click to read pdf file - The Preterist Archive

THE DOOM OF VIRTUE 523
They are his last recorded words. His funeral was humble.
His pyre burned silently in the gardens of his deserted house,
and when they had gathered his ashes his wife and daughter
had yet to endure the anguish of parting with Helvidius.
The hours of their heart-breaking sorrow were insulted by
shouts of rapture with which the people greeted the Parthian
Tiridates and the murderer of their beloved.
During the condemnation of Thrasea and Helvidius the
Temple of Venus Genetrix had been the scene of a tragedy
still more pathetic of a tragedy perhaps the most pathetic
ever witnessed in that assembly of woe. Barea Soranus,
like Thrasea, was a Stoic. He had been the Proconsul of
Asia, and was charged with the double crime of friendship
for Kubellius Plautius and of having administered his province
rather with a view to his own glory than for the public
good. This was an allusion to his honourable conduct in
having supported the people of Pergamus in their opposition
to the greedy robbery of their statues by Acratus, the
freedman of Nero. These were old charges, but to them was
added the new and deadly one that his daughter, Servilia,
had practised arts of sorcery and given money to the diviners
of horoscopes.
The hapless Servilia was little more than a girl, yet she
was practically a widow. Her husband, Annius Pollio, had
been driven into exile, as an accomplice in the Pisoniau
conspiracy, though no evidence had been brought against
him. The poor young widow she was not yet twenty
years old -
was falling sick with the intensity of her anxiety
for the father whom she tenderly loved. She had merely
consulted the Chaldeans, in the anguish of her heart and
the inexperience of her youth, to know whether Nero would
be placable, and Soranus be able to refute the charges brought
against him, or, at any rate, to escape with his life. The
impostors, after accepting large sums and exhausting her
resources, had basely betrayed her.
On opposite sides of the tribunal where Nero sat between
the two consuls stood the hapless prisoners the father
grey with age, the young daughter not even venturing to
lift
up her eyes to his face, because in her rash affection
she had increased his perils.
The accuser was a knight named Ostorius Sabinus.
'
Did