Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| In the consulship of Gaius Vipstanus and Gaius Fonteius, Nero delayed no longer a crime he had long been planning. His boldness had grown with his years in power, and his passion for Poppaea burned hotter every day. She had no hope of marrying him and seeing Octavia divorced while Agrippina lived, so she attacked the emperor with constant accusations, sometimes with mocking jokes, calling him a ward under guardianship, a man who took orders from someone else and lacked not just power but freedom itself. Why else, she asked, was their marriage being put off? Was it her looks that displeased him, or her ancestors' triumphs? Or was it her fertility, her honest devotion? No — he was afraid that a wife, at least, might expose his mother's arrogance and greed to the anger of the senate and the hatred of the people. And if Agrippina could only stand a daughter-in-law who hated her son, then let Poppaea go back to Otho's bed — she would go anywhere on earth rather than watch, from close up, the humiliations heaped on the emperor. Such talk, delivered with tears and a mistress's cunning, worked on Nero unopposed, since everyone wanted his mother's power broken, and no one believed his hatred of her would ever go as far as murder.
2| Cluvius records that Agrippina's hunger to keep her grip on power drove her so far that at midday, when wine and feasting had Nero warmed up, she would come to him often, dressed and ready, prepared for incest. The people around them noticed lascivious kisses and caresses that hinted at coming scandal. Seneca, seeing this, sought a woman's help against a woman's seduction: he sent in the freedwoman Acte, who — worried both for her own safety and for Nero's reputation — was to warn him that the incest was common talk, that his mother was going around bragging of it, and that soldiers would not tolerate a prince marked by so foul a crime. Fabius Rusticus tells it differently: it was Nero who wanted the affair, not Agrippina, and the same freedwoman's cleverness broke it off. But the version Cluvius gives is confirmed by every other source, and public rumor leans that way too — whether Agrippina really conceived such monstrous desires, or whether people simply found it easier to believe fresh depravity of a woman who, as a girl, had committed adultery with Lepidus in hopes of power, and with the same appetite had thrown herself at Pallas and trained herself in every kind of vice through her marriage to her uncle.
3| So Nero began avoiding private meetings with her. When she left for her gardens, or her estate at Tusculum or Antium, he praised her for taking a rest. Finally, wherever she was, he found her presence unbearable and decided to kill her — debating only the method: poison, the sword, or some other form of violence. Poison was his first choice. But given at the emperor's own table, it could not be passed off as accident after Britannicus had already died that way. Winning over accomplices seemed hard too, given a woman so practiced in crime and so alert to plots against her; besides, she had built up her body's resistance by taking antidotes in advance. As for the sword and open murder, no one could think how to hide it, and Nero feared that whoever was chosen for so monstrous a deed might refuse the order. Then the freedman Anicetus, commander of the fleet at Misenum and once Nero's boyhood tutor, hated by Agrippina and hating her in return, offered a clever plan. He explained that a ship could be built with a section that would come apart at sea through a hidden mechanism, throwing her into the water without warning: nothing swallows accidents so readily as the sea, and if she were lost in a shipwreck, who would be unfair enough to blame a crime on what winds and waves had done? The emperor, Anicetus added, could then build his dead mother a temple and altars and put on a show of devotion.
4| The scheme was approved, and the timing helped: the festival of the Quinquatrus was being celebrated at Baiae. Nero lured his mother there, telling everyone that a child ought to bear a parent's outbursts and try to smooth things over — the aim being to spread word of a reconciliation, which Agrippina, with the easy credulity of women where good news is concerned, was glad to believe. He went down to meet her as she arrived by boat from Antium, took her hand, embraced her, and led her to Bauli, a villa that sits where the sea curves in between the headland of Misenum and the lake of Baiae. Among the other ships moored there stood one more finely built than the rest, as if this too were meant to honor his mother — since she usually traveled by trireme, rowed by marine crews. Now she was invited to a banquet, so that night would cover the crime. It is well established that someone gave the plot away, and that Agrippina, hearing of the danger and unsure whether to believe it, was carried to Baiae by litter. There flattery calmed her fears: she was received warmly and given the seat of honor above Nero himself. Through a long meal, talking now with youthful familiarity, now turning serious as if sharing confidences, he drew things out, then walked her out as she left, clinging to her eyes and her chest longer than usual — whether to complete the act, or because even his brutal heart could not help a last look at a mother about to die.
5| The night was bright with stars, the sea calm and still, as if the gods themselves had arranged it to expose the crime. The ship had not gone far — two of Agrippina's household were with her, Crepereius Gallus standing near the tiller, Acerronia reclining at her mistress's feet and happily recalling how the son's anger had cooled and the mother's favor been restored — when, at a signal, the canopy above them, weighted heavily with lead, collapsed. Crepereius was crushed and died instantly. As for Agrippina and Acerronia, the couch's raised sides held firm enough to take the weight, and that chance saved them. The ship did not break apart as planned, since in the confusion most of the crew — not in on the plot — got in the way of those who were. The rowers then decided to tip the vessel over on one side and sink it that way, but they could not agree quickly enough on this sudden change of plan, and others pulling the opposite way gave the two women a chance to slip into the sea more gently. Acerronia, foolishly shouting that she was Agrippina and begging for help for the emperor's mother, was killed with poles, oars, and whatever ship's tackle came to hand. Agrippina, silent and so less recognized — though she took one wound to the shoulder — swam clear, then was picked up by small boats and carried into the Lucrine lake and so to her own villa.
6| There she thought it through: the flattering letter that had summoned her, the special honor she had been shown, the fact that the ship had collapsed at its upper part like some mechanical contraption on dry land, right by the shore, with no wind and no rocks to explain it. She noted, too, Acerronia's death, and, looking at her own wound, concluded there was only one way to answer a plot: pretend it had gone unnoticed. Her freedman Agerinus was dispatched to her son, with word that thanks to heaven's favor and Nero's own luck, she had come through a grave mishap alive. She asked that he, however frightened by his mother's danger, put off any visit — she needed rest for now. Meanwhile, feigning calm, she treated her wound and warmed her body, and gave orders that Acerronia's will be found and her property sealed — the one thing she did without any pretense at all.
7| Nero, meanwhile, waiting for word that the deed was done, was told instead that she had escaped with a light wound, having come close enough to danger that there could be no doubt who was behind it. Terrified, he cried out that she would be here any moment, burning for revenge — arming the slaves, perhaps, or stirring up the soldiers, or making straight for the senate and the people to accuse him of the shipwreck, her wound, the deaths of her friends. What defense did he have, unless Seneca and Burrus could think of something? He had summoned them the moment he woke — though it is unclear whether they already knew. For a long time both men said nothing, unwilling to argue against something that could not be stopped, or perhaps believing things had gone so far that if Agrippina were not struck first, Nero himself would die. At last Seneca spoke first, only far enough to turn to Burrus and ask whether the soldiers could be ordered to kill her. Burrus answered that the praetorians, bound to the whole house of the Caesars and still loyal to the memory of Germanicus, would never bring themselves to any violence against his daughter — let Anicetus carry out what he had promised. Anicetus did not hesitate: let the whole business be entrusted to him, he said. Nero's answer was that only now, on this very day, had he truly received an empire — and that it was a freedman, of all people, who had given him so vast a gift; Anicetus should move at once and pick the boldest men he had for it. As for Nero, when he learned that Agerinus had come as Agrippina's messenger, he set up a frame of his own: right as Agerinus was still speaking, a sword went down at the man's feet, thrown there by Nero, and orders followed to seize him as though caught red-handed — so that he could later claim his mother had schemed to murder the emperor and, caught out, had killed herself from shame.
