Because of the uneasy state of financial affairs, prices continued to rise and by considerably more than the fifth by which Nero had lowered the value of money. Nero issued many edicts to try to keep prices under control and punish usurers, but the result was that the goods simply vanished from the shops. In the halls and marketplaces the people were soon unable to buy their green vegetables, meat, lentils and root vegetables, but had to go out into the country or turn to tradesmen who crept around at dusk from house to house with their baskets, defying the magistrates by selling at high prices.
There was no real shortage of things. It was just that no one wanted to sell his goods at unnaturally forced prices, but preferred to be idle or lock up their stores. If, for instance, one needed new sandals for formal occasions, or a good tunic, or even a buckle, one had to beg and plead with a merchant to bring what one was asking for out from under the counter and then break the law by paying the right price for it.
For all these reasons, the Pisonian conspiracy spread like wildfire when it became known that a few resolute men within the Order of Knights were prepared to seize power and overthrow Nero, as soon as they could decide how the power would be shared and who should replace the Emperor. The economic crisis made the conspiracy seem Rome’s only salvation and everyone rushed to join it. Even Nero’s closest friends thought it safe to give their support to it, since it seemed evident that the conspiracy would succeed as discontent was rife both in Rome and in the provinces and there was more than enough money to pay the bonuses to the Praetorians.
Fenius Rufus, who was still in charge of the grain stores in addition to holding his Prefect’s office since no other honest man could be found, unhesitatingly joined the conspiracy. Due to the artificial lowering of the price of corn, he had suffered great losses and was deeply in debt. Nero refused to consider the State’s making up the difference between the true price of grain and its forced price. Nor would the growers in Egypt and Africa sell their grain at this price, but either stored it or did not even sow their fields.
Apart from Rufus, the Praetorian tribunes and the centurions were quite openly involved in the conspiracy, the Praetorians naturally being bitter that their pay was in the new coinage and with no increase. The conspirators were so certain they would succeed that they sought to keep the whole enterprise inside Rome, save for a few strategically important Italian cities. They therefore refused help from powerful men in the provinces and in this way offended many important people.
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In my view, their greatest fault lay in that they thought they did not need the support of the legions, which they could have got quite easily in Germany and Britain. Corbulo in the East would hardly have become involved in it since he was completely absorbed by his Parthian war, and was also quite without political ambitions. I think he was one of the few people who never even heard the rumors about the plan.
As I had put my affairs in order, perhaps I did not think sufficiently about the needs of the people. On my part I was seized with a kind of spring enchantment. I was thirty-five years old, past bothering with immature girls except possibly as a passing pleasure, but at an age when a man is ripe for true passion and wishes for an experienced Woman of equal birth as a companion.
I still find it difficult to write openly about these things. Perhaps it will suffice to say that, avoiding any unnecessary publicity, I began to visit Antonia’s house quite often. We had so much to talk to each other about that sometimes I could not leave her handsome house on Palatine until dawn. She was a daughter of Claudius and thus had some of Marcus Antonius’ tainted blood in her. And she was an Aelius on her mother’s side as well. Her mother was the adoptive sister of Sejanus. That should be sufficient explanation for anyone who knows.
Your mother was also Claudius’ daughter, and I must admit that after bearing you and after her former hard life, she had calmed down considerably. She no longer shared my bed. Indeed, I seemed to suffer from a kind of deficiency disease in this respect until my friendship with Antonia cured me.
It was at dawn one spring morning, when the birds had just begun to sing and the flowers were fragrant in Antonia’s beautiful garden, from which all traces of the fire had now been erased by new bushes and whole trees, that I first heard about Piso’s conspiracy from Antonia. Exhausted from the joy and friendship, I was standing hand in hand with her, leaning against one of the slender pillars in her summer house, unable to drag myself away from her, although we had begun to say farewell to each other at least two hours earlier.
“Minutus, my dearest,” she said. Perhaps I am wrong to repeat her confession word for word, but on the other hand I have written things in connection with Sabina which might make an ignoramus doubt my manhood. “Oh, my dearest,” she said then. “No man has ever been so tender and good to me and known how to take me in his arms so wonderfully as you have. So I know I shall love you now, always and eternally. I should like us to meet after death as shades in the Elysian fields.”
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