Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| [text breaks off at the start] For she believed that Valerius Asiaticus, twice consul, had once been her lover, and she also had her eye on his gardens, which he had extended from Lucullus's original grounds with striking magnificence. So she set Suillius on them to prosecute both. Sosibius, tutor to Britannicus, joined in, warning Claudius under the guise of goodwill to beware of a man whose power and wealth threatened emperors: Asiaticus, he said, had been a leading figure in the killing of Gaius Caesar, and had not been afraid to admit it before an assembly of the Roman people, even claiming the glory of the deed for himself. He was famous in the city for this, and word was spreading through the provinces that he was preparing to travel to the armies in Germany — not surprising, since he had been born at Vienne, had many powerful relatives, and would find it easy to stir up his countrymen. Claudius investigated no further. He sent Crispinus, the praetorian prefect, with soldiers at speed, as if to crush a war in progress. Crispinus found Asiaticus at Baiae, put him in chains, and hauled him to Rome.
2| He was given no hearing before the Senate: he was heard inside Claudius's bedroom, with Messalina present and Suillius pressing the charges — first that he had corrupted soldiers, binding them to every kind of crime with money and sexual favors, then that he had committed adultery with Poppaea, and finally that he was effeminate. At that last charge the accused broke his silence and burst out: "Ask your sons, Suillius — they'll admit I'm a man." He then launched into his defense; Claudius was visibly moved by it, and Messalina too found herself in tears. Yet the moment she stepped out to dry her eyes, she told Vitellius not to let the accused slip free. She herself hurried to destroy Poppaea, sending men to terrify her into suicide with threats of prison — and Claudius knew so little of it that a few days later, dining with Poppaea's husband Scipio, he asked why he had come to table without his wife, and Scipio answered that she had died a natural death.
3| When Claudius consulted him about acquitting Asiaticus, Vitellius wept, recalled their long friendship and how they had both attended on Antonia, the emperor's mother, then ran through Asiaticus's services to the state and his recent campaign against Britain, and everything else that might win sympathy — and so secured him the free choice of how to die. Claudius's own words followed in the same merciful vein. When some urged Asiaticus to starve himself for a gentle end, he said he would not accept the favor. He kept up his usual exercises, bathed, dined cheerfully, and remarked that he would rather have died by Tiberius's cunning or Gaius's violence than by a woman's treachery and Vitellius's shameless mouth. Then he opened his veins — but first inspected the funeral pyre and had part of it moved, so the shade of the trees would not weaken the heat of the flames. That was how composed he was, right to the end.
4| After this the senators were summoned, and Suillius went on to name as defendants two distinguished Roman knights, both surnamed Petra. What actually killed them was that Mnester and Poppaea had used their house for their meetings. But the charge brought against one of them concerned a dream: he had supposedly seen Claudius wearing a crown of wheat with the ears turned backward, and from that image had predicted a grain shortage. Others said the crown he saw was of vine leaves, gone white, and that he had read it as foretelling the emperor's death as autumn drew on. What is not in doubt is that some dream or other, whichever it was, brought ruin on the man and his brother. Fifteen hundred thousand sesterces and the insignia of a praetor were voted to Crispinus. Vitellius added a million sesterces for Sosibius, for helping Britannicus with his lessons and Claudius with his counsel. Scipio too was asked his opinion, and answered, "Since I feel the same as everyone else about Poppaea's conduct, assume I say the same as everyone else" — a graceful balance between a husband's love and a senator's duty.
5| From then on Suillius kept up a relentless, savage run of prosecutions, and many rivaled him in daring; for the emperor, having drawn all the functions of the laws and the magistrates to himself, had opened up rich ground for plunder. Nothing in public life was so openly for sale as the treachery of advocates — so much so that Samius, a prominent Roman knight, having paid Suillius four hundred thousand sesterces and then discovered he had been sold out, fell on his sword in Suillius's own house. So when Gaius Silius, the consul-elect — whose power and downfall I will describe in due course — raised the matter, the senators rose as one and demanded enforcement of the Cincian law, which from ancient times forbids anyone to take money or gifts for pleading a case.