8| Meanwhile word of Agrippina's danger spread, and people rushed to the shore as though it had all been an accident, everyone doing what they could: some climbed onto the breakwaters, some onto nearby boats, others waded into the sea as far as they could go, some stretched out their hands. The whole shore filled with cries, prayers, and shouting — people asking different questions, others giving uncertain answers. A huge crowd gathered with torches, and once it became known she was safe, they were ready to come and offer their congratulations, until the sight of an armed and threatening column scattered them. Anicetus surrounded the villa with a guard, broke down the door, and seized any slaves he met until he reached the door of her bedroom. A handful of people were left standing there; fear of the men crashing in had sent the rest running. Inside the bedroom, only a faint light was burning, and one maid was with Agrippina, growing more and more uneasy that no one came from her son — not even Agerinus. A happy outcome, she thought, would look different; this was silence, sudden noise, the signs of the worst. As the maid left her, Agrippina said, 'You too are deserting me' — and turned to see Anicetus, with the ship's captain Herculeius and the marine centurion Obaritus. She told him that if he had come to see her, he could report she was recovering; if he had come to do murder, she could not believe her son had ordered it — he had not commanded matricide. The killers closed around the bed. First the captain struck her on the head with a club. Then, as the centurion drew his sword to kill her, she thrust out her body and cried, 'Strike the womb' — and was finished off with many wounds.
9| All this is reported with agreement. Whether Nero looked at his mother's corpse and praised her body—some say yes, some deny it. That very night, on a couch meant for dining, her body was burned in a cheap, hurried funeral; and as long as Nero remained in power, no mound went up and no grave was ever closed over her. Later her household servants gave her a modest tomb, near the road to Misenum and the villa of the dictator Caesar, which looks down from its height over the bays below. When the pyre was lit, her freedman Mnester ran himself through with a sword—whether from love for his patroness or fear of ruin is unclear. Agrippina had foreseen this end for herself many years before, and had scorned it. When she once asked the Chaldean astrologers about Nero, they answered that he would become emperor and kill his mother. 'Let him kill me,' she said, 'so long as he rules.'
10| But only once Caesar had completed the crime did he grasp its magnitude. For the rest of that night he sat rigid in silence, now and then starting up in terror, out of his mind, waiting for daylight as though it would bring his death. Burrus encouraged him, and the first flattery of the centurions and tribunes gave him confidence—they grasped his hand and congratulated him for surviving a plot of his own mother's, sprung on him without warning. His friends then made their way to the temples, and the towns of Campania nearby, taking the cue, celebrated with sacrifices and sent delegations of their own. He himself, by a contrary pretense, seemed grief-stricken, as if angry at his own survival and weeping for his parent's death. But places do not change their look the way men's faces do, and the grim sight of that sea and shore kept confronting him (some believed a trumpet's blast was heard on the surrounding hills, and wailing from his mother's tomb). So he left for Naples, from where he wrote to the senate. The letter's substance: Agerinus, one of Agrippina's most trusted freedmen, had been caught as her hired killer, dagger in hand, and she, aware of her own guilt, had paid for it—as if the plot against Nero's life had been hers.
11| He added charges reaching further back: that she had wanted a share in the empire, had hoped the Praetorian cohorts would swear allegiance to a woman, and that the senate and people would suffer the same disgrace; that once thwarted, she had turned against the soldiers, the senators, and the people, and had argued against the donative to the troops and the largesse to the people, and had plotted against distinguished men. He described what effort it had cost him to stop her from bursting into the senate house or giving answers to foreign delegations. He also attacked the Claudian era obliquely, transferring every outrage of that reign onto his mother, reporting that she had been carried off by the good fortune of the state. He even told the story of the shipwreck—as if anyone were so dull as to believe that was an accident, or that a woman who had just survived a shipwreck could then dispatch some lone armed man to punch through the guard and fleet surrounding an emperor. So it was no longer Nero, whose monstrousness outran every complaint, but Seneca who bore the ill repute, for having written such a confession in a speech.
12| Yet the leading men competed in a strange contest: they decreed thanksgivings at every shrine, that the festival of Minerva, during which the plot had been uncovered, be celebrated annually with games, that a golden statue of Minerva be set up in the senate house with the emperor's image beside it, and that Agrippina's birthday be marked among the unlucky days. Thrasea Paetus, who used to let earlier flatteries pass in silence or brief assent, now walked out of the senate, risking himself but giving no one else the courage to follow. Portents, too, came thick and useless: a woman gave birth to a snake, another was struck dead by lightning in her husband's bed; the sun went dark without warning, and lightning struck every one of the city's fourteen districts. All this happened with so little concern from the gods that Nero went on ruling and committing crimes for many years after. To ease the ill feeling against him now that his mother was removed, and to show his newfound mildness, he restored to their homes the noblewomen Junia and Calpurnia and the ex-praetors Valerius Capito and Licinius Gabolus—all of them people Agrippina had once had exiled. He likewise permitted Lollia Paulina's ashes to return home and a tomb to be raised over them, and released from punishment Iturius and Calvisius, whom he himself had recently exiled. Silana had already died, having returned from long exile to Tarentum once Agrippina's power was failing—the very enmity that had ruined her now relaxed, or perhaps had softened.
13| He stayed on in the Campanian towns even so, unsure how Rome would receive him—would the senate obey, would the people cheer? Meanwhile the worst men in his circle (and no court ever had more of them) assured him that Agrippina's name was loathed, that her death had made him more popular, not less: he should go boldly and see their devotion for himself. And they insisted on going ahead of him. They found the welcome even warmer than promised: crowds meeting him by the roadside, the senate in festive dress, wives and children lined up by sex and age, tiered platforms built along his route as for viewing a triumph. Puffed up by this, victorious over a whole city's servility, he went up to the Capitol, gave thanks, and gave himself over to every indulgence, which some remnant of respect for his mother, however feeble, had until then held in check.
14| He had long wanted to drive a four-horse chariot in the arena, and an equally shameful desire to sing to the lyre, performer-style. He would point out that racing horses was a royal pastime, practiced by generals of old, celebrated in the praises of poets and given as an honor to the gods; and that song was sacred to Apollo, and that this god, in such attire, stood as a great and prophetic presence not only in Greek cities but at Roman temples too. He could no longer be restrained, and Seneca and Burrus decided that since they could not stop both, they would give way on one. An enclosed space was made in the Vatican valley where he could drive his horses without a public audience. Soon the Roman people were themselves invited, and praised him lavishly—the crowd being what it is, greedy for pleasures, and glad when the emperor shares its tastes. But this public exposure of his shame brought not satisfaction, as they expected, but further appetite. Thinking to lessen the disgrace by spreading it among more people, he brought onto the stage the impoverished descendants of noble families, bought for money—those who have since died I will not name, out of respect for their ancestors, though the real disgrace belongs to him who paid them to sin rather than paying them not to. He also forced well-known Roman knights to promise to perform in the arena, with huge gifts—though when the one giving the orders can also compel, a gift is really just coercion.
