Book 1
1
Must I then alone have my head cut off? What, would you have all men lose their heads that you may be consoled? Will you not stretch out your neck as LateranusPlautius Lateranus, consul-elect, was charged with being engaged in Piso’s conspiracy against Nero. He was hurried to execution without being allowed to see his children; and though the tribune who executed him was privy to the plot, Lateranus said nothing. (Tacit. Ann. xv. 49, 60.) did at Rome when Nero ordered him to be beheaded? For when he had stretched out his neck, and received a feeble blow, which made him draw it in for a moment, he stretched it out again. And a little before, when he was visited by Epaphroditus,Epaphroditus was a freedman of Nero, and once the master of Epictetus. He was Nero’s secretary. One good act is recorded of him: he helped Nero to kill himself, and for this act he was killed by Domitian (Suetonius, Domitian, c. 14). Nero’s freedman, who asked him about the cause of offence which he had given, he said, If I choose to tell anything, I will tell your master.
