United States or Falkland Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He instanced the rebellion of Maternus as a result of the incompetence and venality of Perennis. Worse than this, he said, Perennis was plotting the Emperor's assassination and the elevation to the Principate of one of his two sons. This project of his, which he was furthering by astute secret machinations, had come to the knowledge of a loyal member of the Emperor's retinue.
We have lived like hermits, showing ourselves only often enough to keep alive the Maternus legend." "Well, isn't that better than risking your neck trying to make and unmake emperors?" Narcissus asked. "I risk my neck each hour I linger in Rome!" "Well then, by Hercules, take payment for the risk, and cut the risk and vanish!" exclaimed Narcissus.
But nothing was more probable than that such a permit would be unobtainable. Sextus stepped into the firelight, pulling back the hood to let the centurion see his face. "By Mars' red plume! Are you the man they call Maternus?" Sextus retorted with a challenge: "Now will you send for your commander? He knows me well." "Dioscuri! Doubtless! Probably you robbed him of his purse!
"Well, that was what the caravan folk thought, until they passed the place of execution and saw no body there." "The robbers possibly themselves removed it and were seeking to avenge Maternus." "Much more likely somebody was bribed to let him escape!
One of the slaves, who can read, declares that the words on the parchment he burned were "Maternus Latro," and that it was the identical parchment he had seen hanging from Maternus' neck on the cross.
One merchant grinned to the other: "Yet I think it was on the first night that Maternus rose up! They stiffen if they stay a whole night on the cross. If he could walk to Daphne three nights later, he had not been crucified many hours. Come, let us go to the baths before the crowd gets there.
He had glossy, straight brown hair, soft brown eyes, a complexion almost infantile in its rosy freshness, and all his features were small, his ears close to his head, his mouth even tiny, his nose likewise: and withal, Maternus was habitually mild, serene of expression, slow and soft of speech, and deliberate in all his movements.
Some say he is the same Maternus who was crucified near Antioch at about the time when you were there; some say he isn't. He is reported to visit Rome in various disguises, and to be able to conduct himself so well that he can pass for a patrician. Some say he has a large band; some say, hardly any followers. Some say it was he who robbed the emperor's own mail a month ago. Pertinax looked bored.
The works of the other Flavian poets, Curiatius Maternus, Saleius Bassus, Arruntius Stella, and the poetess Sulpicia, are lost; all else that survives of the verse of the period is the work of a writer of a different order, but of considerable importance and value, the epigrammatist Martial.
"Throw 'em down!" came a chorus of voices, "throw 'em down!" Down we were thrown, none too tenderly, but we landed without breaking any bones. Two men clutched each of us and haled us towards the fire. There we had our first glimpse of Maternus, who sat on a pack, his back against the rock, not too close to the fire, the light of which played on his left cheek. He looked plump and lazy.
Word Of The Day