After mid-winter I became aware of a traffic not only in dainties and wine, but in implements and weapons. Many daggers and knives were smuggled into the _ergastulum_, not a few files. The senators had a small arsenal of old swords, regular infantry swords, rusty but dangerous. Gradually I heard whispers of a plot. The conspirators were to file through the bars of more than one window, plastering up the filed places with filth and earth to conceal the filing, leaving a thread of metal to hold the filed bars in place. Then, when all was ready, they planned to murder the guards, overseers and superintendent, break out, sack the town-arsenal, loot shops and mansions, and then, well-clad and fully armed, take to the mountains and join the bands of the King of the Highwaymen. Two of the senators claimed to have been men of his before their incarceration and promised to lead the rest to the haunts of his brigands. The date set for their attempt was the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April, a few days before the Vernal Equinox. My gorge rose at the idea of the burning and sacking of Nuceria, even at the slaughter of our cruel guards, overseers and superintendent. The more I thought the matter over the less I liked the prospect. I had every reason to hate the dictator and senators. I saw no likelihood of betterment for myself if I were carried off with these riffraff as one of a band of looters, murderers and outlaws, loose in the forests. I contrived to disclose the plot to the prison authorities. As a result the _ergastulum_ was entered by the town guards, rigorously searched by the aldermen and their apparitors, under the aldermen's eyes, all the sawn bars, files, knives, daggers and swords discovered, the suspected men tortured till the ring-leaders were identified, the dictator and his senators flogged and manacled, and the management of the _ergastulum_ renovated. I was conducted from the prison, given a bath, clothed in a clean, warm tunic and cloak, provided with good shoes, abundantly fed and put to sleep in a clean bed in the house of a freedman who watched closely that I did not escape, but did everything to make me comfortable. The next day the chief alderman of Nuceria interrogated me at the town hall, praised me, declared that I had saved the town many horrors and much damage and loss, and asked me what reward I craved. I answered, boldly, that what I craved was what all slaves craved: freedom. He replied that, in his opinion, I had merited manumission; but that I was not the property of the municipality of Nuceria, but of the _fiscus_; [Footnote: See Note B.] I was, in short, part of the personal property of the Emperor and could be manumitted only by the Emperor, or by one of his legal representatives. Such a manumission would be difficult to arrange and its arrangement would take a long time. He would set to work to try to arrange for it. Meantime, could I not ask some reward within their power to grant?