15| But to avoid disgracing himself yet in a public theater, he founded games called the Juvenalia, for which people signed up from everywhere. No one's rank, age, or past honors kept them from practicing the arts of the Greek or Latin stage, down to gestures and tunes fit for no man. Even distinguished women rehearsed shameful roles. In the grove that Augustus had planted around his artificial lake, little pavilions were built, taverns, and stalls selling incitements to vice. Money was handed out, which the decent spent under compulsion and the dissolute for glory. From this, vice and disgrace grew, and nothing did more to corrupt already-corrupted morals than that filthy mess. Modesty is barely kept alive even by honest pursuits—how much less could chastity or restraint or any decent custom survive amid a contest of vices? Last of all Nero himself walked onto the stage, working hard over his lyre and rehearsing with the music teachers standing by. A company of soldiers was there too, centurions and tribunes, and Burrus, grieving yet praising him. This was the occasion on which Roman knights were first signed up under the title Augustiani—men who stood out for their youth and vigor, some brazen by nature, others hoping for advancement. Day and night they thundered applause, calling the emperor's looks and voice divine, as if they were famous and honored for their own merit.
16| So that his theatrical talents alone would not be all that was known of him, he also took up an interest in poetry, gathering around him men with some small skill in composition, not yet well known. After dinner these men would sit together, stringing together verses they brought with them or made up on the spot, and filling out whatever lines Nero himself tossed off—as the style of the verses shows, not flowing from one continuous impulse or inspiration. He also gave time after meals to teachers of philosophy, enjoying watching them argue and contradict each other. And there was no shortage of men eager to be seen with a solemn face and grave look amid the emperor's entertainments.
17| About this same time, a minor spark set off a savage bloodbath between Nuceria's settlers and those of Pompeii, at a gladiatorial show staged by Livineius Regulus—the same man whose expulsion from the senate I have already noted. In typical small-town rowdiness they traded insults, then stones, then swords, the Pompeians having the stronger numbers since the show was held in their town. Many of the Nucerians were carried back to Rome with mutilated wounds, and many mourned the deaths of children or parents. The emperor left the judgment of the matter to the senate, and the senate passed it to the consuls. When it came back before the senate, the Pompeians were banned for ten years from holding any such gathering, and whatever unlawful associations they had set up were broken apart. As for Livineius and the rest who had incited the riot, exile was their punishment.
18| Pedius Blaesus was also removed from the senate, accused by the people of Cyrene of violating the treasury of Aesculapius and of corrupting the military levy through bribery and favoritism. The same Cyrenians brought charges against Acilius Strabo, who had held praetorian authority and been sent by Claudius to settle a land dispute: fields once belonging to King Apion's ancestors, left to the Roman people along with his kingdom, had been seized one after another by whoever held them next, and long-standing abuse and lawlessness were being defended as if they were legal right. When the land was taken from them by judgment, resentment fell on the judge, and the senate replied that it did not know the terms of Claudius's original commission and that the emperor should be consulted. Nero, approving Strabo's judgment, wrote back that he would nonetheless come to the aid of the allies and let them keep the land they had occupied.
19| Next came the deaths of illustrious men: Domitius Afer and Marcus Servilius, both of whom had reached the highest honors and were famous for eloquence — Afer for pleading cases, Servilius first for a long career at the bar, then for his celebrated history of Rome, and for a refinement of life that made him even more distinguished. They matched in talent but were opposites in character.
20| In the fourth consulship of Nero, with Cornelius Cossus as his colleague, a festival of games on a five-year cycle was established at Rome in the Greek style. Opinion was divided, as it usually is about anything new. Some recalled that even Pompey the Great had been criticized by the older generation for building a permanent theater. Before that, games had been staged on makeshift stands with a temporary stage, or, going back further, the audience had watched standing up, so that if they sat in a theater they wouldn't waste whole days in idleness. As for the games themselves, tradition was to be kept: whenever the praetors put them on, no citizen was required to compete. But now the ancestral customs, already fading, were being torn up by the roots through imported decadence, so that whatever could corrupt or be corrupted anywhere was now on display in Rome, and the young were degenerating through foreign pursuits — gymnasiums, idleness, and shameful love affairs — encouraged by the emperor and senate, who not only allowed vice free rein but actually pressured Rome's leading men to disgrace themselves on stage under the pretext of speeches and poems. What was left, people asked, but to strip their bodies naked too, put on boxing gloves, and train for that instead of soldiering? Would justice improve, would the juries of knights perform their solemn duty of judgment better, for having learned to appreciate broken cadences and sweet voices? Nights, too, were now given over to this disgrace, so that no hour was left for shame — instead, in the mixed crowd, whatever the most degenerate had craved by day, they now dared in the dark.
21| Most people simply liked the license itself, though they draped it in respectable language. Their ancestors, they argued, hadn't shunned the pleasures of spectacle either, given the resources of their time — hence actors brought in from Etruria, horse races from Thurii; and once Achaia and Asia were under Roman control, games were staged there with even more care, and no Roman of good birth had ever stooped to the theatrical arts, in the two hundred years since Lucius Mummius's triumph, the first man to bring that kind of spectacle to the city. It was also economical, they said, to build a permanent theater rather than spend a fortune putting one up and tearing it down every year. Nor would the magistrates drain their own fortunes as they had before, or the people pressure officials to fund Greek-style contests, since the state itself now covered the expense. Victories in oratory and poetry would spur talent; and no judge should feel burdened by devoting his ears to honest pursuits and permitted pleasures. The few nights out of the whole five-year cycle were given to festivity, not license, since with so much light from the torches nothing improper could stay hidden. In fact the show passed without any glaring disgrace, and even the common people showed no great enthusiasm, since although pantomime actors were restored to the stage, they were barred from the sacred competitions. No one won first prize for oratory — instead, Caesar was declared the victor. The Greek-style cloaks that many had taken to wearing during the festival went out of fashion soon after.
22| Meanwhile a comet blazed in the sky, which popular belief holds portends a change of ruler. So, as if Nero were already deposed, people began asking who would replace him, and the name on everyone's lips was Rubellius Plautus, noble on his mother's side through the Julian family. Plautus himself lived by the old-fashioned standards, austere in bearing, his household chaste and withdrawn, and the more he shunned attention, the greater the reputation he gained. This talk was fed further by an equally baseless reading of a lightning strike: because while Nero was dining at his villa called Sublaqueum by the Simbruine lakes, the food and table were struck, and this happened in the territory of Tibur, from which Plautus's family originally came, people believed this marked him out as chosen by divine will — and many who eagerly, if often wrongly, read omens into anything new and uncertain began to court him out of ambition. Alarmed by this, Nero wrote to Plautus advising him to look to the peace of the city and remove himself from those spreading ugly rumors about him: he had ancestral estates in Asia where he could enjoy his youth safely and undisturbed. So Plautus withdrew there with his wife Antistia and a few of his household. Around the same time, an excessive taste for luxury brought Nero disgrace and danger, when he swam in the source of the Marcian aqueduct as it entered the city; by swimming there he seemed to have profaned the holy waters and the place's sanctity alike. The grave illness that followed was taken as confirmation of the gods' anger.
23| Meanwhile Corbulo, having destroyed Artaxata, judged it best to use the fresh terror to seize Tigranocerta — razing it would deepen the enemy's terror, while sparing it would earn him a name for mercy — so he marched there, keeping his troops from open hostility so as not to close off hope of pardon, but staying alert, knowing this was a people quick to shift loyalties, as sluggish in the face of danger as they were treacherous when opportunity arose. The barbarians reacted each according to his nature: some offered submission, some abandoned their villages and fled into the wilds, and some hid themselves and their most treasured possessions in caves. So the Roman commander used different methods for each — mercy toward those who submitted, speed against those who fled, and ruthlessness toward those who had holed up in hiding, burning the mouths and passages of their caves after packing them with brushwood and kindling. As he advanced past their own borders, the Mardi, a people practiced in raiding, attacked him, a people practiced in raiding and shielded by their mountains against his advance; Corbulo sent in the Hiberi to lay waste to them, punishing their reckless daring with foreign blood.
