While he was thus wearied and agitated, there burst upon him the immense weight of Piso’s conspiracy, which afforded him a proof how many and how varied were the forces of hatred and contempt which he had kindled in the hearts of all.
Piso stood at the head of the great Calpurnian house, and was connected by ties of relationship with many of the noblest families in Rome. He was not himself the author of the conspiracy, for which, indeed, his character was altogether too unstable and corrupt. He was dragged into it by Subrius Flavus, a tribune, and Sulpicius Asper, a centurion of the Prætorian guards. Fænius Rufus, the Prætorian Præfect, approved of the plot, out of disgust for the machinations of his rival, Tigellinus, who was constantly incriminating him to the Emperor. Seneca lent a dubious sanction, which many believed to be mixed up with personal designs. Lucan was goaded into complicity by the wrongs heaped upon him by Nero’s jealousy. Perhaps the most important, courageous, and disinterested adherent was Plautius Lateranus, the consul-elect. He had no motive but a noble patriotism which felt the shame of a Roman at being governed by a histrionic debauchee. Joined to these were very unpromising elements. No credit could accrue to any cause from the support of such men as Flavius Scævinus, a man of dissolute character and slothful life; Quintianus, stained with the same vices which made Nero infamous; Senecio, a dandy long endeared to Nero by similarity of tastes; Natalis, a confidential friend of Piso, who had probably meditated treachery from the first; and Epicharis, a freed woman of the lowest character, though for some unknown reason she proved herself the most impassioned and the most courageous of them all.
The conspiracy was revealed through the fantastic and effeminate folly of Scævinus, but not until it had left Nero almost wild with terror. Natalis, Scævinus, Quintianus, Senecio, shrinking from the thought of torture—which the poor freedwoman heroically braved, and under which she expired—turned informers. The friends of Piso strove in vain to awaken him to manly counsels. He went home, and lay hidden there till the band of tiros arrived whom Nero—distrusting the older soldiers—had sent to bid him kill himself. He opened his veins, wrote a will full of the grossest flattery to the Emperor and ignobly died.
More courageous was the death of Lateranus. When Epaphroditus came to question him, he answered: ‘If I should have anything to say, I will say it to your master.’ Nero did not allow him to choose his mode of death, or to embrace his children. Hurried to a place of servile execution, he maintained a disdainful silence, not even reproaching the tribune Statius, an accomplice in the conspiracy, by whose hand he was to die. He stretched out his neck without a word, and stretched it out again when the first blow failed.
Fænius Rufus did not escape. He overdid his part by trying to terrify the conspirators as he sat by Nero and Tigellinus before his own name had been denounced. It was too much to expect that among that crowd of cowards, dupes, and traitors no one would find it intolerable to have the same man as both an accomplice and inquisitor. So, as he browbeat and threatened Scævinus, he answered with a smile that no one knew more than Rufus himself, and urged him to show his gratitude to such an excellent Emperor. Rufus turned pale, stammered, and so completely betrayed his guilt that Nero ordered a powerful soldier to seize and bind him then and there. His death was pusillanimous. He poured his lamentations even into his will.
Subrius Flavus was the next to be betrayed. ‘As if I, a soldier, could ever have undertaken such work with such helpless women as these!’ he exclaimed. But, pressed with questions, he confessed and gloried in the deed.
‘What made you forget your oath of allegiance to me?’ asked Nero.
‘Because I hated you,’ he answered. ‘While you were worthy to be loved, you had no more faithful soldier than myself. I began to hate you when you displayed yourself as the murderer of your mother and your wife, a jockey, a mummer, and an incendiary.’
The words struck the ears of Nero like a terrific blow. Familiar with crime, he was unaccustomed to be charged with it. Indifferent to the deeds, he shrank from the name of a criminal, and nothing in the conspiracy caused him worse pain than this. He ordered the tribune Veianus Niger to execute Flavus. To increase the terror of the condemned it was customary to dig a grave before their eyes. The grave was dug for Flavus in a field hard by. Looking at its shortness and shallowness with contempt, as at a scamped piece of work, he exclaimed with disdain, ‘You cannot even do a thing like that as a soldier should.’
‘Stretch out your neck manfully,’ said Niger.