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Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 8:04 PM
It was however wonderful how among people of different class, rank,
age, sex, among rich and poor, everything was kept in secrecy till betrayal
began from the house of Scaevinus. The day before the treacherous attempt,
after a long conversation with Antonius Natalis, Scaevinus returned home,
sealed his will, and, drawing from its sheath the dagger of which I have
already spoken, and complaining that it was blunted from long disuse, he
ordered it to be sharpened on a stone to a keen and bright point. This
task he assigned to his freedman Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. At the same time sat down to
a more than usually sumptuous banquet, and gave his favourite slaves their
freedom, and money to others. He was himself depressed, and evidently in
profound thought, though he affected gaiety in desultory conversation.
Last of all, he directed ligatures for wounds and the means of stanching
blood to be prepared by the same Milichus, who either knew of the conspiracy
and was faithful up to this point, or was in complete ignorance and then
first caught suspicions, as most authors have inferred from what followed.
For when his servile imagination dwelt on the rewards of perfidy, and he
saw before him at the same moment boundless wealth and power, conscience
and care for his patron's life, together with the remembrance of the freedom
he had received, fled from him. From his wife, too, he had adopted a womanly
and yet baser suggestion; for she even held over him a dreadful thought,
that many had been present, both freedmen and slaves, who had seen what
he had; that one man's silence would be useless, whereas the rewards would
be for him alone who was first with the information.
Accordingly at daybreak Milichus went to the Servilian gardens,
and, finding the doors shut against him, said again and again that he was
the bearer of important and alarming news. Upon this he was conducted by
the gatekeepers to one of Nero's freedmen, Epaphroditus, and by him to
Nero, whom he informed of the urgent danger, of the formidable conspiracy,
and of all else which he had heard or inferred. He showed him too the weapon
prepared for his destruction, and bade him summon the
accused.
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