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Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 10:47 AM
The Senate then gave their votes that Serenus should be punished
according to ancient precedent, when the emperor, to
soften the odium of
the affair, interposed with his veto. Next, Gallus
Asinius proposed that
he should be confined in Gyaros or Donusa, but this he
rejected, on the
ground that both these islands were deficient in
water, and that he whose
life was spared, ought to be allowed the necessaries
of life. And so Serenus
was conveyed back to Amorgus.
In consequence of the suicide of Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, it
was proposed to deprive
informers of their rewards whenever a person accused
of treason put an
end to his life by his own act before the completion
of the trial. The
motion was on the point of being carried when the
emperor, with a harshness
contrary to his manner, spoke openly for the
informers, complaining that
the laws would be ineffective, and the State brought
to the verge of ruin.
"Better," he said, "to subvert the constitution than
to remove its guardians."
Thus the informers, a class invented to destroy the
commonwealth, and never
enough controlled even by legal penalties, were
stimulated by
rewards.
Some little joy broke this long succession of
horrors. Caius Cominius,
a Roman knight, was spared by the emperor, against
whom he was convicted
of having written libellous verses, at the
intercession of his brother,
who was a Senator. Hence it seemed the more amazing
that one who knew better
things and the glory which waits on mercy, should
prefer harsher courses.
He did not indeed err from dulness, and it is easy to
see when the acts
of a sovereign meet with genuine, and when with
fictitious popularity.
And even he himself, though usually artificial in
manner, and though his
words escaped him with a seeming struggle, spoke out
freely and fluently
whenever he came to a man's rescue.
In another case, that of Publius Suillius,
formerly quaestor to
Germanicus, who was to be expelled from Italy on a
conviction of having
received money for a judicial decision, he held that
the man ought to be
banished to an island, and so intensely strong was his
feeling that he
bound the Senate by an oath that this was a State
necessity. The act wa
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