6| Then, over the protests of those for whom this insult was being prepared, Silius, at odds with Suillius, attacked him fiercely, citing the example of orators of old who had thought of fame and posterity as the true rewards of eloquence. Otherwise, he said, a noble art, the foremost of the liberal pursuits, was being fouled by sordid trafficking; not even honesty could survive intact where the size of the fee was what mattered. Strip out the profit and lawsuits would grow scarce; instead, feuds, indictments, hatreds and injuries were being deliberately kept alive — the way a doctor profits from a worsening illness, the courts' corruption was lining the advocates' pockets. Let them remember Asinius and Messala, and in more recent times Arruntius and Aeserninus: men who had risen to the top through an uncorrupted life and eloquence alone. As the consul-elect spoke, others agreeing, a motion was being prepared to make advocates liable under the law against extortion, when Suillius and Cossutianus and the rest — who saw not a trial in prospect, since they were plainly guilty, but a punishment already decided — surrounded Claudius, begging pardon for the past.
7| And once he had nodded assent, they began their case: who was so arrogant as to presume on the hope of eternal fame? Practical needs required that a fallback be provided, so that no one, for want of an advocate, be left at the mercy of the powerful. Eloquence, besides, did not come free: pursuing it meant neglecting one's own affairs to attend to other people's business. Soldiering fed some men, farming fed others; nobody gives anything away without reckoning on some return first. As for Asinius and Messala — grown rich on plunder from the wars of Antony and Augustus — or the Aeserninus and Arruntius families, born into wealth, striking such a lofty pose cost them nothing. They had examples ready to hand — the huge fees Publius Clodius or Gaius Curio used to command for their speeches. They themselves were ordinary senators who, in a state now at peace, sought nothing beyond the profits peace allowed. Let Claudius think of the common people who made their living from the courts: strip away the rewards for effort, and effort itself would die out. Though less becoming, this argument struck the emperor as not without merit, and he set a cap on fees, up to ten thousand sesterces, beyond which advocates would be liable under the extortion law.
8| At about this time Mithridates — whom I have mentioned as having ruled Armenia and then been sent in chains on Gaius Caesar's orders — returned to his kingdom with Claudius's blessing, relying on the resources of Pharasmanes. Pharasmanes, king of Iberia and Mithridates's brother, was reporting that the Parthians were divided and the supreme power in dispute, so lesser matters were being neglected. Gotarzes, among many other savage acts, had arranged the killing of his brother Artabanus, along with his wife and son, and the fear this spread among the rest led them to summon Vardanes. Vardanes, always ready for bold ventures, covered three thousand stades in two days and drove out Gotarzes, who was caught unaware and terrified. He wasted no time in seizing the nearest provinces, and only the people of Seleucia refused to accept his rule. Enraged against them more from anger — since they had also deserted his father — than from any practical need, he found himself bogged down besieging a strong city, protected by a river across its approaches and secured by walls and supplies. Meanwhile Gotarzes, reinforced by the Dahae and Hyrcanians, renewed the war, and Vardanes was forced to abandon Seleucia and pitch camp in the plains of Bactria.
9| With the forces of the East thus divided and their direction uncertain, the chance fell to Mithridates to seize Armenia, using Roman troops to storm the steep hill-forts while Pharasmanes's army swept the plains. The Armenians offered no resistance, once their commander Demonax, who had dared to give battle, was routed. Cotys, king of Lesser Armenia, caused a brief delay when some of the nobles turned to him, but a letter from Claudius checked him, and everything then flowed toward Mithridates, who proved harsher than suited a newly won throne. As for the Parthian commanders, just as they were preparing to fight, they suddenly struck a truce on learning of a plot by their own countrymen, which Gotarzes revealed to his brother. They met first with hesitation, then embraced, and at the altars of the gods swore to avenge the treachery of their enemies and to make concessions to one another. Vardanes was judged the stronger claimant to keep the throne, while Gotarzes, to avoid any rivalry, withdrew deep into Hyrcania. When Vardanes returned, Seleucia surrendered to him in the seventh year after its revolt — not without disgrace to the Parthians, whom a single city had defied for so long.
10| Next he visited the strongest garrison provinces and was eager to recover Armenia, but Vibius Marsus, governor of Syria, held him back with the threat of war. Meanwhile Gotarzes, regretting having given up the throne, and summoned back by the nobility—who find peace harder to bear than war—gathered his forces. The two sides met at the river Erindes; after a hard fight in the crossing, Vardanes won, and successful battles let him subdue the peoples between there and the river Sindes, the boundary between the Dahae and the Arii. There his successes stopped: even in victory, the Parthians had no taste for a long campaign far from home. So he set up monuments proclaiming his power—no earlier Arsacid had ever won tribute from those nations—and returned home in immense glory, all the more arrogant for it and harder on his subjects. They killed him by a plot laid in advance, catching him off guard while out hunting—still barely into manhood, yet famous among few kings even in old age, if only he had sought his people's love as eagerly as their fear. Vardanes' murder threw Parthia into confusion, torn between rival claimants. Many leaned toward Gotarzes, some toward Meherdates, son of Phraates, held by us as a hostage. Gotarzes won out in the end, but once he had the throne his cruelty and excess drove the Parthians to send secret pleas to the Roman emperor, begging that Meherdates be allowed to claim his father's crown.
