The Emperor accepted the suggestion, and the meeting of the domestic tribunal was fixed to take place on the next nundine. When Pomponia was told of the Emperor’s decision, she felt that her prayers had been heard, and that her pardon was secured, although it was not impossible that the trial might elicit painful secrets, which, for the sake of others, she thought it her duty to conceal. She asked Seneca himself to undertake her defence, and he gladly assumed the task. Plautius sat in his own atrium, and had summoned only those of his family whom he could trust. The evidence on which the informers and their patrons relied was slight and negative, and Seneca had no difficulty in tearing it to pieces. To the intense relief and heartfelt gratitude of Pomponia, she was not definitely charged with being a Christian. Indeed, that specific charge could hardly be urged, because no proof was forthcoming. Regulus skilfully made the most of old precedents. He told how, nearly a hundred years ago, the Senate had decreed the destruction of the Temples of Isis and Serapis (B.C. 46), and how Æmilius Paulus had been the first to shatter the doors with an axe. He mentioned the stern dealings with the Bacchanalians (B.C. 186). He told how (B.C. 139) the priests of Sabazius had been driven from Rome. Referring to the days of the Empire, he mentioned the edict of Claudius against the Jews, and reminded Aulus that Tiberius had banished four thousand Jews to Sardinia. He appealed triumphantly to the old law of the Twelve Tables, ‘Let no one separately worship foreign gods.’ When the accusers had mentioned every unfavourable circumstance, and when, on the other hand, an abundance of testimony had been elicited to prove the habitual purity and blamelessness of Pomponia’s life, Seneca rose to argue for her honourable acquittal.