While she was yet speaking, Soranus caught up her words, and exclaimed
that she had not gone with him into the province; that, from her youth,
she could not have been known to Plautus, and that she was not involved
in the charges against her husband. “Treat separately,” he said, “the
case of one who is guilty only of an exaggerated filial piety, and
as for myself, let me undergo any fate.” He was rushing, as he spoke,
into the embraces of his daughter who hurried towards him, but the
lictors interposed and stopped them both. Place was then given to
the witnesses, and the appearance among them of Publius Egnatius provoked
as much indignation as the cruelty of the prosecution had excited
pity. A client of Soranus, and now hired to ruin his friend, he professed
the dignified character of a Stoic, and had trained himself in demeanour
and language to exhibit an ideal of virtue. In his heart, however,
treacherous and cunning, he concealed greed and sensuality. As soon
as money had brought these vices to light, he became an example, warning
us to beware just as much of those who under the guise of virtuous
tastes are false and deceitful in friendship, as of men wholly entangled
in falsehoods and stained with every infamy.
That same day brought with it a noble pattern in Cassius Asclepiodotus,
whose vast wealth made him a foremost man in Bithynia. He had honoured
Soranus in his prosperity with a respect which he did not cast off
in his fall, and he was now stript of all his property and driven
into exile; so impartially indifferent is heaven to examples of virtue
and vice. Thrasea, Soranus, and Servilia were allowed the choice of
death. Helvidius and Paconius were banished from Italy. Montanus was
spared to his father’s intercessions on the understanding that he
was not to be admitted to political life. The prosecutors, Eprius
and Cossutianus, received each five million sesterces, Ostorius twelve
hundred thousand, with the decorations of the quaestorship.
Then, as evening approached, the consul’s quaestor was sent to Thrasea,
who was passing his time in his garden. He had had a crowded gathering
of distinguished men and women, giving special attention to Demetrius,
a professor of the Cynic philosophy. With him, as might be inferred
from his earnest expression of face and from words heard when they
raised their voices, he was speculating on the nature of the soul
and on the separation of the spirit from the body, till Domitius Caecilianus,
one of his intimate friends, came to him and told him in detail what
the Senate had decided. When all who were present, wept and bitterly
complained, Thrasea urged them to hasten their departure and not mingle
their own perils with the fate of a doomed man. Arria, too, who aspired
to follow her husband’s end and the example of Arria, her mother,
he counselled to preserve her life, and not rob the daughter of their
love of her only stay.
Then he went out into a colonnade, where he was found by the quaestor,
joyful rather than otherwise, as he had learnt that Helvidius, his
son-in-law, was merely excluded from Italy.
When he heard the Senate’s decision, he led Helvidius and Demetrius
into a chamber, and having laid bare the arteries of each arm, he
let the blood flow freely, and, as he sprinkled it on the ground,
he called the quaestor to his side and said, “We pour out a libation
to Jupiter the Deliverer. Behold, young man, and may the gods avert
the omen, but you have been born into times in which it is well to
fortify the spirit with examples of courage.” Then as the slowness
of his end brought with it grievous anguish, turning his eyes on Demetrius
about the last two years of Nero’s reign.]