11| In the same consulship the Secular Games were held, eight hundred years after Rome's founding, and sixty-four after Augustus had staged his own. I pass over the reckoning behind each emperor's dating—it is fully told in the books I wrote on the reign of Domitian, who also held Secular Games; I attended those closely myself, holding a place among the Fifteen priests and serving as praetor at the time. I mention this not to boast but because that priestly college has always overseen this duty, and its members most often carried out the ceremonial offices. While Claudius sat at the circus games, and noble boys rode in the mock battle known as the Troy game, among them Britannicus, the emperor's own son, and Lucius Domitius, soon to be adopted into the imperial house and renamed Nero, the crowd's sharper enthusiasm for Domitius was taken as an omen. It was said that snakes had guarded him as an infant like watchmen—a fable dressed up to match foreign wonders; Nero himself, no man to downplay his own legend, used to say only that a single snake had been seen in his bedroom.
12| Still, the people's sympathies leaned toward the memory of Germanicus, whose last surviving male line this was; and pity for his mother Agrippina grew because of Messalina's cruelty. Messalina was always hostile to her, and just then more restless than usual, kept from plotting charges and accusers only by a fresh, near-mad passion. She had fallen for Gaius Silius, the handsomest young man in Rome, so violently that she drove his wife, the noblewoman Junia Silana, out of the marriage to have him free for herself. Silius was well aware of the scandal and the danger, but refusing her meant certain ruin, while there was some hope of concealment, and the rewards were enormous—so he chose to shut his eyes to the future and enjoy the present as consolation. She came to his house not in secret but with a large retinue, clung to his side when he went out, showered him with wealth and honors. In the end, as if fortune itself had already changed hands, the emperor's slaves, freedmen, and furnishings were seen at her lover's home.
13| Claudius, meanwhile, knew nothing of his own marriage and busied himself playing censor: he issued strict edicts scolding the theater crowd's rowdiness, after they had hurled insults at the ex-consul Publius Pomponius, who wrote plays for the stage, and at some well-known women. He passed a law curbing the cruelty of moneylenders, forbidding money to be lent at interest to sons still under their fathers' authority, repayable on the fathers' deaths. He brought the springs of the Simbruine hills into the city as an aqueduct. And he introduced and put into use new letters of the alphabet, having learned that even Greek writing had not been complete and finished from the start.
14| The Egyptians were the first to render thoughts through animal figures—the oldest records of human memory, still visible carved in stone—and they claim to be the inventors of writing itself. From there, the Phoenicians, dominant at sea, are said to have brought it to Greece and won the credit, as though they had discovered what they had only received. The story goes that Cadmus, sailing with a Phoenician fleet, brought the art to the Greeks, who at that time had no letters of their own. Other traditions instead name Athens' Cecrops, Thebes' Linus, or — in the age of the Trojan War — Palamedes of Argos as the inventor of sixteen letter-forms, with the rest added later, chiefly, it is said, by Simonides. In Italy, the Etruscans learned from Demaratus of Corinth, and the native peoples from Evander the Arcadian; and the shape of Latin letters matches the oldest Greek forms. Even our own alphabet had few letters at first, and more were added later. Following that precedent, Claudius added three new letters, which were in use during his reign and, though dropped afterward, can still be seen today on bronze notices posted in the forums and temples.
15| He then brought before the senate the matter of the college of soothsayers, urging that Italy's oldest discipline not be allowed to fade through neglect: in past crises of the state they had often been consulted, and on their advice rites had been restored and thereafter better observed; the leading families of Etruria, either of their own will or urged by the Roman senate, had kept up the knowledge and passed it down within their households—something now done more carelessly amid general public indifference to worthy skills, and because foreign superstitions were gaining ground. For now, he said, all was well, but the gods' goodwill should be repaid, so that in good times the rites, kept up in uncertain ones, would not simply be forgotten. The senate accordingly decreed that the pontiffs should decide what needed to be kept and strengthened concerning the soothsayers.
