The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 15 [60]
60. In quick succession Nero added the murder of Plautius Lateranus, consul-elect,
so promptly that he did not allow him to embrace his children or to have the
brief choice of his own death. He was dragged off to a place set apart for the
execution of slaves, and butchered by the hand of the tribune Statius, maintaining
a resolute silence, and not reproaching the tribune with complicity in the plot.
Then followed the destruction of Annaeus Seneca, a special joy to the emperor,
not because he had convicted him of the conspiracy, but anxious to accomplish
with the sword what poison had failed to do. It was, in fact, Natalis alone
who divulged Seneca’s name, to this extent, that he had been sent to Seneca
when ailing, to see him and remonstrate with him for excluding Piso from his
presence, when it would have been better to have kept up their friendship by
familiar intercourse; that Seneca’s reply was that mutual conversations and
frequent interviews were to the advantage of neither, but still that his own
life depended on Piso’s safety. Gavius Silvanus, tribune of a praetorian cohort,
was ordered to report this to Seneca and to ask him whether he acknowledged
what Natalis said and his own answer. Either by chance or purposely Seneca had
returned on that day from Campania, and had stopped at a countryhouse four miles
from Rome. Thither the tribune came next evening, surrounded the house with
troops of soldiers, and then made known the emperor’s message to Seneca as he
was at dinner with his wife, Pompeia Paulina, and two friends.
61. Seneca replied that Natalis had been sent to him and had complained to
him in Piso’s name because of his refusal to see Piso, upon which he excused
himself on the ground of failing health and the desire of rest. “He had no reason,”
he said, for “preferring the interest of any private citizen to his own safety,
and he had no natural aptitude for flattery. No one knew this better than Nero,
who had oftener experienced Seneca’s freespokenness than his servility.” When
the tribune reported this answer in the presence of Poppaea and Tigellinus,
the emperor’s most confidential advisers in his moments of rage, he asked whether
Seneca was meditating suicide. Upon this the tribune asserted that he saw no
signs of fear, and perceived no sadness in his words or in his looks. He was
accordingly ordered to go back and to announce sentence of death. Fabius Rusticus
tells us that he did not return the way he came, but went out of his course
to Faenius, the commander of the guard, and having explained to him the emperor’s
orders, and asked whether he was to obey them, was by him admonished to carry
them out, for a fatal spell of cowardice was on them all. For this very Silvanus
was one of the conspirators, and he was now abetting the crimes which he had
united with them to avenge. But he spared himself the anguish of a word or of
a look, and merely sent in to Seneca one of his centurions, who was to announce
to him his last doom.
62. Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which to inscribe his will,
and, on the centurion’s refusal, turned to his friends, protesting that as he
was forbidden to requite them, he bequeathed to them the only, but still the
noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern of his life, which, if
they remembered, they would win a name for moral worth and steadfast friendship.
At the same time he called them back from their tears to manly resolution, now
with friendly talk, and now with the sterner language of rebuke. “Where,” he
asked again and again, “are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of
so many years’ study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero’s cruelty? After
a mother’s and a brother’s murder, nothing remains but to add the destruction
of a guardian and a tutor.”
63. Having spoken these and like words, meant, so to say, for all, he embraced
his wife; then softening awhile from the stern resolution of the hour, he begged
and implored her to spare herself the burden of perpetual sorrow, and, in the
contemplation of a life virtuously spent, to endure a husband’s loss with honourable
consolations. She declared, in answer, that she too had decided to die, and
claimed for herself the blow of the executioner. There upon Seneca, not to thwart
her noble ambition, from an affection too which would not leave behind him for
insult one whom he dearly loved, replied: “I have shown you ways of smoothing
life; you prefer the glory of dying. I will not grudge you such a noble example.
Let the fortitude of so courageous an end be alike in both of us, but let there
be more in your decease to win fame.” Then by one and the same stroke they sundered
with a dagger the arteries of their arms. Seneca, as his aged frame, attenuated
by frugal diet, allowed the blood to escape but slowly, severed also the veins
of his legs and knees. Worn out by cruel anguish, afraid too that his sufferings
might break his wife’s spirit, and that, as he looked on her tortures, he might
himself sink into irresolution, he persuaded her to retire into another chamber.
Even at the last moment his eloquence failed him not; he summoned his secretaries,
and dictated much to them which, as it has been published for all readers in
his own words, I forbear to paraphrase.
64. Nero meanwhile, having no personal hatred against Paulina and not wishing
to heighten the odium of his cruelty, forbade her death. At the soldiers’ prompting,
her slaves and freedmen bound up her arms, and stanched the bleeding, whether
with her knowledge is doubtful. For as the vulgar are ever ready to think the
worst, there were persons who believed that, as long as she dreaded Nero’s relentlessness,
she sought the glory of sharing her husband’s death, but that after a time,
when a more soothing prospect presented itself, she yielded to the charms of
life. To this she added a few subsequent years, with a most praise worthy remembrance
of her husband, and with a countenance and frame white to a degree of pallor
which denoted a loss of much vital energy. Seneca meantime, as the tedious process
of death still lingered on, begged Statius Annaeus, whom he had long esteemed
for his faithful friendship and medical skill, to produce a poison with which
he had some time before provided himself, same drug which extinguished the life
of those who were condemned by a public sentence of the people of Athens. It
was brought to him and he drank it in vain, chilled as he was throughout his
limbs, and his frame closed against the efficacy of the poison. At last he entered
a pool of heated water, from which he sprinkled the nearest of his slaves, adding
the exclamation, “I offer this liquid as a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer.”
