LII. In the conspiracy set on foot by Aristogiton, and which was begun to be executed, by putting to death Hipparchus, the brother of Hippias, a courtesan woman, who had been trusted with the secret, and knew all the accomplices, was put to the torture; but she, to convince the tyrant of the impossibility of extorting the secret from her, cut her tongue asunder with her teeth, and let the end drop before his face. LIII. When the first indications of the conspiracy of Pison against Nero, began to shew themselves, many of the most illustrious men of Rome shrunk under, and gave way to the rigour of the torture. Lucan, for example, discovered his own mother as an accomplice, and many others their most intimate friends; and there was only one Epicharis, an ordinary and obscure woman, who was acquainted with the whole transaction, on whom neither whips nor fire, nor all the martyrdoms they could invent, had power to tear from her breast the least information. LIV. I knew a certain one myself, who, being examined by the torture, touching an atrocious crime which had been committed by her master and mistress, resisted the force of that rigorous test, not to save herself, but only to skreen them; for so small a portion of the fault could be imputed to her, either on account of her ignorance of the magnitude of the crime, or from her having acted by the command of others, and from various circumstances of mitigation, that the law would not have condemned her to a punishment, any thing comparable to the severity of that she underwent. LV. But of women, from whom the power of torture could not tear the secrets of their breasts, the examples are infinite. I heard a person who had been used to assist upon such occasions declare, that, although he had known many of them confess, rather than be stripped naked to prepare them for the execution of the punishment of the rack, the instances of their having confessed after undergoing this martyrdom of their modesty, were very rare. A truly great and shining excellence in the sex this, that the regard for their modesty, should have more weight with them than all the terrors of an executioner. LVI. I do not doubt, but this parallel I have drawn of the sexes, may appear to many somewhat flattering to the women; but I shall reply to these, that Seneca, whose rigid Stoicism removes all doubts of his impartiality, and whose severity sets him at a great distance from all suspicion of flattery, has made a comparison not a jot less favourable to the side of the women, for he absolutely asserts them to be equal to the men, in all the valuable natural faculties and dispositions. These are his words: _Quis autem dicat, naturam malignè cum muliebribus ingeniis egisse, & virtutes illarum in arctum retraxisse? Par illis mihi crede, vigor, par ad honesta (libeat) facultas est. Laborem, doloremque ex æquo si consuevere patiuntur._ (in Consol. ad Marciam.) SECT. IX.