16| That same year the Cherusci people asked Rome for a king, having lost their nobles in civil wars and having left only one survivor of the royal line, a man named Italicus who was living in Rome. On his father's side he descended from Flavus, Arminius's brother; his mother came from Actumerus, chief of the Chatti. He himself was handsome, and trained in weapons and horsemanship in both his ancestors' style and ours. So Claudius, having given him money and a bodyguard, urged him to take up his family's honor with good spirit—the first man born at Rome, he said, to go out not as a hostage but as a citizen to rule a foreign people. At first the Germans welcomed his arrival gladly, since, untouched by any factional loyalty, he treated everyone alike; he was praised and courted, showing sometimes an affability and moderation that offended no one, more often the drinking and appetites that barbarians find appealing. His fame grew first among those nearest, then farther afield, until the men who had thrived on faction, suspicious of his growing power, withdrew to neighboring peoples and protested that Germany's old freedom was being stripped away and Roman power was rising up again. Was there truly no one born in that land fit to rule, they asked, that the offspring of Flavus the informer should be exalted above all others? Arminius's name was invoked in vain: had his son, raised on hostile soil, come to take the throne, he might reasonably be feared—shaped as he was by a foreign upbringing, by servitude, by alien customs. But if Italicus had his father's cast of mind, they said, no man had ever waged fiercer war on his own country and its household gods than that father of his.
17| With these and similar arguments they raised a large force, and no fewer followed Italicus. He reminded them that he had not forced his way in against their will but had been summoned, since he outranked all others in noble birth; let them test his courage, he said, and judge for themselves whether he lived up to his uncle Arminius and his grandfather Actumerus. As for his father, he felt no shame: Flavus had chosen his loyalty to Rome freely, and never abandoned it, at a time when the Germans themselves wanted it so. The word 'freedom,' he said, was falsely used as a cover by men who were personally degenerate and ruinous to the public good, with no hope left except through discord. The crowd cheered him on eagerly, and after a great battle among the barbarians the king won—only to be swept by his good fortune into arrogance, driven out, then restored again through the strength of the Lombards, and through good times and bad kept troubling the Cherusci.
18| At about this same time, with no trouble at home and emboldened by Sanquinius's death, the Chauci launched raids into Lower Germany before Corbulo had even arrived, led by Gannascus—a man of the Canninefates who had once served in an auxiliary unit, then deserted, and now, in light raiding boats, plundered mainly the coast of Gaul, knowing it rich and unguarded. Corbulo took charge of the province with great caution and, before long, great renown—this campaign was where it began. He moved his triremes along the Rhine channel and dispatched the remaining vessels, each suited to its own waterway, through the estuaries and canals; the enemy's light boats he sank, and Gannascus he drove off. Once the immediate situation was settled, he brought the legions—grown lazy at drill and labor and all too fond of plundering—back to old discipline, letting no one leave the column or fight without orders. Sentries, watches, and daily and nightly duties were all carried out under arms. It was said that he had soldiers put to death, one for digging a rampart trench without his sword belted on, another for wearing only his dagger while at work. These stories were extreme, and perhaps false, but they took root all the same because of the commander's known severity; and one could judge how relentless he must be over serious offenses from a man credited with such harshness even over trifles.
19| That terror affected us and the enemy in opposite ways: it raised our courage, while it broke the barbarians' spirit. The Frisian nation, hostile or unreliable ever since the rebellion that began with the defeat of L. Apronius, gave hostages and settled on the lands Corbulo had marked out for them. He also set up for them a senate, magistrates, and laws. And to make sure they didn't shake off these arrangements, he fortified a garrison, sending men to lure the greater Chauci into surrender, and at the same time to strike at Gannascus by treachery. The ambush was neither wasted nor beneath its target, since the man was a deserter and an oath-breaker. But his killing stirred up the Chauci, and Corbulo was sowing the seeds of a revolt — welcomed by most as a happy development, but seen by some as an ominous one. Why stir up an enemy? If things went badly, the disaster would fall on the state; if he succeeded, a man of such distinction would be a threat to peace and a burden to a spineless emperor. So Claudius forbade any new offensive action in Germany so firmly that he ordered the garrisons pulled back to this side of the Rhine.
20| Corbulo was already pitching camp on enemy soil when that letter reached him. Caught off guard, with several fears crowding in at once — fear of the emperor, contempt from the barbarians, mockery among the allies — he said nothing but 'Happy were the Roman commanders of old,' and gave the signal to withdraw. Still, to keep his soldiers from falling idle, he had them dig a canal twenty-three miles long between the Meuse and the Rhine, to avoid the unpredictable open sea. Even so, Caesar granted him the honors of a triumph, though he had refused him the war itself. Not long after, Curtius Rufus received the same honor, for having opened mine shafts in the territory of the Mattiaci in search of silver veins — a thin and short-lived profit, while the legions paid for it with hard labor: digging channels, and pushing underground work that was grueling even in the open air. The soldiers, worn down by this, and knowing that similar hardships were being endured across many provinces, put their names to a secret letter, sent in the armies' name, asking that from now on, before he gave anyone a command, the emperor grant the triumphal honors first.
