nating his life. His wife Paulina insisted on
sharing his fate. He gathered his friends around him to give them
his parting counsels and bid them farewell, and ordered his servants
to make the necessary preparations for opening his veins. Then
ensued one of those sad and awful scenes of mourning and death, with
which the page of ancient history is so often darkened--forming
pictures, as they do, too shocking to be exhibited in full detail.
The calm composure of Seneca, was contrasted on the one hand with
the bitter anguish and loud lamentations of his domestics and
friends, and on the other with Paulina's mute despair. When the
veins were opened, the blood at first would not flow, and various
artificial means were resorted to, to accelerate the extinction of
life; at last, however, Seneca ceased to breathe. The domestics of
the family then begged and entreated the soldiers with many tears,
that they might be allowed to save Paulina if it were not too late.
The soldiers consented; so the women bound up her wounds, as she lay
insensible and helpless before them, and thus stopping the farther
effusion of blood, they watched over her with assiduous care, in
hopes to restore her. They succeeded. They brought her back to life,
or rather to a semblance of life; for she never really recovered so
as to be herself again, during the few lonely and desolate years
through which she afterward lingered.

There was another Roman citizen of the highest rank who fell an
innocent victim to the angry passions which the discovery of this
plot awakened in Nero's mind. It was the consul Vestinus. Vestinus
was a man of great loftiness of character, and had never evinced
that pliancy of temper, and that submissiveness to the imperial
will, which Nero required. His position, too, as consul, which was
the highest civil office in the commonwealth, gave him a vast
influence over the people of Rome, so that Nero feared as well as
hated him. In fact, so great was his independence of character, and
his intractability, as it was sometimes called, that the
conspirators, after mature deliberation, had concluded not to
propose to him to engage in the plot. But, though he was thus
innocent, Nero did not certainly know the fact, and, at any rate,
such an opportunity to effect the destruction of a hated rival, was
too good to be lost. Very soon, therefore, after the disclosure of
the conspiracy had been made, Nero sent a tribune, at the head of
five hundre