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A hundred years ago, when Statius and Silius Italicus formed part of the regular course of classical study, he naturally and properly stood alongside of them. His Latin is as pure as that of the best poets of the Silver Age; in wealth of language and in fertility of imagination he is excelled, if at all, by Statius alone.
A wedding-dinner is held, generally, but not necessarily, in the house of the bride, and a wedding-cake, served upon bay-leaves, is cut up and divided among the guests. It is now evening, and a procession is formed to bring Marcia home to the house of Silius.
He could not but be aware that lofty as his position was, it was the brink of a precipice that he stood upon. Still he shut his eyes in a great measure to his danger and went blindly on. The catastrophe, which came very suddenly at last, will form the subject of the next chapter. Silius forms a scheme for making himself emperor. He proposes his plan to Messalina. Messalina's reply. Her motives.
He however admitted, he said, that it was absolutely necessary that something decisive should be done. "Your wife is taken from you," said he, "and Silius is master of her. The next thing will be that he will be master of the republic. He may even already have gained the Prætorian guards over to his side, in which case all is lost.
Silius was a noble, with a nobleman's privileges and also his limitations. The class next in rank below his consisted of the "knights," of whom something has already been said. It will be remembered that these men of the "narrow stripe" were the higher middle class, who conducted most of the greater financial enterprises of Rome and the provinces.
At the betrothal ceremony the friends of both houses are in attendance, a regular form of words is interchanged between Silius and the father of Marcia, a ring is given by the man to his fiancée, to be worn on the fourth finger of her left hand, and he adds some other present, most probably some form of that jewellery of which the Roman women were and still are so extraordinarily fond.
Our city, true to its ancient tradition, became Rome's ever faithful ally, as you may read in the poem of Silius Italicus, and was dignified by treaty with the title of a confederate city; and of this fact Cicero reminded the judges when in that famous trial he thundered against Verres, the spoiler of our Sicilian province, and with the other cities defended this of ours, whose people had signalized their hatred of the Roman praetor by overthrowing his statue in the market-place and sparing the pedestal, as they said, to be an eternal memorial of his infamy.
At length, however, she went one step too far, and brought upon herself in consequence of it a terrible destruction. It was about seven years after the accession of Claudius that the event occurred. The favorite of Messalina at this time was a young Roman senator named Caius Silius.
She lived in a constant round of entertainments and of gayety sometimes receiving companies of guests at her own palace, and sometimes making visits with a large retinue of attendants and friends, at the house of Silius. Of course, every one paid court to Silius, and assumed, in their intercourse with him, every appearance that they entertained for him the most friendly regard.
He, as there was a scarcity of corn in those parts, sent out some officers of cavalry and several military tribunes amongst the neighbouring states, for the purpose of procuring corn and provision; in which number T. Terrasidius was sent amongst the Esubii; M. Trebius Gallus amongst the Curiosolitae; Q. Velanius, with T. Silius, amongst the Veneti.
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