t, the day before, Scaevinus had held a long and
secret conversation with another friend of Piso named Natalis, and when
Natalis, on being summoned, gave a very different account of the subject
of this conversation from that which Scaevinus had given, they were both
put in chains; and, unable to endure the threats and the sight of
tortures, revealed the entire conspiracy. Natalis was the first to
mentioned the name of Piso, and he added the hated name of Seneca,
either because he had been the confidential messenger between the two,
or because he knew that he could not do a greater favour to Nero than by
giving him the opportunity of injuring a man whom he had long sought
every possible opportunity to crush. Scaevinus, with equal weakness,
perhaps because he thought that Natalis had left nothing to reveal,
mentioned the names of the others, and among them of Lucan, whose
complicity in the plot would undoubtedly tend to give greater
probability to the supposed guilt of Seneca. Lucan, after long denying
all knowledge of the design, corrupted by the promise of impunity, was
guilty of the incredible baseness of making up for the slowness of his
confession by its completeness, and of naming among the conspirators his
chief friend Gallus and Pollio, and his own mother Atilla. The woman
Ephicharis, slave though she had once been, alone showed the slightest
constancy, and, by her brave unshaken reticence under the most
excruciating and varied tortures, put to shame the pusillanimous
treachery of senators and knights. On the second day, when, with limbs
too dislocated to admit of her standing, she was again brought to the
presence of her executioners, she succeeded, by a sudden movement, in
strangling herself with her own girdle.

[Footnote 35: See Juv. _Sat_. viii. 212.]

In the hurry and alarm of the moment the slightest show of resolution
would have achieved the object of the conspiracy. Fenius Rufus had not
yet been named among the conspirators, and as he sat by the side of the
Emperor, and presided over the torture of his associates, Subrius Flavus
made him a secret sign to inquire whether even then and there he should
stab Nero. Rufus not only made a sign of dissent, but actually held the
hand of Subrius as it was grasping the hilt of his sword. Perhaps it
would have been better for him if he had not done so, for it was not
likely that the numerous conspirators would long permit the same man to
be at once their accomplice