HKB
too to ridicule the prescriptions of physicians, and all men who, after the age of thirty, needed to be informed by any one else, what helped or hurted their constitutions.
At Rome, the while, were sown the sanguinary seeds of executions to be perpetrated even after Tiberius. Laelius Balbus had with high treason charged Acutia, some time the wife of Publius Vitellius; and, as the Senate were, after her condemnation, decreeing a reward to the accuser, the same was obstructed by the interposition of Junius Otho, Tribune of the People: hence their mutual hate, which ended in the exile of Otho. Thereafter Albucilla, who had been married to Satrius Secundus, him that revealed the conspiracy of Sejanus, and herself famous for many amours, was impeached of impious rites devised against the Prince. In the charge were involved, as her associates and adulterers, Cneius Domitius, Vibius Marsus, and Lucius Arruntius. The noble descent of Domitius I have above declared: Marsus too was distinguished by the ancient dignities in his house, and himself illustrious for learning. The minutes, however, transmitted to the Senate imported, "that in the examination of the witnesses, and torture of the slaves, Macro had presided:" neither came these minutes accompanied with any letter from the Emperor against the accused. Hence it was suspected, that, while he was ill, and perhaps without his privacy, the accusations were in great measure forged by Macro, in consequence of his notorious enmity to Arruntius.
Domitius therefore by preparing for his defence, and Marsus by seeming determined to famish, both protracted their lives. Arruntius chose to die; and to the importunity of his friends, urging him to try delays and evasions, he answered, "that the same measures were not alike honourable to all men: his own life was abundantly long; nor had he wherewithal to reproach himself, save that he had submitted to bear thus far an old age loaded with anxieties, exposed to daily dangers, and the cruel sport of power; long hated as he was by Sejanus, now by Macro, always by some reigning minister; hated through no fault of his own, but as one irreconcilable to baseness and the iniquities of power. He might, in truth, outlive and avoid the few and last days of Tiberius: but how escape the youth of his heir? If upon Tiberius at such an age, and after such consummate experience, the violent spirit of unbridled dominion had wrought with such efficacy, as entirely to transport and change him; was it likely that Caligula, he who had scarce outgrown his childhood, a youth ignorant of all things, or nursed and principled in the worst, would follow a course more righteous under the guidance of Macro; the same Macro, who, for destroying Sejanus, was employed as the more wicked of the two, and had since by more mischiefs and cruelties torn and afflicted the Commonweal? For himself; he foresaw a servitude yet more vehement, and therefore withdrew at once from the agonies of past and of impending tyranny." Uttering these words, with the spirit of a prophet, he opened his veins. How wisely Arruntius anticipated death, the following times will terribly demonstrate. For Albucilla; she aimed at her own life, but the blow being impotent, she was by order of Senate dragged to execution in the prison. Against the ministers of her lusts it was decreed, "that Grasidius Sacerdos, formerly Praetor, should be exiled into an island; Pontius Fregellanus be degraded from the Senate; and that upon Laelius Balbus the same penalty be inflicted:" his punishment particularly proved matter of joy, as he was accounted a man of pestilent eloquence, and prompt to attack the innocent.