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1) Before long we senators led Helvidius to prison, watched in shame the sufferings of Mauricus and Rusticus, and stained ourselves with Senecio's innocent blood. Even Nero used to avert his eyes and, though he ordered abominations, forbore to witness them [Agricola XLV].

*Some Victims of Domitian in 93:

Helvidius Priscus II was sentenced to death. He was son-in-law of Publius Anteius, suicide of 66. According to Suetonius his farce about Paris was taken as a coded mockery of Domitian.

Herennius Senecio was sentenced to death for his eulogy of Helvidius Priscus I and for failing to stand for any office after the quaestorship.

Arulenus Rusticus was sentenced to death. As a young tribune he offered to veto the Senate's expected condemnation of Thrasea [Annals XIV.26]. He composed a eulogy for Thrasea [and perhaps also Helvidius Priscus I].

Mauricus Rusticus, brother of Arulenus, was exiled in 93 along with all "philosophers" but returned safely in 97.

Epictetus was exiled, either in the banishment of 93 or earlier. He portrayed Helvidius Priscus I and Paconius Agrippinus as Stoic saints. He was a pupil of the Etruscan stoic Musonius Rufus whom Nero exiled in 65 and who may have counciled Rubellius Plautus toward an "imperturbable expectation of death [Annals XIV.57]."

*Some Victims of Nero:

Deaths in 65: Epicharis (suicide), C. Calpurnius Piso (suicide), Plautius Lateranus (silent when executed by conspirator), Seneca (suicide), Subrius Flavus and Sulpicius Asper (courageous when executed), Faenius Rufus (cowardly when executed), Vestinus Atticus (suicide), Lucan - nephew of Seneca (recited his own poetry as he died a suicide), Claudius Senecio, Afranius Quintianus and Flavius Scaevinius ("deaths belied their effeminate lives").

Exiled in 65: Dec. Novius Priscus (because friend of Seneca), Verginus Flavus and Musonius Rufus (as "professors of rhetoric and philosophy").

Intervening events: Silanus Torquatus II (first exiled, he fights when presented with the order to die, falling "wounded in front, as in battle"), Antistius Vetus - father-in-law of Rubellius Platus, his mother-in-law Sextia and his daughter Antista Pollitta (group suicide).

Deaths in 66: Publius Anteius [?] and Ostorius Scapula (suicide), Annaeus Mela - brother of Seneca and father of Lucan (suicide), Petronius the Arbiter (suicide), Thrasea Paetus (suicide).

Exiled in 66: Cassius Asclepiodotus, Helvidius Priscus I - son-in-law of Thrasea, Paconius Agrippinus.

2) [Piso's] character lacked seriousness or self-control. He was superficial, ostentatious, and sometimes dissolute. But many people are fascinated by depravity and disinclined for austere morals on the throne. Such men found Piso's qualities attractive. However, his ambitions were not what originated the conspiracy. Who did, who initiated this enterprise which so many joined, I could not easily say [p. 368].

3) From his early youth Helvidius devoted his great mental powers to intellectual studies, not as many people do, with the idea of using a philosopher's reputation as a cloak for indolence, but rather to fortify himself against the caprice of fortune when he entered public life. He became a follower of that school of philosophy [Stoicism?] which holds that morality is the one good thing in life and vice the only evil, while power and rank and other things ... are neither good nor bad. [O]f Thrasea's virtues he absorbed none so much as his independence [Histories IV.5].

4) "The grounds of Thrasea's opposition to Nero's regime did not follow from his Stoicism: for one thing, Seneca had shown in his De Clementia how Stoicism could be used to justify and provide a monarchical ideology for the existing system. What Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus wanted was libertas senatoria [Griffin (1976), p. 363]."

5) It had been the custom of Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus to pass over flatteries in silence or with curt agreement. But this time he walked out of the senate - thereby endangering himself without bringing general freedom any nearer [p. 318].

6) [Cossutianus Capito, son-in-law of Tigellinus:] `At the New Year, Thrasea evaded the regular oath. Though a member of the board of Fifteen for Religious Ceremonies, he absented himself from the national vows. He has never sacrificed for the emperor's welfare or his divine voice. [F]or three years he has not entered the senate...This is party warfare against the government. It is secession. If many more have the same impudence it is war... Disbelief in Poppaea's divinity shows the same spirit as refusing allegiance to the acts of the divine Augustus and divine Julius. Thrasea rejects religion, abrogates law [p.391]'.

7) "What good, then, did Priscus do, who was but a single individual? And what good does red [purple] do the mantle [cloak]? What else than that it stands out conspicuously in it as red, and is displayed as a goodly example to the rest [Epictetus, Discourses, I.2]?"

* The traditionalist conception is based on the authority of ancestral mores (mos maiorum). Its characteristic moral imperatives include the imperatives to strive for dominance and to develop self-mastery a means to obedience and loyalty. In contrast, the philosophical conception of morality was based on the authority of rational reflection. Its characteristic moral imperatives include the imperatives to strive for rationality and to develop self-mastery as a means effective deliberation, rational criticism and autonomy.

8) [Tigellinus on Plautus:] `He parades an admiration for the ancient Romans, but he has the arrogance of the Stoics, who breed sedition and intrigue [p. 339].'

9) [Agricola] declined to court, by a defiant and futile parade of independence, the renown that must inevitably destroy him. Let it be clear to those who insist on admiring disobedience that even under bad emperors men can be great, and that a decent regard for authority, if backed by industry and energy, can reach that peak of distinction which most men attain only by following a perilous course, winning fame, without benefiting their country, by an ostentatious martyrdom [Agricola, XLII].

10) [Subrius Flavus, asked by Nero why he had forgotten his military oath:] `Because I detested you! I was as loyal as any of your soldiers as long as you deserved affection. I began detesting you when you murdered your mother and wife and became charioteer, actor, and incendiary!' I have given his actual words because they did not obtain the publicity of Seneca's; yet the soldier's blunt, forceful utterance was equally worth recording [p.378].

11) Even if I were describing foreign wars and patriotic deaths, this monotonous series of events would have become tedious both for me and for my readers. For I should expect them to feel as surfeited as myself by the tragic sequence of citizen deaths - even if they had been honourable deaths. But this slavish passivity, this torrent of wasted bloodshed far from active service, wearies, depresses, and paralyses the mind. The only indulgence I would ask the reader for the inglorious victims is that he should forebear to censure them. For the fault was not theirs. The cause was rather heaven's anger with Rome [p. 388].

12) Seeing conviction ahead, he [Silanus Torquatus] opened his veins. Nero made the usual pronouncement indicating that, however guilty and rightly distrustful of his defence Torquatus had been, he would nevertheless - if he had awaited his judge's mercy - have lived [p. 361].