amillus had become monarch?" He replied: "I should have stood behind
him and said nothing." So he became famous for this speech, and Arria
for something quite different. The latter, who was wife of Caecina Paetus,
refused to live after he had been put to death, although, being on very
intimate terms with Messalina, she might have occupied a position of some
honor. Moreover, when her husband showed cowardice, she strengthened his
resolution. She took the sword and gave herself a wound, then handed it
to him, saying: "See, Paetus, I feel no pain."--These two persons, then,
were accorded praise, for by reason of the long succession of woes
matters had now come to such a pass that excellence no longer meant
anything else than dying nobly.

The attitude of Claudius in bringing destruction upon them and others is
indicated by his forever giving to the soldiers as a watchword this verse
about its being necessary "In one's first anger to ward off the foe." [6]
He kept throwing out many other hints of that sort in Greek both to them
and to the senate, with the result that those who could understand any
of them laughed at him. These were some of the happenings of that
period.--And the tribunes at the death of one of their number themselves
convened the senate for the purpose of appointing a tribune to succeed
him,--this in spite of the fact that the consuls were accessible.

[A.D. 43 (_a. u._ 796)]

[-17-] When Claudius now became consul again,--it was the third time,--he
put an end to many sacrifices and many feast days. For, as the greater
part of the year was given up to them, no small damage was done to public
business. Beside curtailing the number of these he retrenched in all the
other ways that he could. What had been given away by Gaius without any
justice or reason he demanded back from the recipients; but he gave back
to the road commissioners all that his predecessor had exacted in fines
on account of Corbulo. Moreover, he gave notice to magistrates chosen by
lot, since they were even now slow about leaving the City, that they must
commence their journey before the middle of April came. He reduced to
servitude the Lycians, who rising in revolt had slain some Romans, and
merged them in the prefecture of Pamphylia. During the investigation,
which was conducted in the senate-house, he put a question in the Latin
tongue to one of the envoys who had originally been a Lycian but had been
made a Roman. As the man did not und