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496 DARKNESS AND DAWN
goaded into complicity by the wrongs heaped upon him by
Nero's jealousy. Perhaps the most important, courageous, and
disinterested adherent was Plautius Lateranus, the consulelect.
He had no motive but a noble patriotism which felt
the shame of a Roman at being governed by a histrionic
debauchee. Joined to these were very unpromising elements.
No credit could accrue to any cause from the support of such
men as Flavius Sceevinus, a man of dissolute character and
slothful life ; Quintianus, stained with the same vices which
made Nero infamous ; Senecio, a dandy long endeared to Nero
by similarity of tastes ; Natalis, a confidential friend of Piso,
who had probably meditated treachery from the first; and
Epicharis, a freedwornan of the lowest character, though for
some unknown reason she proved herself the most impassioned
and the most courageous of them all.
The conspiracy was revealed through the fantastic and
effeminate folly of Scsevinus, but not until it had left Nero
almost wild with terror. Natalis, Sca3vinus, Quintianus, Senecio,
shrinking from the thought of torture which the poor
freedwoman heroically braved, and under which she expired
turned informers. The friends of Piso strove in vain to
awaken him to manly counsels. He went home, and lay
hidden there till the band of tiros arrived whom Nero distrusting
the older soldiers had sent to bid him kill himself.
He opened his veins, wrote a will full of the grossest flattery
to the Emperor and ignobly died.
More courageous was the death of Lateranus. When Epaphroditus
came to c
question him, he answered : If I should
have anything to say, I will say it to your master.' Nero did
not allow him to choose his mode of death, or to embrace his
children. Hurried to a place of servile execution, he maintained
a disdainful silence, not even reproaching the tribune
Statins, an accomplice in the conspiracy, by whose hand he
was to die. He stretched out his neck without a word, and
stretched it out again when the first blow failed.
Fsenius Rufus did not escape. He overdid his part by trying
to terrify the conspirators as he sat by Nero and Tigellinus
before his own name had been denounced. It was too much
to expect that among that crowd of cowards, dupes, and
traitors no one would find it intolerable to have the same
man as both an accomplice and inquisitor. So, as he brow-