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It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and courageously she informed Tiberius. The latter, in danger and in Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period. The danger was most threatening, especially because Sejanus was the commander of the pretorian guard.

I will only mention two more churches, and both of these converts from heathendom; both of them dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy of the calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced to the level of the rest. One is the old pretorian temple of the Romans, which was converted by King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the seventh century.

"What can a soldier, and a Pretorian, want with the persecuted Christians, if not to destroy them?" "Boy, I have no evil intentions. If you guide me down below I swear I will not use my knowledge against your friends. When I am below I will be a prisoner, and they can do with me what they like." "Do you swear that you will not betray them?"

Putting himself upon his march in his general's cloak, and a dagger hanging from his neck before his breast, he did not resume the use of the toga, until Nymphidius Sabinus, prefect of the pretorian guards at Rome, with the two lieutenants, Fonteius Capito in Germany, and Claudius Macer in Africa, who opposed his advancement, were all put down.

These were Titus Vinius, who had been his lieutenant in Spain, a man of insatiable avarice; Cornelius Laco, who, from an assessor to the prince, was advanced to be prefect of the pretorian guards, a person of intolerable arrogance, as well as indolence; and his freedman Icelus, dignified a little before with the privilege of wearing the gold ring, and the use of the cognomen Martianus, who became a candidate for the highest honour within the reach of any person of the equestrian order . He resigned himself so implicitly into the power of those three favourites, who governed in every thing according to the capricious impulse of their vices and tempers, and his authority was so much abused by them, that the tenor of his conduct was not very consistent with itself.

"We want the suppression of the so-called 'Guardia Civil, this pretorian and odious institution in whose malignment and inhuman meshes so many Philippine martyrs have suffered and expired; that center of tortures and iniquities, those contemptible flatterers of small tyrants and of the concupiscense of the priests, those insatiable extortioners of the poor native; those hardened criminals animated constantly in their perverseness by the impunity with which their accomplices, the representatives of despotism and official immorality, covered them.

He betrayed but one symptom, before he breathed his last, of being delirious, which was this: he was all on a sudden much frightened, and complained that he was carried away by forty men. But this was rather a presage, than any delirium: for precisely that number of soldiers belonging to the pretorian cohort, carried out his corpse.

X. He heard of the victory at Bedriacum , and the death of Otho, whilst he was yet in Gaul, and without the least hesitation, by a single proclamation, disbanded all the pretorian cohorts, as having, by their repeated treasons, set a dangerous example to the rest of the army; commanding them to deliver up their arms to his tribunes.

"Who are you, and why do you seek us out in the last resting-place that is left to us on earth?" "Do not suspect me of evil. I come alone, unattended. I am at your mercy." "But what can a soldier and a Pretorian wish of us? Are you pursued? Are you a criminal? Is your life in danger?" "No. I am an officer high in rank and authority. But I have all my life been seeking anxiously after the truth.

The ceremonial of his entrance was conducted with great solemnity. On a plain adjoining the Roman camp, the pretorian troops were drawn up in martial array: the emperor and his court took their station in front of the lines, and behind them was ranged the whole body of the people.