§. 2. Cruelties.
The vein of the City that was opened so long ago, doth bleed still and still as fresh as ever. For Slaughter saith Tacitus was continual, and Dion addeth that none of them that were accused were acquitted, but all condemned: some upon the letters of Tiberius, others upon the impeachment of Macro (of whom hereafter,) and the rest only upon suspition. Some were ended by the executioner, others ended themselves by their own hands, the Emperor all this while keeping out of the City, and that, as was thought, lest he should be ashamed of such doings there. Among those that perished by their own hands was Pomponius Labeo, and his wife Paxaea, who being accused for corruption in his government of Maesta, cut his own veins and bled to death, and his wife accompanied him in the same fatal end. To the like end, but upon different occasions and accusations came Mamercus Scaurus and his wife Sextia. He some years before having escaped narrow∣ly with life upon a charge of treason, is now involved again in other accusations, as of Adultery with Livilla, magical practices, and (not at the least) for libelling against Ti∣berius. For having made a Tragedy which he titled Atreus, and in the same, bringing him in, advising one of his subjects in the words of Euripides, That he should bear with the folly of the Prince: Tiberius not so guilty indeed of such a taxation of being a fool, as ready to take on to be guilty, that he might have the better vie against the Author, per∣sonated the matter to himself, crying out that Scaurus had made him a bloody Atreus, but that he would make an Ajax of him again: which accordingly came to pass: for the Tra∣gedian to prevent the executioner, acted his own Tragedy, and died by his own hand, his wife being both incourager and companion with him in the same death. But among these lamentable spectacles so fearful and so frequent, it was some contentment to see the accusers still involved in the like miseries with those whom they had accused: for that malady of accusing was grown Epidemical and infectious, sparing none, and as it were catching one of another. The tokens hereof appeared in the banishment of Servilius and Cornelius the accusers of Scaurus, and of Abudius Rufo that had done the like by Len∣tulus Getulicus. This Getulicus was then commander of the Legions in Germany, and be∣ing charged with so much intimacy with Sejanus, as that he intended to have married his daughter to Sejanus his son, he quitted himself by a confident letter to Tiberius. In which he pleadeth that his familiarity and alliance to Sejanus had begun by the Emperors own advice and privacy: and he was so far from crouching, that he profereth terms of parti∣tion to Tiberius, namely that he should enjoy the Empire, and himself would enjoy the Province where he was: This it was to have Arms and Armies at his disposal, for, for all this affront, the Emperor is necessarily calm, considering partly his own age, partly the hatred of the people, but chiefly, that he stood in that height and sway and power that he was in rather by the timorous opinion of others than by any strength or firmness of his own.
This year there arose a feigned Drusus in Greece: a man as it seemed, neither led by common policy that might have told him, that so great a Prince of Rome could not possi∣bly have been so long obscured, nor by common opinion which greatly suspected, that Drusus was made away by the Emperors own consent: He found a party as inconsiderate as himself, for he was intertained by the Cities of Greece and Jonia, and furnished with aid, and had like to have come into Syria and surprized the forces there, had he not been descried, taken and sent to Tiberius.
To conclude with some other rarity, besides these of cruelty, there was seen a Phoe∣nix in Egypt this year, as Tacitus hath laid it, (but as Dion two years after) which then exercised the wits of the Philosophical Greeks interpreting the presage either to the State or to the Emperor as their fancy led them: and in after times it exercised the pens of Christians, applying it as an Embleme of the resurrection of Christ.