Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

RETURN FROM EXILE47his way back from Ostia, while in the gardenof his palace the Bacchanalia were being celebratedwith feasting and drinking and the wildestexcesses. Messahna herself, as a Bacchante, herhair flowing and shaking the thyrsus, andSilius, crowned with ivy, led the revels ; andaround them women, clad in skins, dancedand sang in mad self-abandonment. One ofthe revellers, who had climbed to the top of atree, was asked by his comrades what he saw :'An awful storm coming up from Ostia,' he replied,in words afterwards regarded as a presage.Soon after came the news that Claudius knewall, and was returning post-haste to Rome andvengeance. The company scattered, and Messalinawent out to meet the emperor with her children,Octavia and Britannicus. Narcissus, however,and his confederates contrived to prevent ameeting ; Claudius, stunned, stupid, and silent,left all to the freedman ;Silius was seized andput to death ;and the same night Messalina,by Narcissus' direction and the emperor's pretendedorder, suffered the same fate. The newswas brought to Claudius at his dinner. He wasnot told whether she died by her own hand or bythat of another, nor had he the curiosity to ask.In the ensuing days [says Tacitus]he showed nosigns of anger or of hatred, of joy or of grief,or ofany human emotion ;nor was he moved in any degreeby the sight either of his sorrowing children or ofthe triumphant satisfaction displayed by Messalina'saccusers.-^1Ann. xi. 38.