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Notes Display Latin text | Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb Book VI Chapter 7: The fall of Sejanus. Further consequences (cont.)[AD 32] | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
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Authority was then given to the Senate to decide the case of Caecilianus, one of its members, the chief witness against Cotta, and it was agreed that the same penalty should be inflicted as on Aruseius and Sanquinius, the accusers of Lucius Arruntius. Nothing ever happened to Cotta more to his distinction. Of noble birth, but beggared by extravagance and infamous for his excesses, he was now by dignity of his revenge, raised to a level with the stainless virtues of Arruntius. Quintus Servaeus and Minucius Thermus were next arraigned. Servaeus was an ex-praetor, and had formerly been a companion of Germanicus; Minucius was of equestrian rank and both had enjoyed, though discreetly, the friendship of Sejanus. Hence they were the more pitied. Tiberius, on the contrary, denounced them as foremost in crime, and bade Gaius Cestius, the elder, tell the Senate what he had communicated to the emperor by letter. Cestius undertook the prosecution. And this was the most dreadful feature of the age, that leading members of the Senate, some openly, some secretly employed themselves in the very lowest work of the informer. One could not distinguish between aliens and kinsfolk, between friends and strangers, or say what was quite recent, or what half-forgotten from lapse of time. People were incriminated for some casual remark in the forum or at the dinner-table, for every one was impatient to be the first to mark his victim, some to screen themselves, most from being, as it were, infected with the contagion of the malady. Minucius and Servaeus, on being condemned, went over to the prosecution, and then Julius Africanus with Seius Quadratus were dragged into the same ruin. Africanus was from the Santones, one of the states of Gaul; the origin of Quadratus I have not ascertained. Many authors, I am well aware, have passed over the perils and punishments of a host of persons, sickened by the multiplicity of them, or fearing that what they had themselves found wearisome and saddening would be equally fatiguing to their readers. For myself, I have lighted on many facts worth knowing, though other writers have not recorded them. Event: The fall of Sejanus |