24| Corbulo and his army, though they had suffered no losses in battle, were wearing down from want and hardship, forced to fend off hunger with the meat of pack animals. On top of that came a shortage of water, blistering summer heat, and long marches, all made bearable only by the commander's own endurance, which he shared — and more — with the common soldiers. They then reached cultivated land where the crops had already been harvested, and of two forts where the Armenians had taken refuge, one was captured by direct assault; the defenders who had beaten off the first attack were then forced into submission by siege. From there Corbulo crossed into the territory of the Tauraunitae and narrowly avoided an unforeseen danger: not far from his tent a barbarian of some standing was found armed, and under torture revealed the whole plot, naming himself as its author along with his accomplices; those who under a pretense of friendship had been preparing treachery were convicted and punished. Not long after, envoys arrived from Tigranocerta reporting that the city's gates stood open, its people awaiting orders, and presenting a golden crown as a gift of hospitality. Corbulo received it with honor and took nothing from the city, so its people would keep their goodwill undiminished and give obedience the more readily.
25| The garrison at Legerda, however, which fierce young defenders had shut up, was taken only after a real fight: they had dared to give battle before the walls, and when driven back, held out behind their fortifications until they finally yielded to a siege ramp and the swords of the attackers. This all went more smoothly because the Parthians were tied down by a war with Hyrcania. The Hyrcanians even sent envoys to the Roman commander seeking alliance, pointing out that they were holding Vologaeses in check as a pledge of their friendship. As they made their way back, Corbulo, to keep them from being surrounded by enemy patrols after crossing the Euphrates, gave them an escort to the shores of the Red Sea, from where, avoiding Parthian territory, they returned home.
26| Corbulo also drove off Tiridates, who was entering the far reaches of Armenia through Media, sending the legate Verulanus ahead with auxiliary troops and then following swiftly with the legions himself, forcing Tiridates to retreat and abandon hope of war. Wherever he found the local population hostile to Rome, Tiridates ravaged with fire and slaughter, trying to seize control of Armenia — until Tigranes arrived, chosen by Nero to take the throne. He was of the Cappadocian nobility, grandson of King Archelaus, but having spent many years as a hostage at Rome, his spirit had been broken down to something like a slave's submissiveness. His acceptance was not unanimous, since loyalty to the Arsacid line still lingered among some; but most people, sick of Parthian arrogance, preferred a king given to them by Rome. A garrison was also assigned to him — a thousand legionaries with three allied cohorts and two wings of cavalry — and to help him hold his new kingdom more securely, the neighboring regions of Armenia were ordered to obey Pharasmanes, Polemo, Aristobulus, and Antiochus respectively, according to which bordered them. Corbulo withdrew to Syria, left vacant and placed under his authority by the death of the governor Ummidius.
27| That same year Laodicea, one of the great cities of Asia, was leveled by an earthquake and recovered on its own, with no help from us. Meanwhile in Italy, Puteoli, an old town, received from Nero the rights and title of a colony. Veterans were enrolled at Tarentum and Antium, but this did nothing to relieve those towns' emptiness, since most of the settlers drifted off to the provinces where they had served out their years, unused to taking wives or raising children, and left childless households behind with no heirs. It was no longer as it had once been, when whole legions were settled together with their tribunes and centurions and the men of their own units, so that shared feeling and comradeship built a real community. Now they were strangers to one another, drawn from scattered companies, with no leader and no bonds of affection, thrown together suddenly as if from different tribes of mankind — a mere crowd, not a colony.
28| Elections for praetor had usually been left to the senate's judgment, but competition for the posts had grown so fierce that the emperor stepped in, putting the three candidates who exceeded the quota in command of a legion instead. He also enhanced the senate's standing by ruling that anyone who appealed from a private judge's verdict to the senate would risk the same sum as if he had appealed to the emperor — previously such appeals had cost nothing and carried no penalty. At year's end the Roman knight Vibius Secundus was convicted of extortion on charges brought by Moors and expelled from Italy; only his brother Vibius Crispus's influence spared him a harsher sentence.
29| In the consulship of Caesennius Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus, Britain suffered a serious defeat. The governor Aulus Didius, as I have noted, had done no more than hold what earlier commanders had won, and his successor Veranius, after some modest raids on the Silures, was stopped by death before he could press the war further — he had a great reputation for severity while he lived, but his will betrayed his vanity: he flattered Nero extravagantly, claiming he would have conquered the whole province for him had he lived two more years. At this point Britain was governed by Suetonius Paulinus, a man skilled in warfare and, thanks to public opinion, which never lets anyone go unrivaled, cast as Corbulo's rival — he wanted glory to rival Corbulo's Armenian triumph, and crushing Britain's enemies would give it to him. So he set his sights on Mona, an island thick with fighting men and sheltering fugitives, and had flat-bottomed boats built for the shallow, shifting channel there. Foot soldiers went across in these; the horsemen either forded the strait or, in the deeper stretches, swam beside their mounts.
30| A hostile force stood massed along the shore, dense with men and weapons, women running among them — dressed in black like the Furies, hair streaming, they brandished torches. Around them the Druids raised their hands to heaven and poured out terrible curses, and the strangeness of the sight froze the soldiers, who stood rooted and exposed to wounds as if their limbs had failed them. But urged on by their commander, and goading each other not to fear a mob of women and fanatics, they advanced the standards, cut down everyone in their path, and swallowed the enemy in their own fire. A garrison was then placed over the conquered, and the groves sacred to their savage superstitions were cut down — for the Druids believed it right to drench their altars in captive blood and consult the gods through human entrails. While Suetonius was occupied with this, news reached him that the province had suddenly risen in revolt.
31| Prasutagus, whose long reign over the Iceni had made him famous for his wealth, had made the emperor co-heir with his two daughters, believing that gesture would shield his household and kingdom from harm. It turned out otherwise: his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his household by slaves, as if both had been taken by conquest. His wife Boudicca was flogged, and his daughters raped. The leading men of the Iceni were stripped of their ancestral property as though the whole territory had been handed over as spoils, and the king's relatives were treated as slaves. Driven by this outrage and the fear of worse — for they had now been reduced to the status of a province — they took up arms, and stirred the Trinobantes to join the revolt, along with others who had not yet been broken by servitude and had secretly pledged themselves to recover their freedom. Their hatred burned fiercest against the veterans, who had lately been settled as colonists at Camulodunum: these men drove people from their homes, evicted them from their land, and called them captives and slaves, encouraged in their arrogance by soldiers who shared their way of life and hoped for the same license. Worse still, the temple built to the deified Claudius stood there like a citadel of everlasting tyranny, and the priests appointed to serve it drained the province's wealth under the pretext of religion. Destroying the colony seemed no great task, since it had no fortifications — a matter our commanders had given too little thought to, more concerned with pleasant living than practical defense.
