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A year of shame and of so many evil deeds heaven also marked by
storms and pestilence. Campania was devastated by a hurricane, which destroyed
everywhere countryhouses, plantations and crops, and carried its fury to
the neighbourhood of Rome, where a terrible plague was sweeping away all
classes of human beings without any such derangement of the atmosphere
as to be visibly apparent. Yet the houses were filled with lifeless forms
and the streets with funerals. Neither age nor sex |
That same year the emperor put into possession of the Latin franchise
the tribes of the maritime Alps. To the Roman knights he assigned places
in the circus in front of the seats of the people, for up to that time
they used to enter in a promiscuous throng, as the Roscian law extended
only to fourteen rows in the theatre. The same year witnessed shows of
gladiators as magnificent as those of the past. Many ladies of distinction,
however, and senators, disgraced themselves by |
The same year saw many impeached. One of these, Publius Celer,
prosecuted by the province of Asia, the emperor could not acquit, and so
he put off the case till the man died of old age. Celer, as I have related,
had murdered Silanus, the pro-consul, and the magnitude of this crime veiled
his other enormities. Cossutianus Capito was accused by the people of Cilicia;
he was a man stained with the foulest guilt, and had actually imagined
that his audacious wickedness had the same |
About the same time, the mountain between Lake Fucinus and the
river Liris was bored through, and that this grand work might be seen by
a multitude of visitors, preparations were made for a naval battle on the
lake, just as formerly Augustus exhibited such a spectacle, in a basin
he had made this side the Tiber, though with light vessels, and on a smaller
scale. Claudius equipped galleys with three and four banks of oars, and
nineteen thousand men; he lined the circumference of the |
About the same time an embassy from the Parthians, which had been
sent, as I have stated, to solicit the return of Meherdates, was introduced
into the Senate, and delivered a message to the following effect:- "They
were not," they said, "unaware of the treaty of alliance, nor did their
coming imply any revolt from the family of the Arsacids; indeed, even the
son of Vonones, Phraates's grandson, was with them in their resistance
to the despotism of Gotarzes, which was alike |
Aemilia Lepida too, whose marriage with the younger Drusus I have
already related, who, though she had pursued her husband with ceaseless
accusations, remained unpunished, infamous as she was, as long as her father
Lepidus lived, subsequently fell a victim to the informers for adultery
with a slave. There was no question about her guilt, and so without an
attempt at defence she put an end to her life.
At this same time the Clitae, a tribe subject to the Cappadocian
Archelaus, |
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