When his scouts reported that the king had undertaken a long march, and that it was doubtful whether Media or Albania was its destination, he waited for daylight, and then sent on his light-armed troops, which were meanwhile to hover round the walls and begin the attack from a distance.The inhabitants however opened the gates of their own accord, and surrendered themselves and their property to the Romans.
This saved their lives; the city was fired, demolished and levelled to the ground, as it could not be held without a strong garrison from the extent of the walls, and we had not sufficient force to be divided between adequately garrisoning it and carrying on the war.If again the place were left untouched and unguarded, no advantage or glory would accrue from its capture.Then too there was a wonderful occurrence, almost a divine interposition.While the whole space outside the town, up to its buildings, was bright with sunlight, the enclosure within the walls was suddenly shrouded in a black cloud, seamed with lightning-flashes, and thus the city was thought to be given up to destruction, as if heaven was wroth against it.
For all this Nero was unanimously saluted emperor, and by the Senate's decree a thanksgiving was held; statues also, arches and successive consulships were voted to him, and among the holy days were to be included the day on which the victory was won, that on which it was announced, and that on which the motion was brought forward.
Other proposals too of a like kind were carried, on a scale so extravagant, that Caius Cassius, after having assented to the rest of the honours, argued that if the gods were to be thanked for the bountiful favours of fortune, even a whole year would not suffice for thanksgivings, and therefore there ought to be a classification of sacred and business-days, that so they might observe divine ordinances and yet not interfer with human affairs.
A man who had struggled with various calamities and earned the hate of many, was then impeached and condemned, but not without angry feelings towards Seneca.This was Publius Suilius.He had been terrible and venal, while Claudius reigned, and when times were changed, he was not so much humbled as his enemies wished, and was one who would rather seem a criminal than a suppliant.With the intent of crushing him, so men believed, a decree of the Senate was revived, along with the penalty of the Cincian law against persons who had pleaded for hire.Suilius spared not complaint or indignant remonstrance; freespoken because of his extreme age as well as from his insolent temper, he taunted Seneca with his savage enmity against the friends of Claudius, under whose reign he had endured a most righteously deserved exile."The man," he said, "familiar as he was only with profitless studies, and with the ignorance of boyhood, envied those who employed a lively and genuine eloquence in the defence of their fellow-citizens.He had been Germanicus's quaestor, while Seneca had been a paramour in his house.Was it to be thought a worse offence to obtain a reward for honest service with the litigant's consent, than to pollute the chambers of the imperial ladies? By what kind of wisdom or maxims of philosophy had Seneca within four years of royal favour amassed three hundred million sesterces? At Rome the wills of the childless were, so to say, caught in his snare while Italy and the provinces were drained by a boundless usury.His own money, on the other hand, had been acquired by industry and was not excessive.He would suffer prosecutions, perils, anything indeed rather than make an old and self-learned position of honour to bow before an upstart prosperity."Persons were not wanting to report all this to Seneca, in the exact words, or with a worse sense put on it.Accusers were also found who alleged that our allies had been plundered, when Suilius governed the province of Asia, and that there had been embezzlement of public monies.Then, as an entire year had been granted to them for inquiries, it seemed a shorter plan to begin with his crimes at Rome, the witnesses of which were on the spot.These men charged Suilius with having driven Quintus Pomponius by a relentless prosecution into the extremity of civil war, with having forced Julia, Drusus's daughter, and Sabina Poppaea to suicide, with having treacherously ruined Valerius Asiaticus, Lusius Saturninus and Cornelius Lupus, in fact, with the wholesale conviction of troops of Roman knights, and with all the cruelty of Claudius.His defence was that of all this he had done nothing on his own responsibility but had simply obeyed the emperor, till Nero stopped such pleadings, by stating that he had ascertained from his father's notebooks that he had never compelled the prosecution of a single person.
Suilius then sheltered himself under Messalina's orders, and the defence began to collapse."Why," it was asked, "was no one else chosen to put his tongue at the service of that savage harlot? We must punish the instruments of atrocious acts, when, having gained the rewards of wickedness, they impute the wickedness to others."And so, with the loss of half his property, his son and granddaughter being allowed to retain the other half, and what they had inherited under their mother's or grandmother's will being also exempted from confiscation, Suilius was banished to the Balearic isles.Neither in the crisis of his peril nor after his condemnation did he quail in spirit.Rumour said that he supported that lonely exile by a life of ease and plenty.When the accusers attacked his son Nerullinus on the strength of men's hatred of the father and of some charges of extortion, the emperor interposed, as if implying that vengeange was fully satisfied.
About the same time Octavius Sagitta, a tribune of the people, who was enamoured to frenzy of Pontia, a married woman, bribed her by most costly presents into an intrigue and then into abandoning her husband.