To repair this waste the only resource was plunder. But Domitian was a pettifogger as well as a plunderer; he would fleece or assassinate his victims under forms of law. The law of majesty, and the many laws for restoring old Roman morality, needed only a little ingenuity and effrontery to furnish lucrative grounds for impeachment.(335) The tribe of delators were ready to his hand. He had punished them for serving Nero; they were now to reap a richer harvest under Domitian. Every fortune which rose above mediocrity, every villa with rich pastures and woodlands in the Apennines, or on the northern lakes, was marked for plunder.(336) Domitian was the first and only emperor who assumed the censorship for life.(337) The office made him absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his nobles. A casual word, a thoughtless gesture, might be construed into an act of treason; and the slave households furnished an army of spies. Nay, even kindred and near friends were drawn into this vast conspiracy against domestic peace and security. It may be admitted that Domitian had to face a real peril. The rebellion of Antonius Saturninus was an attempt which no prince could treat lightly, and the destruction of the correspondence in which so many men of rank were involved, may well have heightened Domitian’s alarm.(338) He struck out blindly and savagely. He compelled the Senate to bear a part in the massacre, and Tacitus has confessed, with pathetic humiliation, his silent share in the murder of the upright and innocent.(339) Yet the imperial inquisitor was himself racked with terror in his last hours. He walked in a corridor where the walls were lined with mirrors,(340) so that no unseen hand might strike him from behind. On his last morning he started in terror from his bed and called for the diviner whom he had summoned from Germany.(341) But, amid all his terror, Domitian had a deep natural love of cruelty. He was never more dangerous than when he chose to be agreeable;(342) he loved to play with his victims. What a grim delight in exquisite torture, what a cynical contempt for the Roman nobles, are revealed in the tale of his funereal banquet!(343) The select company were ushered into a chamber draped from floor to ceiling in black. At the head of each couch stood a pillar like a tombstone, with the guest’s name engraved upon it, while overhead swung a cresset such as men hang in vaults of the dead. A troop of naked boys, black as all around, danced an awful measure, and then set on the dismal meal which was offered, by old Roman use, to the spirits of the departed. The guests were palsied with terror, expecting every moment to be their last. And the death-like silence was only broken by the voice of the Emperor as he told a gruesome tale of bloody deaths. In such cynicism of lawless power, in such meek degradation of a once proud order, did the tyranny of the first century reach its close. CHAPTER II