"Do not, Senators, think only of Sejanus's last day, but of his sixteen years of power.We actually adored a Satrius and a Pomponius.To be known even to his freedmen and hall-porters was thought something very grand.What then is my meaning? Is this apology meant to be offered for all without difference and discrimination? No;it is to be restricted within proper limits.Let plots against the State, murderous designs against the emperor be punished.As for friendship and its obligations, the same principle must acquit both you, Caesar, and us."The courage of this speech and the fact that there had been found a man to speak out what was in all people's thoughts, had such an effect that the accusers of Terentius were sentenced to banishment or death, their previous offences being taken into account.Then came a letter from Tiberius against Sextus Vestilius, an ex-praetor, whom, as a special favourite of his brother Drusus, the emperor had admitted into his own select circle.His reason for being displeased with Vestilius was that he had either written an attack on Caius Caesar as a profligate, or that Tiberius believed a false charge.
For this Vestilius was excluded from the prince's table.He then tried the knife with his aged hand, but again bound up his veins, opening them once more however on having begged for pardon by letter and received a pitiless answer.After him a host of persons were charged with treason, Annius Pollio, Appius Silanus, Scaurus Mamercus, Sabinus Calvisius, Vinicianus too, coupled with Pollio, his father, men all of illustrious descent, some too of the highest political distinction.
The senators were panic-stricken, for how few of their number were not connected by alliance or by friendship with this multitude of men of rank! Celsus however, tribune of a city cohort, and now one of the prosecutors, saved Appius and Calvisius from the peril.The emperor postponed the cases of Pollio, Vinicianus, and Scaurus, intending to try them himself with the Senate, not however without affixing some ominous marks to the name of Scaurus.
Even women were not exempt from danger.Where they could not be accused of grasping at political power, their tears were made a crime.
Vitia, an aged woman, mother of Fufius Geminus, was executed for bewailing the death of her son.Such were the proceedings in the Senate.It was the same with the emperor.Vescularius Atticus and Julius Marinus were hurried off to execution, two of his oldest friends, men who had followed him to Rhodes and been his inseparable companions at Capreae.Vescularius was his agent in the plot against Libo, and it was with the co-operation of Marinus that Sejanus had ruined Curtius Atticus.Hence there was all the more joy at the recoil of these precedents on their authors.
About the same time Lucius Piso, the pontiff, died a natural death, a rare incident in so high a rank.Never had he by choice proposed a servile motion, and, whenever necessity was too strong for him, he would suggest judicious compromises.His father, as I have related, had been a censor.He lived to the advanced age of eighty, and had won in Thrace the honour of a triumph.But his chief glory rested on the wonderful tact with which as city-prefect he handled an authority, recently made perpetual and all the more galling to men unaccustomed to obey it.
In former days, when the kings and subsequently the chief magistrates went from Rome, an official was temporarily chosen to administer justice and provide for emergencies, so that the capital might not be left without government.It is said that Denter Romulius was appointed by Romulus, then Numa Marcius by Tullus Hostilius, and Spurius Lucretius by Tarquinius Superbus.Afterwards, the consuls made the appointment.The shadow of the old practice still survives, whenever in consequence of the Latin festival some one is deputed to exercise the consul's functions.And Augustus too during the civil wars gave Cilnius Maecenas, a Roman knight, charge of everything in Rome and Italy.When he rose to supreme power, in consideration of the magnitude of the State and the slowness of legal remedies, he selected one of the exconsuls to overawe the slaves and that part of the population which, unless it fears a strong hand, is disorderly and reckless.Messala Corvinus was the first to obtain the office, which he lost within a few days, as not knowing how to discharge it.After him Taurus Statilius, though in advanced years, sustained it admirably; and then Piso, after twenty years of similar credit, was, by the Senate's decree, honoured with a public funeral.
A motion was next brought forward in the Senate by Quintilianus, a tribune of the people, respecting an alleged book of the Sibyl.