21| As for the origins of Curtius Rufus, whom some claim was the son of a gladiator, I would neither report as fact something false, nor am I comfortable tracing out what may be true. After he grew up, he was attending a quaestor who had been assigned to Africa; one day, wandering alone through the empty colonnades of the town of Hadrumetum at midday, a female figure of more than human size appeared to him, and he heard a voice say, 'You, Rufus, are the man who will come to this province as proconsul.' Lifted by this omen into hope, he went down to Rome, and through friends' generosity and his own sharp talent won the quaestorship, and later, as a candidate of some note, the praetorship through the emperor's backing. Tiberius papered over the disgrace of his birth with a quip: 'Curtius Rufus, it seems to me, fathered himself.' He lived to a great age, gloomy and sycophantic toward his superiors, arrogant toward those below him, and difficult with his equals; he held consular command, the honors of a triumph, and finally the governorship of Africa — and there he died, fulfilling the omen of his fate.
22| Meanwhile at Rome, for no reason known or made public, Cn. Nonius, a Roman knight, was found armed with a sword among the crowd greeting the emperor. When put to torture, he admitted his own guilt but did not give up any accomplices — whether because he had none, or was hiding them, is unclear. In the same consulship, P. Dolabella proposed that gladiatorial games be held every year, funded by those about to enter the quaestorship. Among our ancestors this office had been a reward for merit, and any citizen who trusted in his own good qualities was free to seek public office; age itself was no bar, so that men in their first youth could enter on the consulship or the dictatorship. But quaestors were established even under the kings, as the curiate law, later reenacted by L. Brutus, shows. The power to choose them remained with the consuls, until the people took over that appointment as well. The first elected, in the sixty-third year after the expulsion of the Tarquins, were Valerius Potitus and Aemilius Mamercus, to accompany the army on campaign. Then, as duties multiplied, two more were added to manage affairs at Rome; later the number was doubled, once Italy paid tribute and the revenues of the provinces came in. After that, Sulla's law created twenty, to fill out the senate to which he had handed over the courts. And although the knights later recovered the courts, the quaestorship still continued to be granted freely, based on a candidate's standing or the voters' good will — until, under Dolabella's proposal, it was practically put up for sale.
23| In the consulship of A. Vitellius and L. Vipstanus, when the question of filling out the senate came up, the leading men of Gallia Comata, who had long held treaty rights and Roman citizenship, sought the right to stand for office at Rome. There was much varied talk about this. Opinions clashed before the emperor: some insisted Italy was not so weak that it could not supply its own capital with senators. In the past, they said, native-born men had sufficed for kindred peoples, and no one regretted the old republic; indeed, examples were still recalled of the excellence and glory the ancient Roman character had produced under the old customs. Was it not enough that Veneti and Insubres had already broken into the senate house, without now bringing in a flood of foreigners like some kind of conquest? What honor would be left for the remaining nobles, or for some poor senator from Latium? Those rich provincials would fill up everything — men whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers had led hostile nations, cutting down our armies by the sword, and besieging the deified Julius at Alesia. That was recent history: what if the memory died of those who had perished at the hands of these same peoples beneath the Capitol and the citadel of Rome? Let them enjoy the name of citizenship, by all means — but let them not vulgarize the badges of the senate and the honors of high office.
24| The emperor, unmoved by these and similar arguments, spoke against them at once, and having summoned the senate, began like this: 'My ancestors, the oldest of whom, Clausus, was of Sabine origin and was admitted at once to Roman citizenship and to the patrician families, urge me to follow the same policy in governing the state — to bring here whatever excellence exists anywhere. I know well enough that the Julii trace to Alba, the Coruncanii to Camerium, the Porcii to Tusculum — and, without raking over ancient history, that Etruria, Lucania, and Italy as a whole supplied men to the senate, until finally Italy itself was extended to the Alps, so that not only individuals one by one, but whole lands and peoples, merged into our name. It was when the Transpadanes were admitted to citizenship, when — under the guise of legions settled around the world — the strongest of the provincials were added to reinforce our exhausted empire, that we had solid peace at home and flourished abroad. Do we regret that the Balbi came from Spain, or other men of no less distinction from Narbonese Gaul? Their descendants remain among us, and their love for this country as their homeland is no less than ours. What else destroyed the Spartans and Athenians, for all their military strength, except that they shut out the conquered as foreigners? Our founder Romulus, by contrast, was wise enough to make of most nations, in a single day, first enemies and then citizens. Foreigners have ruled over us as kings; giving public offices to the sons of freedmen is not, as many mistakenly think, some recent innovation, but was common practice among our forebears. Yes, we fought the Senones — but did the Volsci and Aequi never form a battle line against us? The Gauls once took our city — yet we too handed hostages to the Etruscans, and bowed under the Samnite yoke. And yet, if you review all our wars, none was finished in a shorter time than the one against the Gauls; and ever since, peace with them has been constant and reliable. Now that they are blended with us by custom, culture, and marriage, let them bring in their gold and their wealth rather than hold it apart from us. Conscript fathers, whatever now passes for oldest tradition was new once: patrician magistrates came first, then plebeian ones, then Latin, then finally magistrates drawn from the rest of Italy. This too will grow old with time, and what we defend today by precedent will itself become a precedent.'
