Caesar, meanwhile, after dedicating the temples in Campania, warned the public by an edict not to disturb his retirement and posted soldiers here and there to keep off the throngs of townsfolk.But he so loathed the towns and colonies and, in short, every place on the mainland, that he buried himself in the island of Capreae which is separated by three miles of strait from the extreme point of the promontory of Sorrentum.The solitude of the place was, I believe, its chief attraction, for a harbourless sea surrounds it and even for a small vessel it has but few safe retreats, nor can any one land unknown to the sentries.Its air in winter is soft, as it is screened by a mountain which is a protection against cutting winds.In summer it catches the western breezes, and the open sea round it renders it most delightful.It commanded too a prospect of the most lovely bay, till Vesuvius, bursting into flames, changed the face of the country.Greeks, so tradition says, occupied those parts and Capreae was inhabited by the Teleboi.Tiberius had by this time filled the island with twelve country houses, each with a grand name and a vast structure of its own.Intent as he had once been on the cares of state, he was now for thoroughly unbending himself in secret profligacy and a leisure of malignant schemes.For he still retained that rash proneness to suspect and to believe, which even at Rome Sejanus used to foster, and which he here excited more keenly, no longer concealing his machinations against Agrippina and Nero.
Soldiers hung about them, and every message, every visit, their public and their private life were I may say regularly chronicled.And persons were actually suborned to advise them to flee to the armies of Germany, or when the Forum was most crowded, to clasp the statue of statue of the Divine Augustus and appeal to the protection of the people and Senate.These counsels they disdained, but they were charged with having had thoughts of acting on them.
The year of the consulship of Silanus and Silius Nerva opened with a foul beginning.A Roman knight of the highest rank, Titius Sabinus, was dragged to prison because he had been a friend of Germanicus.He had indeed persisted in showing marked respect towards his wife and children, as their visitor at home, their companion in public, the solitary survivor of so many clients, and he was consequently esteemed by the good, as he was a terror to the evil-minded.Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petitius Rufus, and Marcus Opsius, ex-praetors, conspired to attack him, with an eye to the consulship, to which there was access only through Sejanus, and the good will of Sejanus was to be gained only by a crime.They arranged amongst themselves that Latiaris, who had some slight acquaintance with Sabinus, should devise the plot, that the rest should be present as witnesses, and that then they should begin the prosecution.Accordingly Latiaris, after first dropping some casual remarks, went on to praise the fidelity of Sabinus in not having, like others, forsaken after its fall the house of which he had been the friend in its prosperity.He also spoke highly of Germanicus and compassionately of Agrippina.Sabinus, with the natural softness of the human heart under calamity, burst into tears, which he followed up with complaints, and soon with yet more daring invective against Sejanus, against his cruelty, pride and ambition.He did not spare even Tiberius in his reproaches.That conversation, having united them, as it were, in an unlawful secret, led to a semblance of close intimacy.Henceforward Sabinus himself sought Latiaris, went continually to his house, and imparted to him his griefs, as to a most faithful friend.
The men whom I have named now consulted how these conversations might fall within the hearing of more persons.It was necessary that the place of meeting should preserve the appearance of secrecy, and, if witnesses were to stand behind the doors, there was a fear of their being seen or heard, or of suspicion casually arising.Three senators thrust themselves into the space between the roof and ceiling, a hiding-place as shameful as the treachery was execrable.
They applied their ears to apertures and crevices.Latiaris meanwhile having met Sabinus in the streets, drew him to his house and to the room, as if he was going to communicate some fresh discoveries.
There he talked much about past and impending troubles, a copious topic indeed, and about fresh horrors.Sabinus spoke as before and at greater length, as sorrow, when once it has broken into utterance, is the harder to restrain.Instantly they hastened to accuse him, and having despatched a letter to the emperor, they informed him of the order of the plot and of their own infamy.Never was Rome more distracted and terror-stricken.Meetings, conversations, the ear of friend and stranger were alike shunned; even things mute and lifeless, the very roofs and walls, were eyed with suspicion.
The emperor in his letter on the first of January, after offering the usual prayers for the new year, referred to Sabinus, whom he reproached with having corrupted some of his freedmen and having attempted his life, and he claimed vengeance in no obscure language.
