“I am innocent, Caesar,” the tribune protested. “I cannot be compared to my accusers. How can it be thought that I, a soldier, would combine with such traitors as these?”
5
But Scaevinus and Proculus declared that Flavus had been the most ardent of the plotters, and one of the first. As Tigellinus pressed him and as Scaevinus and Proculus offered to testify about meetings that Flavus had conducted with them and Prefect Rufus, Flavus at last admitted his guilt.
“But why?” Nero asked, astonished that a Praetorian tribune could betray his emperor and his oath of allegiance. Nero, despite all his faults, believed totally in keeping his word once he gave his sacred oath. “What could have led you to forget your oath of allegiance to me?”
6
“I hated you!” Flavus replied, flushed with honesty at last.
“You hated me?” said Nero, in disbelief.
“I did. Yet, not a soldier could have been more loyal to you, while you deserved to be loved. I began to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, an actor, and an incendiary.”
7
Nero’s eyes flashed with anger. Here were all the “crimes” that his worst critics had accused him of since the Great Fire, crimes stretching back years. It was likely that Flavus had been one of those behind the incessant rumors that put the blame for the fire at Nero’s door. It was also possible that this tribune had sent men through the burning city on the first night of the fire to discourage firefighting, tossing burning brands into buildings and claiming that they were acting on the authority of a certain individual. Flavus may even have set the second fire on Tigellinus’ property, so that the despised Tigellinus received blame and was removed from his post as Flavus’ superior.
Nero turned to Veianius Niger, the tribune of another of the Praetorian Cohorts, and ordered him to take Flavus away and to personally deal with him at once. Flavus, in chains and stripped of his weapons, expensive armor, helmet, and white tribune’s cloak, was left in just his white, purple-bordered tunic. He was hustled from the Servilian Gardens by a large body of men from Niger’s cohort, to a field outside the garden walls. As Flavus watched, several of Niger’s men dug a pit for his body. When they had finished digging and were clambering from the pit, Flavus shook his head. “It’s too shallow, and too narrow,” he scornfully declared. He looked at the soldiers all around him. “Even this is not according to military regulation.”
8
With his hands chained behind his back, he was pressed to his knees beside his grave. His fellow tribune drew his sword and stood over him.
“Present your neck, Flavus,” said Niger, his trembling voice betraying his dread of what he must do.
“I pray that your blow is firm, Niger,” said Flavus.
9
Niger readied his aim, then brought down his blade. But it only penetrated Flavus’ neck part of the way. As blood spurted, Niger, close to panic, raised his sword and struck again. This time, the prisoner’s head flopped to the ground and his corpse toppled over. When Niger returned to Nero and held up Flavus’ severed head by its bloodied fair hair as proof that the deed had been done, someone in Nero’s entourage must have remarked that Flavus possessed a thick neck.
“Yes,” said Niger, laughing now. “It took a blow-and-a-half to slay him.”
10
Sulpicius Asper, a centurion in Flavus’ cohort who had initiated the assassination plot in company with Flavus earlier in the year, had also been identified by Scaevinus and Proculus, who were singing like birds by this time and no longer protecting any of the Praetorians involved in the plot. When Asper was brought before his emperor, Nero was still in shock to think that men who gave their sacred oath to serve and protect him had been planning to murder him. He also asked Asper, “Why did you want to kill me? When you swore to serve me?”
“I could not have rendered a better service to you than to end your infamous career,” Asper spat back in answer.
“Let him suffer the prescribed penalty,” said Nero with disgust.
11
Asper was hauled away and, like Flavus, beheaded at once. Prefect Faenius Rufus, their superior, as a man of senior rank, was granted a little time to compose his last will and testament, and then he too lost his head. Rufus, full of self-pity, wrote in his will that he desperately lamented his foolishness in becoming involved with the conspirators. When he was taken to his execution, he broke down in tears and died bemoaning his misfortune. Information was also given by convicted men against four other Praetorian centurions. All were promptly dealt with; all received the blade soldier-like and composed.
Two more Praetorian tribunes were also accused of complicity in the plot. One, Gavius Silvanus, was acquitted for lack of evidence. But the charge had a factual basis, and apparently feeling dishonored in front of his military colleagues, this Silvanus took his own life soon after. The next Praetorian tribune to be accused was Statius Proximus. When brought before Nero, Proximus openly confessed to having been involved with some conspirators, although he made no mention of the plan to replace Piso with Seneca. To Proximus’ surprise, because he had obeyed Nero’s orders and supervised Seneca’s demise, the emperor gave him a full pardon, which he gratefully accepted. But Proximus was wracked with guilt, and he too also later committed suicide.
Three other Praetorian tribunes were said by conspirators to be known to hate Nero, although there was no evidence that any of them had been involved in the plot. To be on the safe side, Nero deprived all three of their tribuneships and removed them from his service. With the military purged of the murderous and the disloyal, Nero turned to completing the weeding out of the civilian conspirators.
Four men in particular proved industrious in pursuing lines of inquiry on the emperor’s behalf. They set out to identify men who, if not undeniably in league with the convicted conspirators, at least had suspect loyalty to the emperor. One of these investigators was, of course, Tigellinus. Not only was he back in the emperor’s favor, but he was now rid of his rival Faenius Rufus, through Rufus’ own foolishness. Another who sought out the guilty was Nymphidius, prefect of the vigiles. The son of Nymphidia, a freedwoman seamstress who had been the lover of freedmen on the staff of the emperor Caligula, Nymphidius claimed to have been fathered by Caligula himself.
