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Monday, August 02, 2010 - 2:10 PM
Rome meanwhile being a scene of ceaseless bloodshed, Pomponius
Labeo, who was, as I have related, governor of Moesia, severed his veins
and let his life ebb from him. His wife, Paxaea, emulated her husband.
What made such deaths eagerly sought was dread of the executioner, and
the fact too that the condemned, besides forfeiture of their property,
were deprived of burial, while those who decided their fate themselves,
had their bodies interred, and their wills remained valid, a recompense
this for their despatch. The emperor, however, argued in a letter to the
Senate that it had been the practice of our ancestors, whenever they broke
off an intimacy, to forbid the person their house, and so put an end to
friendship. "This usage he had himself revived in Labeo's case, but Labeo,
being pressed by charges of maladministration in his province and other
crimes, had screened his guilt by bringing odium on another, and had groundlessly
alarmed his wife, who, though criminal, was still free from
danger."
Mamercus Scaurus was then for the second time impeached, a man
of distinguished rank and ability as an advocate, but of infamous life.
He fell, not through the friendship of Sejanus, but through what was no
less powerful to destroy, the enmity of Macro, who practised the same arts
more secretly. Macro's information was grounded on the subject of a tragedy
written by Scaurus, from which he cited some verses which might be twisted
into allusions to Tiberius. But Servilius and Cornelius, his accusers,
alleged adultery with Livia and the practice of magical rites. Scaurus,
as befitted the old house of the Aemilii, forestalled the fatal sentence
at the persuasion of his wife Sextia, who urged him to die and shared his
death.
Still the informers were punished when ever an opportunity occurred.
Servilius and Cornelius, for example, whom the destruction of Scaurus had
made notorious, were outlawed and transported to some islands for having
taken money from Varius Ligur for dropping a prosecution. Abudius Ruso
too, who had been an aedile, in seeking to imperil Lentulus Gaetulicus,
under whom he had commanded a legion, by alleging that he had fixed on
a son of Sejanus for his son-in-law, was himself actually condemned and
banished from Rome. Gaetulicus at this time was in charge of the legions
of Upper Germany, and had won from them singular affection, as a man of
unbounded kindliness, moderate in his strictness, and popular even with
the neighbouring army through his father-in-law, Lucius Apronius. Hence
rumour persistently affirmed that he had ventured to send the emperor a
letter, reminding him that his alliance with Sejanus had not originated
in his own choice, but in the advice of Tiberius; that he was himself as
liable to be deceived as Tiberius, and that the same mistake ought not
to be held innocent in the prince and be a source of ruin to others. His
loyalty was still untainted and would so remain, if he was not assaIled
by any plot. A successor he should accept as an announcement of his doom.
A compact, so to say, ought to be sealed between them, by which he should
retain his province, and the emperor be master of all else. Strange as
this story was, it derived credibility from the fact that Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire alone
of all connected with Sejanus lived in safety and in high favour, Tiberius
bearing in mind the people's hatred, his own extreme age how his government
rested more on prestige than on power.
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