Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

156 SENECAthis important recruit, and so, without betrayingthe names of the conspirators, sufficiently indicatedwhat was afoot to lead him to report to the emperorwhat he had heard. Epicharis was summonedto Rome and confronted with the informer who,however, found it impossible to confute her resolutedenials. Nero's suspicions had nevertheless beenaroused, and Epicharis was detained in custody.This alarm determined the conspirators tohasten their attempt. Nero was about to be Piso'sguest in his villa at Baiae, and the opportunityseemed to many of them an excellent one forcarrying out their designs. But Piso refused toviolate, after the manner of Macbeth, the laws''of hospitality. Better,' he said, that the deedshould be done in the city, in that detested housefounded on the spoils of citizens. What wasdone for the sake of the republic should be doneopenly.' At last they resolved to execute theirplot at the Circus' games, where Nero was moreaccessible than at other times. Lateranus, onpretence of a petition, was to fall at the knees ofthe emperor and, seizing them, to overturn him,when the other conspirators would attack himwith their daggers. Piso, who was to await eventsat the Temple of Ceres, was then to be summonedto the camp by Fenius the prefect and by others,and proclaimed emperor. The first blow was tobe struck by Flavins Scevinus, a conspiratorof senatorial rank, who had consecrated to thisend a dagger in the Temple of Safety, and nowwithdrew it for its work.To the imprudence of Scevinus the discovery