32| Meanwhile, for no discernible reason, Camulodunum's statue of Victory toppled and lay with its face to the ground, as though it were fleeing the enemy. Women worked themselves into a frenzy, chanting that destruction was near; strange cries had been heard in their senate house, they said, the theater had echoed with wailing, and a phantom city lay overturned in the estuary of the Thames. The sea, too, had turned the color of blood, and at low tide left behind shapes like human corpses — omens the Britons read as hope and the veterans as dread. But since Suetonius was far away, they appealed for help to the procurator Catus Decianus. He sent barely two hundred men, and those without proper weapons, along with the small garrison already there. Trusting to the temple's protection, and hampered by secret sympathizers with the revolt who sabotaged their plans, they built neither ditch nor rampart, nor did they send away the old and the women, leaving only the young men to defend the place — as careless as if it were peacetime, until they were surrounded by a horde of barbarians. Everything outside the temple was looted or burned in the first rush; the temple itself, where the soldiers had gathered, held out under siege for two days before it fell. Riding that success, the Britons then encountered the Ninth Legion's commander, Petilius Cerialis, moving up to relieve the town; they crushed his legion and cut down every foot soldier he had. Cerialis escaped with his cavalry to the camp and held out behind its defenses. Shaken by this disaster, and by the province's hatred, which his own greed had done much to provoke, the procurator Catus fled to Gaul.
33| Suetonius, meanwhile, with remarkable nerve, pushed through enemy territory to reach Londinium — a town not distinguished by the title of colony, but thriving with merchants and supplies. There he hesitated over whether to make it his base, but weighing the thinness of his forces and the costly lesson taught by Petilius's rashness, he decided to save the larger cause by sacrificing this one town. He was unmoved by the tears and pleas of those begging for protection; he gave the signal to march, taking along any who could join the column. Those held back by weakness, old age, or attachment to the place were slaughtered by the enemy. The municipality of Verulamium suffered the same fate, since the barbarians, bypassing forts and garrisons, went gladly after the richest and least defended targets, eager for plunder and too lazy for hard fighting. It is generally agreed that some seventy thousand citizens and allies died in the places I have named. The enemy took no interest in capturing or selling prisoners, or in any of war's usual exchanges — they rushed straight to slaughter, gallows, fire, and crucifixion, as if hastening to take their revenge before having to pay for it themselves.
34| By now Suetonius had the Fourteenth Legion with him, along with detachments of the Twentieth and auxiliaries drawn from nearby posts — roughly ten thousand armed men in all — and he resolved to end his delay and offer battle. He chose ground approached through a narrow defile and closed off behind by a forest, confident that the enemy held nothing but open plain in front, with no danger of ambush. So the legionaries stood massed in close ranks, light-armed troops around them, and cavalry gathered thick on the wings. The British forces, meanwhile, surged everywhere in bands and squadrons, a greater host than had ever gathered before, and so fierce in spirit that they brought their wives along to witness the victory, setting them in wagons ranged around the field's outer edge.
35| Boudicca, driving her daughters before her in a chariot, declared to each tribe as she reached it that it was common enough for Britons to fight under a woman's leadership — but this time she came not as a queen of great ancestry avenging her lost kingdom and wealth, but as one more woman of the people, avenging lost freedom, a body broken by the lash, and the violated honor of her daughters. Roman greed had gone so far, she said, that they left nothing untouched — not bodies, not old age, not virgin innocence. But the gods stood by a just cause: the legion that had dared to fight had already fallen; the rest cowered in their camps or looked for a way to flee. They would never withstand the roar and shout of so many thousands, let alone the shock of their charge — if they weighed their numbers and the justice of their cause, they must see that on this field they had to win or die. That was a woman's resolve; the men could live and be slaves if they chose.
36| Suetonius, too, did not stay silent at this critical moment. Though confident of his men's courage, he mixed encouragement with appeal, urging them to ignore the barbarians' noise and empty threats — there were more women than fighting men in that horde. Unwarlike, unarmed, they would break the moment they recognized the steel and courage of troops who had beaten them so many times before. Even in a large army, he said, only a few actually decide the battle, and it would add to their glory that so small a force could win the fame of a whole army. Let them only stay in close order, hurl their javelins, and then keep up the killing with shield-boss and sword, without a thought for plunder — once victory was won, everything would be theirs. Such was the fire that followed his words; the veteran soldiers, so practiced in battle, made ready to hurl their javelins with such assurance that Suetonius, certain of the outcome, gave the signal to engage.
37| The legion first held its ground, using the narrow approach as a shield, and once the enemy had closed in near enough for their volleys to find their mark and run out, they burst forward in wedge formation. The auxiliaries charged the same way, and the cavalry, lances leveled, broke through whatever resistance stood firm before them. The rest of the Britons turned to flee, but escape was difficult, since their own wagons, ringed around the field, blocked the way out. The soldiers spared no one, not even the women; the baggage animals too, pierced with javelins, added to the heaps of dead. It was a victory as brilliant as any won in earlier days — some accounts claim nearly eighty thousand Britons fell, against barely four hundred Roman soldiers killed and not many more wounded. Boudicca ended her life with poison. And Poenius Postumus, camp prefect of the Second Legion, on hearing of the success won by the men of the Fourteenth and Twentieth, and ashamed at having denied his own legion an equal share of the glory by disobeying his commander's orders against military custom, ran himself through with his sword.
38| The whole army was then concentrated and kept under tents to finish off the rest of the war. Nero reinforced it, sending from Germany two thousand legionaries, eight auxiliary cohorts, and a thousand cavalry. Their arrival brought the Ninth Legion back up to strength, the cohorts and cavalry wings were settled in new winter quarters, and whatever tribes had been wavering or hostile were laid waste with fire and sword. But nothing hurt worse than famine, since the Britons had neglected to sow their fields, every age group having gone to war instead, counting on seizing our supplies for themselves. And these fiercest of peoples were slower still to bend toward peace, because Julius Classicianus, sent out to replace Catus and at odds with Suetonius, let his personal quarrels obstruct the public good. He had spread word that people should wait for a new governor, one who, without an angry conqueror's arrogance, would deal gently with those who surrendered. At the same time he wrote to Rome that they should expect no end to the fighting unless Suetonius were replaced, attributing his setbacks to the man's own perversity and his successes to luck.
39| So Polyclitus, one of the freedmen, was sent to inspect the state of Britain. Nero had great hopes that his authority could not only patch up the discord between the governor and the procurator but also pacify the rebellious tempers of the natives. Polyclitus did not fail to make himself a burden, moving through Italy and Gaul with an enormous train, and once he had crossed the Ocean he made himself a terror even to our own soldiers. But among the enemy he was a joke, for their freedom still burned fresh and they had never yet learned the power of freedmen; it amazed them that slaves could give the orders, with a general and an army standing behind them who had just brought so vast a war to its close. Still, everything was reported to the emperor in a softened light. Suetonius was kept on in command, but after he later lost a few ships on the shore along with their crews, he was ordered to hand over the army to Petronius Turpilianus, who had just laid down his consulship, on the pretext that the war was still going on. Turpilianus, provoking the enemy not at all and provoked by them just as little, dressed up his lazy inaction with the respectable name of peace.
40| That same year at Rome two notorious crimes were committed, one by a senator's daring, the other by a slave's. Domitius Balbus was a former praetor, exposed to schemers both by his great old age and by his childlessness and wealth. A relative of his, Valerius Fabianus, who was aiming at high office, forged a will for him, bringing in as accomplices the Roman knights Vinicius Rufinus and Terentius Lentinus. Between them they had already drawn in two more, Antonius Primus and Asinius Marcellus. Antonius would try any daring scheme; Marcellus, distinguished by his great-grandfather Asinius Pollio, was not thought a bad man himself, except that he believed poverty the worst of evils. So Fabianus sealed the forged document with these accomplices I have named and with others less prominent. The matter was proven before the senate, the Cornelian law then brought down Fabianus and Antonius, and Rufinus and Terentius with them. Marcellus was spared the penalty, though not the disgrace, out of respect for his ancestors and at Nero's personal request.
