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Behold! in a few days a command will be given to the pretorians to cast old men, women, and children into prison, and lead them to death, just as they led to death the slaves of Pedanius Secundus. All this has been done by that second Judas.
It was said also that Cæsar had gone mad, that he would command pretorians and gladiators to fall upon the people and make a general slaughter. Others swore by the gods that wild beasts had been let out of all the vivaria at Bronzebeard's command. Men had seen on the streets lions with burning manes, and mad elephants and bisons, trampling down people in crowds.
Everything which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the pretorians.
"Tigellinus," said Nero, "dost thou love me?" "Thou knowest, lord." "Sacrifice thyself for me." "O divine Cæsar," answered Tigellinus, "why present the sweet cup which I may not raise to my lips? The people are muttering and rising; dost thou wish the pretorians also to rise?" A feeling of terror pressed the hearts of those present.
They passed the lupanaria gleaming with light, the grove, the line of mounted pretorians, and found the litters. "I will go with thee," said Petronius. They sat down together. On the road both were silent, and only in the atrium of Vinicius's house did Petronius ask, "Dost thou know who that was?" "Was it Rubria?" asked Vinicius, repulsed at the very thought that Rubria was a vestal. "No."
He said that even Augustians were dissatisfied; that Fenius Rufus, second prefect of the pretorians, endured with the greatest effort the vile orders of Tigellinus; and that all Seneca's relatives were driven to extremes by Cæsar's conduct as well toward his old master as toward Lucan.
He therefore hastened to say that the pretorians would never kill the daughter of Germanicus, and then added that if they really wished to do away with Agrippina, the best plan would be for Anicetus to carry out the work which he had begun. His advice was the same as Seneca's, but he turned over to a third person the very grave responsibility for its execution.
In the evening was heard with delight bellowing which was like thunder, and which sounded throughout the city. The prisons were overflowing with thousands of people; every day the mob and pretorians drove in new victims. Pity had died out. It seemed that people had forgotten to speak, and in their wild frenzy remembered one shout alone: "To the lions with Christians!"
And an appeal to the Pretorians of Rome or to the Janizzaries of the Ottoman empire would be as relevant as an appeal for warning to the major-generals of Oliver Cromwell. Nor is there any fixed and necessary hostility between militarism and art, between militarism and culture, as the Athens of Plato and of Sophocles, a military State, attests.
Ulpianus corrected many of the irregular practices instituted by Sardanapalus; but, after putting to death Flavianus and Chrestus, that he might succeed them, he was himself before long slain by the Pretorians, who attacked him in the night; and it availed nothing that ran to the palace and took refuge with the emperor himself and the latter's mother.
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