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Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 12:34 PM
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 was exempt from peril.
Slaves and the free-born populace alike were suddenly cut off, amid the
wailings of wives and children, who were often consumed on the very funeral
pile of their friends by whom they had been sitting and shedding tears.
Knights and senators perished indiscriminately, and yet their deaths were
less deplored because they seemed to forestal the emperor's cruelty by
an ordinary death. That same year levies of troops were held in Narbon
Gaul, Africa and Asia, to fill up the legions of Illyricum, all soldiers
in which, worn out by age or ill-health, were receiving their discharge.
Lugdunum was consoled by the prince for a ruinous disaster by a gift of
four million sesterces, so that what was lost to the city might be replaced.
Its people had previously offered this same amount for the distresses of
Rome.
In the consulship of Caius Suetonius and Lucius Telesinus, Antistius
Sosianus, who, as I have stated, had been punished with exile for repeated
satires on Nero, having heard that there was such honour for informers
and that the emperor was so partial to bloodshed, being himself too of
a restless temper and quick to seize opportunities, made a friend of a
man in like condition with himself, one Pammenes, an exile in the same
place, noted for his skill as an astrologer, and consequently bound to
many in close intimacy. He thought there must be a meaning in the frequent
messages and the consultations, and he learnt at the same time that an
annual payment was furnished him by Publius Anteius. He knew too that Anteius
was hated by Nero for his love of Agrippina, and that his wealth was sufficiently
conspicuous to provoke cupidity, and that this was the cause of the destruction
of many. Accordingly he intercepted a letter from Anteius, and having also
stolen some notes about the day of his nativity and his future career,
which were hidden away among Pammenes' secret papers, and having further
discovered some remarks on the birth and life of Ostorius Scapula, he wrote
to the emperor that he would communicate important news which would contribute
to his safety, if he could but obtain a brief reprieve of his exile. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
and Ostorius were, he hinted, grasping at empire and prying into the destinies
of themselves and of the prince. Some swift galleys were then despatched
and Sosianus speedily arrived. On the disclosure of his information, Anteius
and Ostorius were classed with condemned criminals rather than with men
on their trial, so completely, indeed, that no one would attest the will
of Anteius, till Tigellinus interposed to sanction it. Anteius had been
previously advised by him not to delay this final document. Then he drank
poison, but disgusted at its slowness, he hastened death by severing his
veins.
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