25| Following the emperor's speech, a decree of the senate gave the Aedui the first right among the Gauls to hold senatorial rank at Rome — granted because of their ancient treaty, and because they alone among the Gauls claim the title of brothers of the Roman people. In the same days Caesar enrolled among the patricians every senator of longest standing, or whose parents had been distinguished, since few were now left of the families that Romulus had called the greater houses and L. Brutus the lesser, and even those which the dictator Caesar had chosen under the lex Cassia, and Augustus under the lex Saenia, were now used up. He took up this welcome public duty as censor with great pleasure. Anxious about how to remove from the senate those with disgraceful records, he chose a gentle and newly devised method rather than the old severity: he advised each man to weigh his own conduct privately and request the right to resign his rank himself, promising easy indulgence in the matter; and he would announce together both those removed from the senate and those who had asked to be excused, so that the censors' judgment and the shame of men stepping down voluntarily would blend together and soften the disgrace. For this the consul Vipstanus proposed that Claudius be named Father of the Senate, since the title Father of the Country was already common to all; new services to the state, he said, deserved to be honored with unusual titles. But Claudius himself restrained the consul for flattering him too much. He also closed the census, in which the number of citizens registered was 5,984,072. And this was the end of his blindness about his own household: not long after, he was forced to learn of, and punish, his wife's crimes — only to be drawn afterward into an incestuous marriage.
26| By now Messalina, sated with the ease of her adulteries, was drifting toward untried pleasures, and it was Silius who pressed hardest to drop the pretense — whether from some fatal recklessness or because he judged the surest cure for looming danger was to court it outright. They had gone too far, he argued, to wait for the emperor to die of old age. For the innocent, harmless plans were enough; but where the crimes were already flagrant, safety had to be sought in audacity. They had accomplices who feared the same fate they did. He himself was unmarried, childless, ready to marry her and adopt Britannicus. Messalina would keep the same power she held now, with the added comfort of security, if they struck first — Claudius was easy to catch off guard but quick to anger once roused. Messalina took this coolly, not out of love for her husband, but from fear that Silius, once he had everything, would spurn his mistress and reassess a crime undertaken in uncertainty at its true cost once it had paid off. Still, she wanted the name of wife, for the sheer scale of the scandal — the last pleasure left to the reckless. Waiting only until Claudius left for Ostia on a sacrificial errand, she went through the full ceremony of a wedding.
27| I am well aware this will look like a fable — that anyone could feel so secure in a city that knows everything and hides nothing, let alone a consul-designate marrying the emperor's wife on an announced day, with witnesses brought in to seal the contract, as though for the begetting of legitimate children; that she listened to the words of the augurs, took her place, offered sacrifice to the gods; that they reclined among guests, exchanged kisses and embraces, and finally passed the night with a bride's license. But I invent nothing for effect — I report only what was heard and written down by those older than myself.
28| So the palace shuddered, and above all those who held real power and, if things turned, had real cause to fear — no longer whispering among themselves but grumbling openly: while an actor had merely defiled the emperor's bedroom, that was a disgrace, but ruin had stayed far off; now a young nobleman, outstanding in looks, force of mind, and a consulship close at hand, was arming himself for a far greater hope. What lay ahead after such a marriage was no secret. Fear crept in, of course, when they weighed how dull Claudius was, how bound to his wife, and how many deaths had already been carried out on Messalina's orders. But then again, the emperor's very complacency gave them confidence: if they could overwhelm him first with the sheer horror of the charge, she could be crushed as condemned before she was even formally accused. Everything turned on one point — whether her defense would be heard at all, and whether his ears could be kept shut even to a confession.
