and
the fact of the province having been withheld gained
him additional esteem.
Subsequently, on the death of Flaccus Pomponius,
propraetor of Syria, a
letter from the emperor was read, in which he
complained that all the best
men who were fit to command armies declined the
service, and that he was
thus necessarily driven to intreaties, by which some
of the ex-consuls
might be prevailed on to take provinces. He forgot
that Arruntius had been
kept at home now for ten years, that he might not go
to
Spain.
That same year Marcus Lepidus also died. I
have dwelt at sufficient
length on his moderation and wisdom in my earlier
books, and I need not
further enlarge on his noble descent. Assuredly the
family of the Aemilii
has been rich in good citizens, and even the members
of that house whose
morals were corrupt, still lived with a certain
splendour.
During the consulship of Paulus Fabius and
Lucius Vitellius, the
bird called the phoenix, after a long succession of
ages, appeared in Egypt
and furnished the most learned men of that country and
of Greece with abundant
matter for the discussion of the marvellous
phenomenon. It is my wish to
make known all on which they agree with several
things, questionable enough
indeed, but not too absurd to be noticed.
That it is a creature sacred to the sun,
differing from all other
birds in its beak and in the tints of its plumage, is
held unanimously
by those who have described its nature. As to the
number of years it lives,
there are various accounts. The general tradition says
five hundred years.
Some maintain that it is seen at intervals of fourteen
hundred and sixty-one
years, and that the former birds flew into the city
called Heliopolis successively
in the reigns of Sesostris, Amasis, and Ptolemy, the
third king of the
Macedonian dynasty, with a multitude of companion
birds marvelling at the
novelty of the appearance. But all antiquity is of
course obscure. From
Ptolemy to Tiberius was a period of less than five
hundred years. Consequently
some have supposed that this was a spurious phoenix,
not from the regions
of Arabia, and with none of the instincts which
ancient tradition has attributed
to the bird. For when the number of years is completed
and death is near,
the phoenix, it is said, builds a nest in the land of
its birth and infuses
into it a germ of life from which an offspring arises,
whose first care,
when fledged, is to bury its father. This is not
rashly done, but taking
up a load of myrrh and having tried its strength by a
long flight, as soon
as it is equal to the burden and to the journey, it
carries its father's
body, bears it to the altar of the Sun, and leaves it
to the flames. All
this is full of doubt and legendary exaggeration.
Still, there is no question
that the bird is occasionally seen in Egypt.
Rome meanwhile being a scene of ceaseless
bloodshed, Pomponius
Labeo, who was, as I have related, governor of Moesia,
severed his veins
and let his life ebb from him. His wife, Paxaea,
emulated her husband.
What made such deaths eagerly sought was dread of the
executioner, and
the fact too that the condemned, besides forfeiture of
their property,
were deprived of burial, while those who decided their
fate themselves,
had their bodies interred, and their wills remained
valid, a recompense
this for their despatch. The emperor, however, argued
in a letter to the
Senate that it had been the practice of our ancestors,
whenever they broke
off an intimacy, to forbid the person their house, and
so put an end to
friendship. "This usage he had himself revived in
Labeo's case, but Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire,
being pressed by charges of maladministration in his
province and other
crimes, had screened his guilt by bringing odium on
another, and had groundlessly
alarmed his wife, who, though criminal, was still free
from
danger."
|