The other two investigators were entirely different men from the widely despised Tigellinus and Nymphidius. It was almost as if Nero relied on them to counter the excesses of the first pair. One was Petronius Turpilianus, an elderly, able, and renowned general who had resigned as a consul for the year in AD 61 to take over the governorship of Britain in the chaotic days following the quashing of Boudicca’s revolt. Turpilianus gained a reputation for a wise and conciliatory administration, which enabled the province to regain its equilibrium in the wake of enormous bloodshed.
The fourth man who was active on the emperor’s behalf was thirty-five-year-old praetor-designate Marcus Cocceius Nerva. He was the son of a former consul who had committed suicide during the reign of Tiberius by starving himself to death shortly after Nerva was born. Credited by all chroniclers with being a good and wise man, Nerva, who was soon due to take up office as a senior judge at Rome, was distantly related to Nero, by marriage. Twenty-nine years from now, Nerva would become Rome’s twelfth emperor.
Through the agency of these four men, Nero was presented with a list of a dozen suspects who, it was thought, sympathized with the convicted conspirators and the conspiracy. At the top of this list was Seneca’s friend Novius Priscus, at whose villa Seneca had died. Another on the list was Rufius Crispinus, the empress Poppaea’s first husband. With no concrete evidence against them, all twelve suspects were, on Nero’s command, exiled from Rome. Some were merely banished from Italy, to live where they chose, while others were sent to specific islands. Several took their wives with them.
One man whom Nero had been hoping would be caught in the conspiratorial net was Vestinus, the sitting consul. When Nero was younger, Vestinus had been one of his companions on his night revels, at a time when Nero, incognito, would pick fights with strangers in the street. Vestinus, a witty man, had been good company on these revels, but his wit had a sarcastic edge, and although Nero had not shown it at the time, the emperor had long remembered Vestinus’ barbs, for many jests are exaggerated truths. Added to Nero’s aggravation was the fact that Vestinus had only recently married Nero’s latest mistress, Statilia Messalina.
Nero felt certain that Vestinus was deeply disaffected with him, and considering Vestinus an impetuous man, Nero was convinced that the consul must have been involved with the conspiracy. Yet, not a word against Vestinus had been uttered by any conspirator, and all inquiries by Nero’s investigators failed to produce a single piece of evidence that incriminated the consul. Came the end of another day, and still no one had come forward with anything negative to say about Vestinus. It was reported to Nero that during that day, Vestinus had conducted his consular duties as usual and in the evening had welcomed a number of guests for dinner. Nero, fearful of waiting any longer in case Vestinus was about to act against him, decided to proceed with his arrest, despite the lack of evidence against him, to “forestall the plans of the consul.”
12
Vestinus’ city house was a palatial mansion on the Palatine Hill, home to the palaces of the emperors. Like the old palaces on the Palatine, Vestinus’ house, a structure “towering over the Forum,” in the words of Tacitus, had been rapidly restored since the Great Fire.
13
In this mansion, Vestinus kept a staff of hundreds of male slaves, chosen deliberately by their master for their handsome appearance and youth. If Vestinus were to arm these men, he could effectively resist arrest or, worse, go on the offensive. So, Nero ordered an entire Praetorian Cohort to make the arrest. In the darkness, one thousand Praetorian soldiers commanded by the trustworthy Tribune Gerellanus marched from their barracks, crossed the city, climbed the Palatine, then surrounded the house, and sealed off the servants’ quarters.
A party of troops led by a centurion burst into the house as the consul and his guests were reclining, unsuspecting, around the dinner table. The centurion announced that his tribune waited outside and asked the consul to accompany him. Vestinus knew exactly what this meant. Quickly coming to his feet, issuing orders to his staff, and asking his physician, who was one of his dinner guests, to join him, the consul withdrew into another room and closed and barred the doors. The physician sliced open the veins of Vestinus’ arms. A warm bath was prepared on the master’s orders, and as soon as it was ready, Vestinus was carried to it by servants and lowered in, as his life blood now colored the bath-water red. Not a word was uttered by the consul, who was resigned to his fate.
Back in the dining room, Praetorians had surrounded the diners, who were instructed to remain where they were. There they waited, for hours, half expecting to also face a fatal end to their banquet. Word of the state of affairs at Vestinus’ house was regularly conveyed across the Tiber to the emperor, who was still residing at the Servilian Gardens. Even after it was reported that Vestinus had expired, Nero left the men in the dining room in suspense. According to Tacitus, he laughed at the thought of their terror. It was late at night when orders finally arrived for the troops to withdraw. Nero now had Vestinus’ head, and that was all he required. The traumatized diners were permitted to go home.
Nero still considered four other men to pose continuing threats. The first was young poet Lucan. From the testimony of other conspirators, it became clear that Lucan had been one of the instigators of the plot against the emperor’s life. What was more, Lucan was the nephew of Seneca, and that alone was sure to win him sympathy and followers from among Seneca’s admirers. Lucan had been promised immunity if he named one other conspirator, and as if to poke out his tongue at Nero, he had named Atilla, his own mother.
Lucan’s immunity offer had not come from Nero’s own lips, but from Tigellinus. On the strength of that technicality and infuriated by Lucan’s cheek, Nero sent the poet word that he had been condemned to death. Calling his friends around him, Lucan slit his veins. Remarking that he felt a chill creep through his hands and feet as the blood dripped from him, he lay reciting one of his poems, about a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death. And so Lucan the poet died. His mother was never arrested or questioned.
Senecio, the “inside man” who had betrayed Nero’s friendship as well as his trust, was the next to receive a visit from the Praetorians. He too was permitted to take his own life. Quintianus was next, and he followed the others’ example, as did, finally, Scaevinus, the man who had claimed the right to plunge Fortune’s dagger into the emperor’s heart. Scaevinus’ wife, Caedicia, was, on Nero’s orders, exiled from Italy. Nero had the by-now-infamous dagger inscribed “To Jupiter the Avenger” and dedicated it in a temple at the capital.