29| At first Callistus — whom I have already mentioned in connection with the killing of Gaius Caesar — and Narcissus, engineer of Appius's death, and Pallas, at that moment riding the height of favor, discussed whether to drive Messalina from her love for Silius by private threats, while covering up everything else. Then, fearing they might drag themselves down in the attempt, they backed off — Pallas out of cowardice, Callistus because he knew the old court too, and reckoned that power was held more safely by cautious counsel than by sharp action. Narcissus alone held firm, changing only his approach: he would say nothing that might tip her off and make her wary of both the charge and the accuser. Watching for his moment, and helped by Claudius's long stay at Ostia, he worked on two of the emperor's mistresses — the ones he was most attached to physically — with gifts, promises, and the argument that a wife's fall would only enlarge their own influence, until he talked them into laying the information.
30| So Calpurnia — that was the mistress's name — once she got a private audience, threw herself at Caesar's knees and cried out that Messalina had married Silius. At the same moment she asked Cleopatra, who stood by waiting for the cue, whether she had heard the same; Cleopatra nodded, and Calpurnia demanded Narcissus be summoned. He begged pardon for having concealed the affairs of Vettius and Plautius in the past, and said he would not now bring up mere adulteries either, since he had no wish to reclaim for Claudius the house, the slaves, and the rest of imperial state that Silius had appropriated — let him keep all that, only let him give back the wife and tear up the marriage contract. 'Do you know,' he said, 'that you're divorced? For the marriage of Silius was witnessed by the people, the senate, the army — and unless you act at once, the husband holds the city.'
31| Then Claudius summoned in turn his closest friends, questioning first Turranius, prefect of the grain supply, then Lusius Geta, commander of the Praetorians. When they confirmed it, the rest crowded around him urging that he go to the camp, secure the Praetorian cohorts, and see to his safety before his revenge. It is well established that Claudius was struck with such panic that he kept asking, over and over, whether he himself still held the empire, or whether Silius was now a private citizen. Messalina, meanwhile, had never been more abandoned to pleasure: it was late autumn, and she was staging a mock grape-harvest through the house. The presses were being worked, the vats ran over; women girt in animal skins leapt about like Bacchantes at sacrifice or in frenzy, Messalina herself with hair loose, shaking a thyrsus, and beside her Silius, crowned with ivy, wearing the buskins, tossing his head, while a lewd chorus roared around them. They say Vettius Valens, in his high spirits, climbed a very tall tree, and when asked what he could see, answered that he saw a fierce storm coming from Ostia — whether that really was what appeared to him, or whether a chance remark simply turned out to be a prophecy.
32| No longer rumor, now — messengers were arriving from every side to say that Claudius knew everything and was coming, ready for vengeance. So Messalina withdrew to the Gardens of Lucullus, and Silius, masking his fear, went off to attend to business in the forum. As the rest scattered in every direction, centurions appeared and fettered them wherever they were found, in the open or in hiding. Messalina, though her situation left little room for planning, still made up her mind, briskly, to go and meet her husband face to face — a tactic that had often saved her before — and sent word that Britannicus and Octavia should run to their father's arms. She also begged Vibidia, most senior among the Vestals, to reach the chief priest and plead her cause. Meanwhile, her isolation had come on so fast that only three companions remained with her; on foot she crossed the city, then took the cart used for hauling garden refuse and set out on the road to Ostia, without anyone showing her the slightest pity, so overwhelming was the ugliness of her crimes.
33| There was panic too around Caesar. Geta, the Praetorian prefect, was a man they did not fully trust, equally pliable toward good or bad. So Narcissus, joined by others who shared his fears, insisted the emperor's only hope of safety lay in transferring command of the soldiers, for that one day, to one of the freedmen — and offered himself for the task. And so that Claudius would not be talked back into forgiving her on the ride into the city by Lucius Vitellius and Largus Caecina, he demanded a seat in the same carriage, and got it.
34| Afterward there was persistent talk that amid Claudius's shifting outbursts — now denouncing his wife's crimes, now drifting back to memories of the marriage and the youth of his children — Vitellius said nothing but 'What an outrage! What a crime!' Narcissus kept pressing him to drop the evasions and speak plainly, but he could not make Vitellius do more than give ambiguous answers that would bend toward whatever direction things took — and Largus Caecina followed his lead. Messalina was already in sight, calling out for Claudius to hear the mother of his own Octavia and Britannicus, but the accuser shouted her down, raising instead the matter of Silius and the wedding; at the same time he handed over notes cataloguing her debaucheries, to keep Caesar's eyes from her. Not long after, as he entered the city, their shared children were brought forward to meet him, but Narcissus had them removed. Vibidia he could not fully push aside; bitterly she kept insisting no wife should be condemned without a hearing. His reply was that she would get her hearing, that room would be made for her to answer the charge — but for now the virgin should withdraw and return to her sacred duties.
