“My friends,” began Marcus Cocceius Nerva, when they were all seated, “we have met expressly to hold pregnant and momentous council. Our aim is to find the ways and means of at last carrying into effect the steps, which we have been deliberating on for many months. The reign of terror of Domitian has from the first been well-nigh unendurable, and now his outrages, his unblushing insolence, have reached a pitch at which our very blood curdles in our veins. Two days since, we all heard from Cinna of the incredible insults offered by Caesar to the most illustrious members of the Senate and of the knightly order; since then other outrages have come to our ears. If Titus[326] once declared that he regarded a day as lost, in which he had done no good action, this, his degenerate brother,[327] accounts each day as misspent, in which he has not trampled justice under-foot, and crowned tyranny with boastful insolence. You all knew Junius Rusticus;[328] he was an excellent man, experienced in every branch of learning, generous, and of the loftiest morality. This illustrious philosopher was, yesterday, crucified. And why, my friends, why? Because he dared to assert that Paetus Thrasea, Nero’s noble victim, was a man of blameless character. For this, and this alone, Junius Rusticus died the death of the basest assassin.” A gloomy murmur rose from the audience. All, with the exception of Aurelius, already knew the facts, but they sounded with renewed horror from the lips of the venerable man. “Nor is this all,” Cocceius went on. “A second crime almost throws the murder of Rusticus into the shade. Not long since a man of fortune named Caepio,[329] of the order of Equites, died here. His heiress was his niece, a young girl of about fourteen. However, a man was found, who would declare openly that in Caepio’s lifetime he had frequently heard him say, that Caesar was to inherit his fortune.[330] On the strength of this lie, the property was unhesitatingly appropriated. The hapless girl, alone and inexperienced, fell into infamy. Sunk in wickedness, crushed by shame and sickness, a few days since she placed herself in the way, as Caesar was being borne to the Forum. She lifted up her hands to the throne on which he was carried, and cried in desperate accents for justice. She was seized by the body-guard, and flogged to death this morning.”