41| That same day's business also struck down Pompeius Aelianus, a young ex-quaestor, on the grounds that he had known of Fabianus's crimes, and he was banned from Italy and from Spain, his native province. Valerius Ponticus suffered an equal disgrace, for having brought the accused before the praetor rather than the city prefect, to keep them from being tried there — a maneuver meant, under cover of legal form, to dodge justice later through collusion. The senate added a decree that anyone who bought or sold such services should be liable to the same penalty as one convicted in open court of malicious prosecution.
42| Not long after, the city prefect Pedanius Secundus was murdered by his own slave, either because the man had been refused the freedom he had already bargained for, or because he burned with love for another slave and could not bear his master as a rival. But since ancient custom required that every slave who had lived under the same roof be put to death, a crowd gathered to shield so many innocent people, and things came close to riot; the senate house itself was besieged. Inside, opinion was divided too, some recoiling from such severity, though most held that nothing should be changed. Among these, Gaius Cassius, when his turn came to speak, argued as follows:
43| 'Many times, conscript fathers, I have sat in this body when new decrees were proposed against the institutions and laws of our ancestors, and I did not object — not because I doubted that things had once been arranged better and more rightly, and that whatever was changed was changed for the worse, but because I did not want to seem to be pushing my devotion to old custom too far. At the same time I thought I should not wear down whatever authority I have by constant objection, so that it would remain intact for the day the state truly needed it. That day has come today, with a man of consular rank murdered in his own house by a slave's treachery, a plot no one betrayed or prevented, even though the senate's decree threatening the whole household with death has not yet been shaken. Go ahead, then, vote for impunity — but whom will his own rank protect, when it did not protect the city prefect? Whom will a crowd of slaves guard, when four hundred did not guard Pedanius Secundus? Who will get help from his household, when ours does not even notice our danger out of fear for itself? Or, as some are shameless enough to imagine, did the killer avenge his own wrongs, because he had struck a bargain over his father's money or was being deprived of an inherited slave? Let us go ahead and declare that a master was rightly killed.'
44| 'Are we to go hunting for arguments against something wiser men before us already settled? But even if we had to decide this question for the first time now, do you believe a slave formed the resolve to kill his master without a threatening word escaping him, without blurting anything out rashly? Grant that he kept his plan hidden, that he got his weapon among people who suspected nothing: could he really slip past the night watch, force open the bedroom door, bring in a light, and commit the murder with everyone in ignorance? A crime gives off many warning signs beforehand. If slaves betray them, we can live singly among the many, safe among the anxious, and, if it comes to the worst, at least not die unavenged among the guilty. Even a slave born on the family estate, raised in the same household, nursing an inherited fondness for his master from childhood on — even him our ancestors did not trust. But now that we keep whole nations as our household slaves, people of different customs, with foreign rites or none at all, you will never control that mixed rabble except by fear. True, some innocent men will die. But even when a defeated army is punished by decimation, and every tenth man is clubbed to death by lot, the brave fall along with the rest. Every great example carries some injustice in it, one that is repaid to individuals by the benefit it brings the public as a whole.'
45| Not one man dared to speak directly against Cassius's opinion, but a discordant chorus answered him, voices pitying the sheer number, the age, the sex, and the plain innocence of most of the condemned; still, the vote for execution won out. Carrying it out was another matter — a mob had massed together, hurling stones and brandishing torches. Nero then rebuked the people by edict and lined the whole route along which the condemned were led to punishment with military guards. Cingonius Varro had proposed that the freedmen who had lived under the same roof should also be deported from Italy. This the emperor forbade, so that an old custom which mercy had not softened should not now be made harsher out of cruelty.
46| In the same consulship the Bithynians brought a complaint of extortion against Tarquitius Priscus and won his condemnation, to the senate's great delight — they had not forgotten that Tarquitius himself had once prosecuted his own proconsul, Statilius Taurus. Quintus Volusius, Sextius Africanus, and Trebellius Maximus conducted a census across the Gallic provinces; Volusius and Africanus, matched in noble blood, each refused to give ground to the other, and Trebellius, thanks to their rivalry, finished ahead of them both.
47| That year Memmius Regulus died, a man distinguished by authority, steadiness, and reputation, so far as such things can shine at all in the shadow cast by an emperor's greatness — so distinguished that once, when Nero fell ill and the flatterers around him were saying the empire would end if anything happened to him by fate, Nero answered that the state had a resource. Asked in whom above all, he had named Memmius Regulus. Yet Regulus lived on after this, protected by his own quiet manner and by the fact that his rank, though newly won, carried no wealth to provoke envy. That same year Nero dedicated a gymnasium and, with Greek open-handedness, supplied oil for the knights and the senate.
48| Under the consulship of Publius Marius and Lucius Afinius, the praetor Antistius, whom I have already mentioned as having behaved recklessly while tribune of the plebs, took to composing scurrilous verses against the emperor and read them aloud before a packed table at a dinner in the house of Ostorius Scapula. Cossutianus Capito brought the charge of treason against him — Capito, only lately returned to the senate after his father-in-law Tigellinus interceded on his behalf. Not since the old days had that law been invoked, and it was widely believed that the aim was not so much Antistius's destruction as glory for the emperor, who could then use a tribune's veto to save from death a man condemned by the senate. When Ostorius testified under oath that he had heard nothing, the witnesses against Antistius were believed instead, and the consul-elect Junius Marullus proposed stripping the defendant of his praetorship and putting him to death in the ancient manner. As the rest fell in line with this, Paetus Thrasea, after paying Nero great honor and denouncing Antistius sharply, argued that whatever a guilty defendant deserved to suffer, it was not for the senate, under so excellent an emperor and bound by no compulsion, to decree it: the executioner and the noose had long since been abolished, and the laws provided punishments that could be imposed without cruelty on the judges' part or disgrace to the age. Rather, Antistius should be sent to an island, his property confiscated — the longer he dragged out his guilty life, the more wretched he would be in private, and the more striking an example of the state's public mercy.
49| Thrasea's independence broke the servility of the others. Once the consul allowed a vote by division, they crossed the floor to his side, all but a few — among them Aulus Vitellius, quickest of all to flatter, who baited every honest man with insults and fell silent whenever one answered back, as timid natures do. But the consuls did not dare carry out the senate's decree; instead they wrote to Caesar reporting the consensus. Nero, torn between shame and anger, finally wrote back that Antistius, provoked by no injury, had spoken the gravest insults against the emperor; the senators had demanded punishment for this, and a penalty proportioned to so great an offense would have been just. But he himself, though he might have blocked their severity, would not stand in the way of their restraint — let them decide as they wished; they were free to acquit as well. When this letter, and others like it, were read out, the emperor's displeasure was plain — yet the consuls did not withdraw the motion, nor did Thrasea back down, nor did the others abandon what they had approved: some, so as not to seem to have exposed the emperor to public resentment; more of them, simply because their numbers made them safe; Thrasea, from his usual firmness of spirit, and because he would not let his reputation slip.
50| Fabricius Veiento was caught up in a similar charge, for having written much slander against the senators and priests in books he called his 'Codicils.' His accuser, Tullius Geminus, added that he had sold imperial appointments and the right to office. This gave Nero grounds to take up the case himself. Veiento, convicted, was banished from Italy, and his books were ordered burned — which only made people hunt them down and read them eagerly while the danger lasted; once it became legal to own them, they were forgotten.