He was then carried into a bath, with the steam of which he was suffocated,
and he was burnt without any of the usual funeral rites. So he had directed
in a codicil of his will, when even in the height of his wealth and power he
was thinking of his life’s close.
65. There was a rumour that Sabrius Flavus had held a secret consultation
with the centurions, and had planned, not without Seneca’s knowledge, that when
Nero had been slain by Piso’s instrumentality, Piso also was to be murdered,
and the empire handed over to Seneca, as a man singled out for his splendid
virtues by all persons of integrity. Even a saying of Flavus was popularly current,
“that it mattered not as to the disgrace if a harp-player were removed and a
tragic actor succeeded him.” For as Nero used to sing to the harp, so did Piso
in the dress of a tragedian.
66. The soldiers’ part too in the conspiracy no longer escaped discovery,
some in their rage becoming informers to betray Faenius Rufus, whom they could
not endure to be both an accomplice and a judge. Accordingly Scaevinus, in answer
to his browbeating and menaces, said with a smile that no one knew more than
he did, and actually urged him to show gratitude to so good a prince. Faenius
could not meet this with either speech or silence. Halting in his words and
visibly terror-stricken, while the rest, especially Cervarius Proculus, a Roman
knight, did their utmost to convict him, he was, at the emperor’s bidding, seized
and bound by Cassius, a soldier, who because of his well-known strength of limb
was in attendance.
67. Shortly afterwards, the information of the same men proved fatal to Subrius
Flavus. At first he grounded his defence on his moral contrast to the others,
implying that an armed soldier, like himself, would never have shared such an
attempt with unarmed and effeminate associates. Then, when he was pressed, he
embraced the glory of a full confession. Questioned by Nero as to the motives
which had led him on to forget his oath of allegiance, “I hated you,” he replied;
“yet not a soldier was more loyal to you while you deserved to be loved. I began
to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer,
an actor, and an incendiary.” I have given the man’s very words, because they
were not, like those of Seneca, generally published, though the rough and vigorous
sentiments of a soldier ought to be no less known. Throughout the conspiracy
nothing, it was certain, fell with more terror on the ears of Nero, who was
as unused to be told of the crimes he perpetrated as he was eager in their perpetration.
The punishment of Flavus was intrusted to Veianius Niger, a tribune. At his
direction, a pit was dug in a neighbouring field. Flavus, on seeing it, censured
it as too shallow and confined, saying to the soldiers around him, “Even this
is not according to military rule.” When bidden to offer his neck resolutely,
“I wish,” said he, “that your stroke may be as resolute.” The tribune trembled
greatly, and having only just severed his head at two blows, vaunted his brutality
to Nero, saying that he had slain him with a blow and a half.
68. Sulpicius Asper, a centurion, exhibited the next example of fortitude.
To Nero’s question why he had conspired to murder him, he briefly replied that
he could not have rendered a better service to his infamous career. He then
underwent the prescribed penalty. Nor did the remaining centurions forget their
courage in suffering their punishment. But Faenius Rufus had not equal spirit;
he even put his laments into his will. Nero waited in the hope that Vestinus
also, the consul, whom he thought an impetuous and deeply disaffected man, would
be involved in the charge. None however of the conspirators had shared their
counsels with him, some from old feuds against him, most because they considered
him a reckless and dangerous associate. Nero’s hatred of him had had its origin
in intimate companionship, Vestinus seeing through and despising the emperor’s
cowardice, while Nero feared the high spirit of his friend, who often bantered
him with that rough humour which, when it draws largely on facts, leaves a bitter
memory behind it. There was too a recent aggravation in the circumstance of
Vestinus having married Statilia Messalina, without being ignorant that the
emperor was one of her paramours.
69. As neither crime nor accuser appeared, Nero, being thus unable to assume
the semblance of a judge, had recourse to the sheer might of despotism, and
despatched Gerellanus, a tribune, with a cohort of soldiers, and with orders
to forestall the designs of the consul, to seize what he might call his fortress,
and crush his train of chosen youths. For Vestinus had a house towering over
the Forum, and a host of handsome slaves of the same age. On that day he had
performed all his duties as consul, and was entertaining some guests, fearless
of danger, or perhaps by way of hiding his fears, when the soldiers entered
and announced to him the tribune’s summons. He rose without a moment’s delay,
and every preparation was at once made. He shut himself into his chamber; a
physician was at his side; his veins were opened; with life still strong in
him, he was carried into a bath, and plunged into warm water, without uttering
a word of pity for himself. Meanwhile the guards surrounded those who had sat
at his table, and it was only at a late hour of the night that they were dismissed,
when Nero, having pictured to himself and laughed over their terror at the expectation
of a fatal end to their banquet, said that they had suffered enough punishment
for the consul’s entertainment.
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