“I have shown you a way to make your life easier,” said Seneca, “but your yourself prefer an honorable death, and I cannot think that you are choosing wrongly. Let us both show equally great strength in the moment of parting.”
He hurriedly bade the centurion open their veins with a quick slash, so that Paulina would have no time to change her mind.
But Nero had nothing against Paulina. He had expressly ordered her to be spared, for he usually tried to avoid unnecessary cruelty in his sentences for his own reputation’s sake. The centurion was forced to obey Seneca because of his position, but he was careful not to injure Paulina’s tendons or artery when he cut her arm.
Seneca’s body was sufficiently weakened by age and his diet that his blood flowed sluggishly. He did not get into a hot bath as he should have done, but just dictated some corrections to his collected writings to his scribe. When Paulina disturbed him with her weeping, he asked her impatiendy to go into the next room, justifying himself by saying that he did not wish to weaken Paulina’s steadfastness by letting her see how much he was suffering.
In the room next door, on the soldier’s commands, Seneca’s slaves immediately bandaged Paulina’s wrists and stopped the bleeding. Paulina made no objections. So the boundless conceit of an author saved Paulina’s life.
Like many Stoics, Seneca was afraid of physical pain, so he asked his personal physician for some numbing poison such as the Athenians had given Socrates. Perhaps Seneca wished posterity to remember him as an equal to Socrates. When he had finished dictating and the centurion had begun to become impatient, he at last went to his hot bath and then to the household steam bath which was filled with so much steam that he was suffocated. His body was quietly cremated without ceremonies, as he had ordained, making a virtue of a necessity. Nero would never have permitted a public funeral for fear of demonstrations.
Thanks to the centurion, Paulina lived on for many years. She grew as pale as a ghost and it was said that she was secretly converted to Christianity. I am telling you what I have heard. I myself had no desire to get in touch with this grief-stricken widow, and any sensible person will know the reason why. It was not until after her death that I had my freedman’s publishing house take over Seneca’s collected works.
My friend, the author Petronius Arbiter, died, as his reputation demantled, after an excellent banquet for his friends at which he smashed every one of the objets d’art he had collected, so that Nero should not have them. Nero was especially grieved about two incomparable crystal goblets which he had always envied Petronius.
451
Petronius satisfied his own vanity as an author by putting in his will a careful catalogue of Nero’s vices and the people with whom he had practiced them, to the extent of mentioning all the times, places and names so that no one should suspect him of drawing too much on his imagination. As a writer he perhaps exaggerated to cause more amusement when he later read out his will to his friends as he gradually bled to death. He had himself bandaged up once or twice in order, as he said, to make the most of death as well.
His will he had sent to Nero. I think it was a pity that he would not allow anyone to make a copy of it, but he thought he owed this to Nero for the sake of their old friendship. Petronius was a fine man, the finest I have ever met I think, however crude his stories were.
He could not invite me to his farewell feast, but I was not offended. He had a message sent to me to say that he fully understood my behavior and would probably have done the same himself if he had had the opportunity. On his part, he would have liked to invite me too, but he had guessed that I would not feel at home with certain of his friends. I still have his sensitive letter and will always remember him as a friend.
But why list the downfall or exile of so many acquaintances, noble friends and respected men during that year and the next? It is more agreeable to tell of the rewards which Nero distributed to those who had distin-guished themselves in the suppression of the conspiracy. He gave the Praetorians the same sum of two thousand sesterces per man as the conspirators had promised them. He also raised their pay by deciding that from then on they would receive their grain free whereas hitherto they had had to buy it at ordinary market prices. Tigellinus and two others received the right to a triumph, and triumph statues of them were erected in Palatine.
I myself insinuated to Nero that the Senate had become a little thin and that my father’s place still remained empty. There was a great need for a man on the Eastern committee who, like my father, could advise on Jewish affairs and who could mediate between the State and the Jews’ interests in connection with their special position. From Nero’s point of view it would be politically farsighted to appoint senators who had demonstrated their loyalty to him by their actions, for the Senate had in many ways shown itself-to be unreliable and still in sympathy with republicanism.
452
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