51| But as the public evils worsened day by day, the props holding things up grew fewer. Burrus died, whether from illness or poison is uncertain. Illness was suggested by the fact that his throat gradually swelled and closed until it choked off his breath. Many claimed that on Nero's orders his palate had been smeared, as if for treatment, with a poisonous drug, and that Burrus, sensing the crime, when the emperor came to visit him, turned his face away and, when asked how he was, answered only: 'I am well enough.' The city long felt his loss, remembering his virtue and comparing it to the sluggish harmlessness of one successor and the blazing vices of the other. For Caesar had set two men over the praetorian cohorts: Faenius Rufus, who enjoyed popular favor because he ran the grain supply without profiteering, and Sofonius Tigellinus, chosen for his long-standing shamelessness and disgrace. Each lived up to his known character — Tigellinus stronger in the emperor's favor, taken into his most intimate vices; Rufus enjoying the goodwill of people and soldiers, which told against him with Nero.
52| Burrus's death broke Seneca's power, since the good in Nero had lost half its strength once one of its guides was removed, and Nero began leaning toward worse men. These attacked Seneca with various charges: that he kept piling up wealth already grown beyond any private measure, still increasing it; that he was drawing the loyalty of citizens to himself; that in the beauty of his gardens and the splendor of his villas he seemed to outdo the emperor himself. They also charged that he claimed the glory of eloquence for himself alone and had taken to writing poetry more often now that Nero had developed a taste for it. For he openly mocked the emperor's amusements, disparaging his skill at driving horses and jeering whenever he sang. How much longer, they asked, would nothing count as distinguished in the state unless it was believed to have come from Seneca? Nero's boyhood was surely over, his young manhood at full strength — let him dismiss his tutor; he had ancestors enough to serve as teachers.
53| Seneca, well aware of his accusers — for some who still cared for decency told him, and Caesar's growing coldness toward his company confirmed it — asked for a private audience, and when it was granted began: 'It is now the fourteenth year, Caesar, since I was attached to your rising hopes, the eighth since you have held power. In that time you have heaped so many honors and so much wealth on me that nothing is lacking to my good fortune except moderation in it. Let me use great precedents — not from my own standing, but from yours. Your great-great-grandfather Augustus allowed Marcus Agrippa the retreat of Mytilene, and Gaius Maecenas a kind of exile within Rome itself; one had been his partner in war, the other worn down by many labors in the city — both received rewards ample enough, though hardly equal to their vast services. What have I offered your generosity in return, except studies raised, so to speak, in the shade? The credit I have gained comes from seeming to have assisted the first steps of your youth — a great enough reward in itself. Yet you have surrounded me with immense favor, with countless money, so that I often turn this over in my mind: I, born to equestrian and provincial standing, am counted among the foremost men of the state. Has my newness shone out among nobles who parade generations of honors? Where is that spirit once content with little? Does it build such gardens, walk through these suburban estates, swell with such vast lands, such wide-flung interest on loans? Only one defense occurs to me — that I ought not to have resisted your gifts.
54| But each of us has filled his measure — you, of what an emperor can grant a friend; I, of what a friend can receive from an emperor. Anything beyond that only feeds envy — which, like everything mortal, lies far beneath your greatness, but weighs on me; it is I who must be relieved. Just as a man exhausted by soldiering or by the road asks for a support to lean on, so in this journey of life, an old man unequal even to the lightest cares, unable to carry my wealth any further, I ask for help. Order my estate managed through your own agents, absorbed into your fortune. I will not be thrusting myself into poverty, but having handed over what dazzles me with its glitter, I will reclaim for my mind the time now spent tending gardens or villas. You still have strength, and for so many years now have shown yourself capable of the highest command; we older friends may fairly ask to be allowed our rest. This too will add to your glory — that you raised to the heights men who could also bear moderate circumstances.'
55| To this Nero replied more or less as follows: 'That I can answer your prepared speech at once — this I owe first to you, who taught me to handle not only what is foreseen but what is sudden. My great-great-grandfather Augustus granted Agrippa and Maecenas rest after their labors, but he himself had reached an age whose authority could back up whatever he chose to give, of whatever kind; and even so he stripped neither man of the rewards he had given. They had earned theirs in war and danger — Augustus's youth was spent amid such things; had I been living under arms, your hand and your weapons would not have been lacking to me either. But what my situation called for, you supplied — reason, counsel, guidance — first for my boyhood, then for my youth. And your gifts to me will last as long as life remains; what you have from me — gardens, interest on loans, villas — are exposed to accident. They may look like much, but many men in no way equal to you in ability have held more. I am ashamed to mention the freedmen who are seen as richer than you. It even makes me blush that you, who stand first in my affection, do not yet outstrip everyone else in fortune.
56| No, your strength is still equal to your affairs and to enjoying what they bring, and I myself am only entering the first stretch of my reign — unless perhaps you rank yourself below Vitellius, three times consul, or me below Claudius, and think my generosity cannot fill for you what Volusius's long thrift gained for himself. If anything in my youth slips toward the treacherous, why not correct it and guide my strengthening years with even closer support? It will not be your moderation people talk of if you give back the money, nor your peace and quiet if you abandon the emperor, but my greed, the fear of my cruelty, on every tongue. And even if your restraint were praised to the skies, it would still be unworthy of a wise man to win glory for himself out of what would bring infamy on his friend.' To this he added an embrace and kisses, being by nature and long practice skilled at masking hatred with deceitful warmth. Seneca — for such is how every conversation with a ruler ends — gave thanks. But he changed the habits of his former power: he barred the crowds that came to pay respects, avoided those who wished to accompany him, appeared rarely in the city, as though poor health or devotion to philosophy kept him at home.
57| With Seneca struck down, it was easy work to undermine Faenius Rufus, since informers accused him of friendship with Agrippina. Tigellinus, growing stronger by the day and reckoning that his sinister talents, the only ones he had, would win more favor if he bound the emperor to him in shared crime, probed at Nero's fears. He found two men Nero dreaded above all others: Plautus, banished lately to Asia, and Sulla, sent off to Narbonese Gaul — and he dwelt on their noble birth and their nearness to armies, Plautus to those of the East, Sulla to those of Germany. He himself, he said, unlike Burrus, looked to no divided hopes but only to Nero's safety: against plots in the city he could be guarded on the spot, but how could distant uprisings be checked? Gaul was primed by the name of Dictator, and Asia's people were no less unsettled by the fame of Plautus's grandfather Drusus. Sulla was poor — hence his outstanding boldness — and only feigned laziness while he waited for an opening for recklessness. Plautus, rich, did not even pretend to want a quiet life, but paraded old-Roman airs, adding the arrogance of the Stoics and their sect, which breeds men restless and hungry for action. There was no more delay. Six days after the killers reached Marseilles, Sulla was murdered before he had time to fear or even hear rumor of it, reclining at a dinner party. His head was brought back, and Nero mocked it, saying his premature gray hair disfigured him.
58| The plot against Plautus could not be kept so quiet, since many were concerned for his safety, and the distance by land and sea, with the time that passed, gave rumor room to grow. People invented stories that he had appealed to Corbulo, then commanding large armies — for if famous, innocent men were killed, he stood first in line for danger. They said too that Asia had taken up arms out of favor for the young man, and that the soldiers sent to do the murder, too few in number and unwilling in spirit, had gone over to the cause of revolution once they found they could not carry out their orders. Such idle talk, as usual, grew fatter on the credulity of idle people. But a freedman of Plautus, faster than the wind itself, outran the centurion, carrying word from his father-in-law, Lucius Antistius: let him flee rather than die a coward's death, while flight was still open; pity for so great a name would win him good men, and rally the bold; meanwhile no help should be scorned. If he beat off sixty soldiers — for that was the number coming — before the news reached Nero, before another force could arrive, much might follow that could grow into open war. In short, either this course found safety, or a man who dared it would suffer nothing worse than a man who did nothing.
