It will not be your moderation, if you restore me your wealth, not your love of quiet, if you forsake your emperor, but my avarice, the fear of my cruelty, which will be in all men's mouths.Even if your self-control were praised to the utmost, still it would not be seemly in a wise man to get glory for himself in the very act of bringing disgrace on his friend."To these words the emperor added embraces and kisses; for he was formed by nature and trained by habit to veil his hatred under delusive flattery.Seneca thanked him, the usual end of an interview with a despot.But he entirely altered the practices of his former greatness; he kept the crowds of his visitors at a distance, avoided trains of followers, seldom appeared in Rome, as though weak health or philosophical studies detained him at home.
When Seneca had fallen, it was easy to shake the position of Faenius Rufus by making Agrippina's friendship a charge against him.
Tigellinus, who was daily becoming more powerful and who thought that the wicked schemings which alone gave him strength, would be better liked if he could secure the emperor's complicity in guilt, dived into Nero's most secret apprehensions, and, as soon as he had ascertained that Plautus and Sulla were the men he most dreaded, Plautus having been lately sent away to Asia, Sulla to Gallia Narbonensis, he spoke much of their noble rank and of their respective proximity to the armies of the East and of Germany."I have no eye,"he said, "like Burrus, to two conflicting aims, but only to Nero's safety, which is at least secured against treachery in Rome by my presence.As for distant commotions, how can they be checked? Gaul is roused at the name of the great dictator, and I distrust no less the nations of Asia, because of the renown of such a grandfather as Drusus.Sulla is poor, and hence comes his surpassing audacity; he shams apathy, while he is seeking an opening for his reckless ambition.Plautus again, with his great wealth, does not so much as affect a love of repose, but he flaunts before us his imitations of the old Romans, and assumes the self-consciousness of the Stoics along with a philosophy, which makes men restless, and eager for a busy life."There was not a moment's delay.Sulla, six days afterwards, was murdered by assassins brought over to Massilia, while he was reclining at the dinner-table, before he feared or heard of his danger.The head was taken to Rome, and Nero scoffed at its premature grey hairs as if they were a disfigurement.
It was less of a secret that there was a design to murder Plautus, as his life was dear to many.The distance too by land and sea, and the interval of time, had given rise to rumours, and the popular story was that he had tampered with Corbulo, who was then at the head of great armies, and would be a special mark for danger, if illustrious and innocent men were to be destroyed.Again Asia, it was said, from its partiality for the young man, had taken up arms, and the soldiers sent to do the crime, not being sufficient in number or decided in purpose, and, finding themselves unable to execute their orders, had gone over to the new cause.These absurdities, like all popular gossip, gathered strength from the idle leisure of a credulous society.
As it was, one of Plautus's freedmen, thanks to swift winds, arrived before the centurion and brought him a message from his father-in-law, Lucius Antistius."He was to avoid the obvious refuge of a coward's death, and in the pity felt for a noble name he would soon find good men to help him, and daring spirits would rally round him.Meantime no resource was to be rejected.If he did but repel sixty soldiers (this was the number on the way), while tidings were being carried back to Nero, while another force was on its march, many events would follow which would ripen into war.Finally, by this plan he either secured safety, or he would suffer nothing worse by daring than by cowardice."But all this had no effect on Plautus.Either he saw no resource before him, an unarmed exile as he was, or he was weary of an uncertain hope, or was swayed by his love of his wife and of his children, to whom he thought the emperor, if harassed by no anxiety, would be more merciful.Some say that another message came to him from his father-in-law, representing that no dreadful peril hung over him, and that two teachers of philosophy, Coeranus from Greece and Musonius from Etruria, advised him to await death with firmness rather than lead a precarious and anxious life.At all events, he was surprised at midday, when stripped for exercise.In that state the centurion slew him in the presence of Pelago, an eunuch, whom Nero had set over the centurion and his company, like a despot's minister over his satellites.
The head of the murdered man was brought to Rome.At its sight the emperor exclaimed (I give his very words), "Why would you have been a Nero?" Then casting off all fear he prepared to hurry on his marriage with Poppaea, hitherto deferred because of such alarms as Ihave described, and to divorce his wife Octavia, notwithstanding her virtuous life, because her father's name and the people's affection for her made her an offence to him.He wrote, however, a letter to the Senate, confessing nothing about the murders of Sulla and Plautus, but merely hinting that both had a restless temper, and that he gave the most anxious thought to the safety of the State.On this pretext a thanksgiving was decreed, and also the expulsion from the Senate of Sulla and Plautus, more grievous, however, as a farce than as an actual calamity.