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Saturday, July 24, 2010 - 4:54 PM
That same consulship witnessed a horrible instance of misery and
brutality. A father as defendant, a son as prosecutor,
(Vibius Serenus
was the name of both) were brought before the Senate;
the father, dragged
from exile in filth and squalor now stood in irons,
while the son pleaded
for his guilt. With studious elegance of dress and
cheerful looks, the
youth, at once accuser and witness, alleged a plot
against the emperor
and that men had been sent to Gaul to excite
rebellion, further adding
that Caecilius Cornutus, an ex-praetor, had furnished
money. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire,
weary of anxiety and feeling that peril was equivalent
to ruin, hastened
to destroy himself. But the accused with fearless
spirit, looked his son
in the face, shook his chains, and appealed to the
vengeance of the gods,
with a prayer that they would restore him to his
exile, where he might
live far away from such practices, and that, as for
his son, punishment
might sooner or later overtake him. He protested too
that Cornutus was
innocent and that his terror was groundless, as would
easily be perceived,
if other names were given up; for he never would have
plotted the emperor's
murder and a revolution with only one confederate.
Upon this the prosecutor named Cneius Lentulus
and Seius Tubero,
to the great confusion of the emperor, at finding a
hostile rebellion and
disturbance of the public peace charged on two leading
men in the state,
his own intimate friends, the first of whom was in
extreme old age and
the second in very feeble health. They were, however,
at once acquitted.
As for the father, his slaves were examined by
torture, and the result
was unfavourable to the accuser. The man, maddened by
remorse, and terror-stricken
by the popular voice, which menaced him with the
dungeon, the rock, or
a parricide's doom, fled from Rome. He was dragged
back from Ravenna, and
forced to go through the prosecution, during which
Tiberius did not disguise
the old grudge he bore the exile Serenus. For after
Libo's conviction,
Serenus had sent the emperor a letter, upbraiding him
for not having rewarded
his special zeal in that trial, with further hints
more insolent than could
be safely trusted to the easily offended ears of a
despot. All this Tiberius
revived eight years later, charging on him various
misconduct during that
interval, even though the examination by torture,
owing to the obstinacy
of the slaves, had contradicted his guilt.
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