59| But none of this moved Plautus — whether because, unarmed and an exile, he saw no real help; or from weariness with uncertain hope; or from love of his wife and children, thinking the emperor would be gentler if not stirred by any alarm. Some say other messages came from his father-in-law, saying nothing terrible was imminent, and that his teachers of philosophy, Coeranus the Greek and Musonius of Etruscan stock, urged him to face death steadily rather than live an uncertain, fearful life. Certainly he was found, at midday, naked and exercising his body. So the centurion struck him down, with the eunuch Pelago looking on — a man Nero had placed in charge over the centurion and his detachment, as if a palace servant were fit to command soldiers. The severed head was brought back; and at the sight of it — I will give the emperor's very words — Nero said, 'Why, Nero …' [the emperor's words break off here in the manuscript] Then, fear laid aside, he pressed on to bring forward his marriage to Poppaea, delayed till now by such alarms, and to remove his wife Octavia — who, modest as her conduct was, still troubled him — her father's name and the people's fondness for her a constant weight on him. To the senate he sent a letter about the deaths of Sulla and Plautus, admitting nothing outright, but claiming both men had been dangerously restless, and that he himself watched constantly over the state's safety. Thanksgivings were voted on this pretext, and both Sulla and Plautus were struck from the senate's rolls — mockery heaped on murder.
60| So, once he had the senate's decree in hand, and saw that all his crimes were being received as splendid achievements, he drove out Octavia, calling her barren, and married Poppaea. She, long his mistress and Nero's partner in adultery, now his wife and in power, pushed one of Octavia's own servants to charge her with a slave's love affair. The man named as the guilty party was called Eucaerus, an Alexandrian by birth, skilled at playing the flute. Her maids were put to torture over this, and though the violence of it broke some into agreeing to false statements, most held firm in defending their mistress's honor. One of them, pressed hard by Tigellinus, answered that Octavia's private parts were purer than his mouth. Even so, Octavia was removed at first under the appearance of an ordinary divorce, and received Burrus's house and Plautus's estates — ill-omened gifts. Soon she was driven to Campania, kept under military guard. From this came constant complaints, openly voiced among ordinary people, whose limited wisdom and modest fortunes leave them with fewer risks to fear. These complaints made it seem as if Nero, repenting his crime, had recalled his wife Octavia.
61| So the crowds, rejoicing, went up to the Capitol and finally offered thanks to the gods. Poppaea's statues they pulled down; Octavia's likenesses they hoisted onto their shoulders, scattering flowers, and set them up in the forum and in temples. They even broke into praises of the emperor … [the Latin here is corrupt] They were already filling the Palace with their numbers and shouting when squads of soldiers, sent out with whips and drawn swords, scattered the disorderly crowd. What the riot had overturned was set right again, and Poppaea's honors were restored. She, always cruel from hatred, now savage too from fear — fear that the mob's violence might grow fiercer, or that Nero might be swayed by the people's sympathy — threw herself at his knees. Her own position, she said, was not the issue here, though it mattered more to her than life; what was truly in extreme danger was her very life, threatened by the dependents and slaves of Octavia, who had given themselves the name of 'the people' and dared, in peacetime, what would scarcely happen in war. Those were arms taken up against the emperor himself; only a leader was missing, and one would easily be found once things were stirred up — Octavia need only leave Campania and come to Rome in person, where her mere nod, even from a distance, could summon riots. What wrong, after all, had she herself done, what offense to anyone — except that she was about to give the house of the Caesars true offspring? Did the Roman people prefer the child of an Egyptian flute-player raised to imperial rank? In short, if it served the state's interest, let him summon his mistress home willingly rather than under pressure — or else look to his own safety. A just punishment and moderate remedies had quieted the first disturbances; but if people despaired of Octavia ever being Nero's wife, they would find her a husband.
62| Her speech, varied and calculated to provoke both fear and anger, terrified Nero as he listened and inflamed him at once. But suspicion resting on a slave carried little weight, and had already been discredited by the torture of the maids. So it was decided to seek a confession from someone onto whom a charge of revolution could also be pinned. Anicetus seemed suited to the task — the same man who had carried out the murder of Nero's mother, as I have told, and who commanded the fleet at Misenum. For a while after that crime he had enjoyed some favor, but later fell into deeper hatred, since men who serve in evil deeds are looked on as if they were a standing reproach. So Nero summoned him and reminded him of his earlier service: he alone, Nero said, had come to the emperor's rescue against a plotting mother; now an equal chance for gratitude awaited him if he would drive away a hostile wife. No violence or weapon was needed this time — only that he confess to adultery with Octavia. Nero promised rewards, secret for now but substantial, along with a pleasant place of retirement, if he confessed; if he refused, he threatened him with death. Anicetus, with his native shamelessness and made easy by his earlier crimes, invented even more than he was told to and confessed before friends the emperor had assembled, as if to take counsel. Afterward he was sent into exile on Sardinia, where want never touched him, and he died there of natural causes.
63| Nero, meanwhile, put out an edict claiming that the prefect had been bribed with hope of winning the fleet's support, and — forgetting that he had shortly before accused her of barrenness — now said Octavia had procured abortions out of consciousness of her own lust, facts he claimed to have discovered himself. On these grounds he confined her to the island of Pandateria. No exile ever moved the eyes of onlookers to greater pity. Some still remembered Agrippina, banished by Tiberius; a more recent memory was Julia, driven out by Claudius. But those women had been in the strength of their years; they had known some happiness, and could ease present cruelty with the memory of a once-better fortune. For this girl, her wedding day had been like a funeral from the start, brought into a house that held nothing but grief for her — her father taken by poison, and soon after her brother; then a servant girl grown stronger than her mistress, and Poppaea married for no purpose but the ruin of the wife; and finally, an accusation more crushing than any death.
64| And so the girl, in her twentieth year, surrounded by centurions and soldiers — already, by grim foreboding, cut off from life though not yet at rest in death — was, after a few days more, ordered to die. She protested that she was now only a widow, only a sister, and invoked the shared name of the Germanicus family and, at the last, the name of Agrippina — in whose lifetime her marriage, though unhappy, had at least been survived without ruin. She was bound with cords and her veins opened in every limb; and because her blood, slowed by terror, flowed too slowly, she was killed by the steam of an overheated bath. To this was added a crueler cruelty still: her severed head was carried to Rome, where Poppaea saw it. For all this, offerings were decreed in the temples — how long shall we go on recording such things? Whoever comes to know the events of those times, from my account or another's, should take it as understood: as often as the emperor ordered exile or death, so often thanks were given to the gods, and what had once marked good fortune had now become the sign of public disaster. Even so I will not stay silent, whenever a senate's decree marked some new low in flattery or some final depth of submission.
65| In that same year, In that same year he was believed to have poisoned the most powerful of his freedmen: Doryphorus, killed for opposing the emperor's marriage to Poppaea, and Pallas, killed for the vast fortune he had hoarded through a long old age. Romanus had privately accused Seneca of complicity with Gaius Piso, but Seneca turned the same charge back on him with greater force. This left Piso afraid, and out of that fear grew the great and ill-fated conspiracy against Nero.