35| Through all this, Claudius's silence was remarkable; Vitellius seemed hardly less in the dark. Everyone obeyed the freedman. He ordered the adulterer's house thrown open and the emperor brought there. Right at the entrance he singled out the statue of Silius's father — the one the senate had condemned to destruction — and then pointed out, piece by piece, whatever ancestral property of the Nerones and Drusi had passed to him as the price of her disgrace. Inflamed now and bursting into threats, he brought Claudius to the camp, where a gathering of soldiers had been arranged. Before them, on Narcissus's advice, Claudius spoke only a few words — shame checked even his justified anger. Then came a steady roar from the cohorts, demanding the names and punishment of the guilty. Silius, brought before the tribunal, attempted neither defense nor delay, and begged only that his death be hastened. The same resolve, the same eagerness for a quick end, showed in several distinguished Roman knights. Titius Proculus, who had been set by Silius to guard Messalina and now offered evidence, Vettius Valens, who confessed, and Pompeius Urbicus and Saufeius Trogus, named as accomplices, were all ordered handed over for execution. Decrius Calpurnianus, prefect of the watch, Sulpicius Rufus, manager of the games, and Iuncus Vergilianus, a senator, met the same punishment.
36| Only Mnester caused hesitation. Tearing his clothes, he cried out that they should look at the whip-marks on his body and remember the words with which he had bound himself to obey Messalina's commands — for others, the fault came from bribery or great ambition, for him from sheer necessity; and no one would have had to die before him, had Silius come to power. Claudius was moved by this and leaning toward mercy, but the freedmen pushed him not to spare a mere actor after so many distinguished men had been put to death — whether Mnester had sinned willingly or under compulsion made no difference. Not even the defense of Traulus Montanus, a Roman knight, was accepted. He was a young man of modest habits but striking looks, who had been summoned by Messalina on her own initiative and then discarded within a single night, her lust turning as quickly to distaste as it had turned to craving. Suillius Caesoninus and Plautius Lateranus were spared death — the latter thanks to his uncle's outstanding service; Caesoninus was shielded by his own vices, since in that filthiest of gatherings he was said to have played the woman's part.
37| Meanwhile Messalina, in the Gardens of Lucullus, tried to stretch out her life. She drafted an appeal, moved sometimes by hope, sometimes by anger — even at the extreme edge of ruin, she still carried her pride. If Narcissus had not rushed her death forward, the disaster would have turned back on her accuser. Claudius went home, and a well-timed dinner soothed him; once the wine had warmed him, he ordered that word be sent to "the poor woman" (that is the word they say he used) to appear the next day and answer the charge. When this was heard and it seemed his anger was cooling and his affection returning — and the men feared that if they delayed, night was near and he might remember the bedroom they had shared — Narcissus burst out and ordered the centurions and the tribune on duty to carry out the execution at once: this, he said, was the emperor's command. A freedman, Euodus, was sent to guard and oversee it. He hurried ahead into the gardens and found her stretched on the ground, her mother Lepida sitting beside her. Lepida had never gotten along with her daughter while she flourished, but now, at the final crisis, pity won her over, and she urged Messalina not to wait for the executioner: her life was over, and nothing was left to seek but a decent death. But a mind corrupted by indulgence held nothing honorable in it; she went on weeping and making useless complaints, until the doors were shoved open by the men rushing in, and the tribune stood there in silence — while the freedman shouted abuse at her, coarse and slave-like.
38| Only then did she finally see her situation clearly and take up the blade. In her panic she tried it against her throat and then her chest, achieving nothing, until the tribune ran her through with a single thrust. Her body was given to her mother. Word was brought to Claudius at dinner that Messalina was dead, without saying whether by her own hand or another's. He did not ask. He called for a cup and went on with the party as usual. Not once in the days after did any hatred show on his face, nor any joy; no anger, no grief, nothing that looked like human feeling — not when he watched her accusers gloating, not when he watched her children in tears. The senate helped him forget her: it decreed that her name and her images be removed from all places, public and private. Narcissus was awarded the insignia of a quaestor — a small thing to a man so full of contempt, given that he now ranked above Pallas and Callistus. honorable enough, though from such things the worst consequences would arise … ⟨the text breaks off here⟩