Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals
Alfred John Church, William Jackson Brodribb, Ed.

---

And so Domitius and Marsus prolonged their lives, Domitius, preparing his defence, Marsus, having apparently resolved on starvation. Arruntius, when his friends advised delay and temporising, replied that "the same conduct was not becoming in all persons. He had had enough of life, and all he regretted was that he had endured amid scorn and peril an old age of anxious fears, long detested by Sejanus, now by Macro, always, indeed, by some powerful minister, not for any fault, but as a man who could not tolerate gross iniquities. Granted the possibility of passing safely through the few last days of Tiberius. How was he to be secure under the youth of the coming sovereign? Was it probable that, when Tiberius with his long experience of affairs was, under the influence of absolute power, wholly perverted and changed, Caius Cæsar, who had hardly completed his boyhood, was thoroughly ignorant and bred under the vilest training, would enter on a better course, with Macro for his guide, who having been selected for his superior wickedness, to crush Sejanus had by yet more numerous crimes been the

FURTHER PROSECUTIONS FOR TREASON

scourge of the State? He now foresaw a still more galling slavery, and therefore sought to flee alike from the past and from the impending future."

While he thus spoke like a prophet, he opened his veins. What followed will be a proof that Arruntius rightly chose death. Albucilla, having stabbed herself with an ineffectual wound, was by the Senate's order carried off to prison. Those who had ministered to her profligacy, Carsidius Sacerdos, an ex-prætor, and Pontius Fregellanus were sentenced, respectively, to transportation to an island and to loss of a senator's rank. A like punishment was adjudged in the case of Lælius Balbus, and, indeed, with intense satisfaction, as Balbus was noted for his savage eloquence and his eagerness to assail the innocent.