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But his men were alarmed and fell back in confusion, while Paul, profiting by their hesitation, sprang with a quick active bound across the basin of the fountain, and gained the cavern’s mouth just as his stout freedman Thrasea showed himself in the entrance with a close casque and cuirass of bronze, and a boar spear in his hand, the heads and weapons of several other able-bodied men appearing close behind.
Nevertheless it would be a great error to regard him as a Stoic in the sense in which Brutus, Cato, and Thrasea, were Stoics. Like all the greatest Roman thinkers he was an Eclectic; he belonged in reality to no school. He was the successor of such men as Scipio, Ennius, and Cicero, far more than of the rigid thinkers of the Porch. He himself says, "Nullius nomen fero."
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "I am right, Thrasea. Foul murder hath been done here! Let us look farther." Several minutes now were spent in searching every foot of ground, and prying even into the open vaults of several broken graves; for at first they had taken a wrong direction in the gloom.
Vestinius, superstitious but inclined to enthusiasm, a man who feared ghosts but not the living, gave a sign for mercy also. So did Scevinus, the Senator; so did Nerva, so did Tullius Senecio, so did the famous leader Ostorius Scapula, and Antistius, and Piso, and Vetus, and Crispinus, and Minucius Thermus, and Pontius Telesinus, and the most important of all, one honored by the people, Thrasea.
Even the stoical and heroic Thrasea openly confessed that he should prefer death to exile.
The unrelenting warfare which the ghost of the legitimate republic waged for centuries, from Cassius and Brutus down to Thrasea and Tacitus, nay, even far later, against the Caesarian monarchy a warfare of plots and of literature was the legacy which the dying Cato bequeathed to his enemies.
"Nay! weep not so, my Thrasea," exclaimed the generous youth, laying his left hand with a friendly pressure on the freedman’s shoulder, "thou shalt have all means to do all honor to his name; all that can now be done by mortals for the revered and sacred dead. Aid me now to remove the body, lest those who slew him may return, and carry off the evidences of their crime."
"I comprehend, and will obey you to the letter, Paullus," answered the grave freedman, "but will not you be armed?" "I will, my Thrasea. Leave thou a leathern hunting helmet here on the table, and light scaled cuirass, which I will do on under my toga. I shall be there at the fourth hour precisely; but it were well that ye should be on your posts by the second hour or soon after.
Nero, however, with the shameful assent of Burrus and Seneca, dispatched assassins to carry out the work, and Agrippina was slaughtered. For a moment remorse seized Nero, but it was soon soothed; Burrus headed the cringing congratulations of Roman society, to which Thrasea Pætus was alone in refusing to be a party.
They consisted for the most part of virtuous noblemen such as Paetus Thrasea, Barea, Rubellius Plautus, above all, Helvidius Priscus, on whose uncompromising independence Tacitus loves to dwell; and of philosophers, moral teachers and literati, who sought after real excellence, not contemporary applause.
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