At his behest, Helius brought another gold goblet and handed it to Celer and Celer mixed the wine before us all, raised the goblet to his own lips and then passed it to Silanus, as he had dented his. Silanus emptied the goblet in two draughts, as usual, for he could not refuse to drink to the Emperor.
After setting the goblet to one side, he was about to continue on the same theme when all at once the veins in his temples swelled, and clutching his throat, he groaned, unable to say a word, his face darkening and turning blue. We stared in terror at him. Before anyone had time to move, he fell to the floor, his fat body jerking once or twice before he let out his last rattling breath there in front of our eyes.
We had all leapt to our feet in fright, quite incapable of speech, and only Publius Celer kept his head.
“I warned him not to get so excited,” he said. “He was overstrained as a result of this unexpected news and took much too hot a bath before the meal. But let us regard this heart attack as a good omen rather than a bad one. You all heard with what rancor he spoke of the Emperor and his mother. His younger brother Lucius took his own life in almost the same way in his day, just to spoil the wedding day of Claudius and Agrippina, when Claudius had broken off his betrothal to Octavia.”
We all began to talk at once of how the heart of an overweight man can burst from too much excitement, and how the face suddenly darkens. Helius fetched Silanus’ physician, who had already retired to bed in accordance with the Cos people’s healthy rules of life. He arrived looking frightened, turned the body over, asked for more light and looked distrustfully down Silanus’ throat. Then he covered his head with his mantle without a word.
When Publius Celer questioned him, he admitted in a broken voice that he had often warned his master against gorging himself with good food, and confirmed that all the signs pointed to a heart attack.
“This unfortunate episode should be recorded on a physician’s certificate,” said Publius Celer, “and also in an official document which we shall all sign as witnesses. An unexpected death causes evil tongues to wag when it is a question of a well-known person. So it should be noted down that I myself tasted the wine before passing it on to him.”
We looked at one another in confusion. It had certainly looked as if Celer had first raised the goblet to his lips, but on the other hand he could quite easily have pretended to do so if the goblet had contained poison. I have described here exactly what happened, because afterwards it was said that Agrippina had sent Celer with the specific task of poisoning Silanus. Certainly his death occurred at a very convenient moment.
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Gossip maintained that Celer had bribed both Helius and the physician, and my name was also dragged into the case with a malicious reference to my friendship with Nero. The trial of Celer, which at the request of the Senate was held to investigate the matter thoroughly, was post- poned year after year and was finally shelved when Celer died of old age. I should have been glad to have stood witness on his behalf. Helius was later given a prominent position in Nero’s service.
The Proconsul’s sudden death naturally attracted considerable attention in Ephesus as well as in the whole province of Asia. There was no big funeral, so as not to cause anxiety among the people, and his body was cremated in his own beloved garden at his country property. When the pyre had burned down, we collected the ashes and put them in a fine urn which was sent to the Silanus family’s rapidly filled mausoleum in Rome. Publius Celer took over the Proconsulate until the Senate had time to choose a new Proconsul for Asia from those who were waiting their turn. Silanus’ term of .office was soon to have come to an end anyhow.
The change of regime itself had aroused considerable unrest in Ephesus, and the death of the Proconsul worsened the situation. The city’s innumerable fortunetellers, miracle workers, sellers of black magic books, and first and foremost the silversmiths, who sold small models of the temple of Artemis as souvenirs, took advantage of this opportunity to cause disturbances in the streets and to ill-treat the Jews.
Paul, of course, was the cause of this. I now found out that he had been sowing discord in Ephesus for two years, and it was of him that Silanus’ physician had spoken, although I did not realize it at the time.
Paul had persuaded his followers to collect all their astrological calendars and books of dreams, worth a hundred or so sesterces, and burn them publicly in the forum as a demonstration against their rivals. The bonfire of books had aroused the ire of the superstitious people of Ephesus, and even the educated people did not like books being burned, although they themselves did not bother much with the good and evil days of horo- scopes or the interpretation of dreams. But they feared that philosophy and poetry might be next to land in the fire.
I was seized with fury when I once again heard Paul named as a disturber of the peace. I should have liked to leave Ephesus at once, but Publius Celer feared more uprisings and asked me to take over the command of the city cavalry and the Roman garrison.
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