The whole army was then brought together and kept under canvas to finish the remainder of the war.The emperor strengthened the forces by sending from Germany two thousand legionaries, eight cohorts of auxiliaries, and a thousand cavalry.On their arrival the men of the ninth had their number made up with legionary soldiers.The allied infantry and cavalry were placed in new winter quarters, and whatever tribes still wavered or were hostile were ravaged with fire and sword.Nothing however distressed the enemy so much as famine, for they had been careless about sowing corn, people of every age having gone to the war, while they reckoned on our supplies as their own.
Nations, too, so high-spirited inclined the more slowly to peace, because Julius Classicanus, who had been sent as successor to Catus and was at variance with Suetonius, let private animosities interfere with the public interest, and had spread an idea that they ought to wait for a new governor who, having neither the anger of an enemy nor the pride of a conqueror, would deal mercifully with those who had surrendered.At the same time he stated in a despatch to Rome that no cessation of fighting must be expected, unless Suetonius were superseded, attributing that general's disasters to perverseness and his successes to good luck.
Accordingly one of the imperial freedmen, Polyclitus, was sent to survey the state of Britain, Nero having great hopes that his influence would be able not only to establish a good understanding between the governor and the pro-curator, but also to pacify the rebellious spirit of the barbarians.And Polyclitus, who with his enormous suite had been a burden to Italy and Gaul, failed not, as soon as he had crossed the ocean, to make his progresses a terror even to our soldiers.But to the enemy he was a laughing-stock, for they still retained some of the fire of liberty, knowing nothing yet of the power of freedmen, and so they marvelled to see a general and an army who had finished such a war cringing to slaves.Everything, however, was softened down for the emperor's ears, and Suetonius was retained in the government; but as he subsequently lost a few vessels on the shore with the crews, he was ordered, as though the war continued, to hand over his army to Petronius Turpilianus, who had just resigned his consulship.Petronius neither challenged the enemy nor was himself molested, and veiled this tame inaction under the honourable name of peace.
That same year two remarkable crimes were committed at Rome, one by a senator, the other by the daring of a slave.Domitius Balbus, an ex-praetor, from his prolonged old age, his childlessness and his wealth, was exposed to many a plot.His kinsman, Valerius Fabianus, who was marked out for a career of promotion, forged a will in his name with Vinicius Rufinus and Terentius Lentinus, Roman knights, for his accomplices.These men had associated with them Antonius Primus and Asinius Marcellus.Antonius was a man of ready audacity;Marcellus had the glory of being the great-grandson of Asinius Pollio, and bore a character far from contemptible, except that he thought poverty the greatest of all evils.So Fabianus, with the persons whom I have named and some others less distinguished, executed the will.The crime was proved against them before the Senate, and Fabianus and Antonius with Rufinus and Terentius were condemned under the Cornelian law.Marcellus was saved from punishment rather than from disgrace by the memory of his ancestors and the intercessions of the emperor.
That same day was fatal also to Pompeius Aelianus, a young ex-quaestor, suspected of complicity in the villanies of Fabianus.
He was outlawed from Italy, and from Spain, where he was born.
Valerius Pontius suffered the same degradation for having indicted the defendants before the praetor to save them from being prosecuted in the court of the city-prefect, purposing meanwhile to defeat justice on some legal pretext and subsequently by collusion.A clause was added to the Senate's decree, that whoever bought or sold such a service was to be just as liable to punishment as if he had been publicly convicted of false accusation.