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IX. Statements are made in both parts that appear to be the outcome only of inventive ingenuity and a malignant humour. This seems to be said merely with the view of blackening the character of Tiberius, as the character of Nero is blackened by the statements made about Antonius Natalis.
He ordered Epicharis to be told that concealment was no longer possible, that Scevinus and Natalis had divulged the plot in full, and that her only hope lay in amply confessing all that she knew. This announcement had no effect upon Epicharis. She refused to admit that she knew any thing of any conspiracy. Nero then ordered that she should be put to the torture.
I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I know not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or whether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so: "Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit Formidolosus, pars violentior Natalis hors, seu tyrannus Hesperive Capricornus undae:"
Scaevinus, with equal weakness, perhaps because he thought that Natalis had left nothing to reveal, mentioned the names of the others, and among them of Lucan, whose complicity in the plot would undoubtedly tend to give greater probability to the supposed guilt of Seneca.
Natalis was the first to mentioned the name of Piso, and he added the hated name of Seneca, either because he had been the confidential messenger between the two, or because he knew that he could not do a greater favour to Nero than by giving him the opportunity of injuring a man whom he had long sought every possible opportunity to crush.
Van Tricasse then sent one of the aides-de-camp of the confectioner-general, citizen Hildevert Shuman, a manufacturer of barley-sugar, a very firm and energetic man, who carried to the authorities of Virgamen the original minute of the indictment drawn up in 1195 by order of the Burgomaster Natalís Van Tricasse.
From all which preparations Milichus conjecturing what work was in hand, accused Scaevinus before Nero; whereupon Scaevinus was arrested, and with him Natalis, another of the conspirators, who the day before had been seen to speak with him for a long time in private; and when the two differed in their account of what then passed between them, they were put to the torture and forced to confess the truth.
"We will take revenge at the proper moment," said simply Natalis Van Tricasse, the thirty-second predecessor of the burgomaster of this story, "and the Virgamenians will lose nothing by waiting." The Virgamenians were forewarned.
In this connection it may be mentioned, as a series of curious coincidences, that in the Zoroastrian religion long before our era the Sun-God Mithras bore much the same relation to the All-Father that the Christ does in ours, and is referred to in the Zend Avesta as the Incarnate Word; that Mithras is said, like the Christ, to have been born in a cave; that the Fathers admitted that the new-born Sun had been worshipped in the cave at Bethlehem to which the story of the birth of Jesus referred; and that in framing its calendar our Church fixed upon the recognised birthday of Mithras, the Natalis Invicti of the Roman Brumalia, as the birthday of the Christ.
He denies the allegations of his accuser. Nero perplexed. The truth at last discovered. Scevinus and Natalis make a full confession.
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