The Historians' History of the World 06

Domitius therefore by preparing for his defence, and Marsus by seeming determined to starve himself to death, protracted their lives. Arruntius, to the importunity of his friends, urging him to try delays and evasions, answered that the same measures were not honourable to all men alike: he had lived long enough; his only regret was, that exposed on all sides to derision and peril, he had submitted to bear thus far an old age loaded with anxieties; long obnoxious to the malice of Sejanus, now of Macro, always of some minion of power; not because he was guilty of any crime, but because he was intolerant of the grossest iniquities. Grant that the few and last days of Tiberius could be got over, yet how could he escape all that he would have to endure under the youth who threatened to succeed him? When the mind of Tiberius, a man of consummate experience, underwent such a convulsion and transformation from the potent influence of imperial power, was it likely that Caligula, who had scarce outgrown his childhood, ignorant of everything, or nursed and trained up in the worst, would follow a course more righteous under the guidance of Macro; the same Macro, who, as the more expert villain, having been selected for the task of crushing Sejanus, had brought the commonwealth to a state of wretchedness the most abject, by his numerous atrocities? He had now before him, he said, a prospect of slavery still more embittered; and therefore it was that he withdrew at once from the horrors which had been enacted, and those that impended.

While pouring forth these warnings with the intense emotion of a prophet, he opened his veins. That Arruntius was wise in resorting to suicide the following events will testify. Albucilla, after inflicting an ineffectual wound upon herself, was by order of the senate dragged to prison. As to the ministers of her lusts, it was decreed, “that Carsidius Sacerdos, of prætorian rank, should be banished to an island; Pontius Fregellanus expelled the senate; and that upon Lælius Balbus the same penalty be inflicted.” The senators gave the latter judgment with feelings of joy, as he was accounted a man of turbulent eloquence, and zealous in his efforts against the innocent.

About the same time, Sextus Papinius, of a consular family, chose a sudden and frightful end, by throwing himself down from an eminence. The cause was ascribed to his mother, who, after many repulses, had, by fondling and excitement, brought him into a situation from which he could escape by death only. She was therefore accused in the senate; and, though she embraced the knees of the fathers, and pleaded “the natural tenderness of a mother’s grief, and the greater weakness of a woman’s spirit under such a calamity,” with other motives of pity in the same doleful strain, she was banished from Rome for ten years, till her younger son was past the slippery period of youth.[15]