About the same time the emperor enrolled in the ranks of the patricians such senators as were of the oldest families, and such as had had distinguished ancestors.There were now but scanty relics of the Greater Houses of Romulus and of the Lesser Houses of Lucius Brutus, as they had been called, and those too were exhausted which the Dictator Caesar by the Cassian and the emperor Augustus by the Saenian law had chosen into their place.These acts, as being welcome to the State, were undertaken with hearty gladness by the imperial censor.Anxiously considering how he was to rid the Senate of men of notorious infamy, he preferred a gentle method, recently devised, to one which accorded with the sternness of antiquity, and advised each to examine his own case and seek the privilege of laying aside his rank.Permission, he said, would be readily obtained.
He would publish in the same list those who had been expelled and those who had been allowed to retire, that by this confounding together of the decision of the censors and the modesty of voluntary resignation the disgrace might be softened.
For this, the consul Vipstanus moved that Claudius should be called "Father of the Senate." The title of "Father of the Country"had, he argued, been indiscriminately bestowed; new services ought to be recognized by unusual titles.The emperor, however, himself stopped the consul's flattery, as extravagant.He closed the lustrum, the census for which gave a total of 5,984,072 citizens.Then too ended his blindness as to his domestic affairs.He was soon compelled to notice and punish his wife's infamies, till he afterwards craved passionately for an unhallowed union.
Messalina, now grown weary of the very facility of her adulteries, was rushing into strange excesses, when even Silius, either through some fatal infatuation or because he imagined that, amid the dangers which hung over him, danger itself was the best safety, urged the breaking off of all concealment."They were not," he said, "in such an extremity as to have to wait for the emperor's old age.Harmless measures were for the innocent.Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity.They had accomplices in all who feared the same fate.For himself, as he had neither wife nor child, he was ready to marry and to adopt Britannicus.Messalina would have the same power as before, with the additional advantage of a quiet mind, if only they took Claudius by surprise, who, though unsuspicious of treachery, was hasty in his wrath."The suggestion was coldly received, not because the lady loved her husband, but from a fear that Silius, after attaining his highest hopes, would spurn an adulteress, and soon estimate at its true value the crime which in the midst of peril he had approved.But she craved the name of wife, for the sake of the monstrous infamy, that last source of delight to the reckless.She waited only till Claudius set out for Ostia to perform a sacrifice, and then celebrated all the solemnities of marriage.
I am well aware that it will seem a fable that any persons in the world could have been so obtuse in a city which knows everything and hides nothing, much more, that these persons should have been a consul-elect and the emperor's wife; that, on an appointed day, before witnesses duly summoned, they should have come together as if for the purpose of legitimate marriage; that she should have listened to the words of the bridegroom's friends, should have sacrificed to the gods, have taken her place among a company of guests, have lavished her kisses and caresses, and passed the night in the freedom which marriage permits.But this is no story to excite wonder; I do but relate what I have heard and what our fathers have recorded.
The emperor's court indeed shuddered, its powerful personages especially, the men who had much to fear from a revolution.From secret whisperings they passed to loud complaints."When an actor,"they said, "impudently thrust himself into the imperial chamber, it certainly brought scandal on the State, but we were a long way from ruin.Now, a young noble of stately beauty, of vigorous intellect, with the near prospect of the consulship, is preparing himself for a loftier ambition.There can be no secret about what is to follow such a marriage." Doubtless there was thrill of alarm when they thought of the apathy of Claudius, of his devotion to his wife and of the many murders perpetrated at Messalina's bidding.On the other hand, the very good nature of the emperor inspired confident hope that if they could overpower him by the enormity of the charge, she might be condemned and crushed before she was accused.The critical point was this, that he should not hear her defence, and that his ears should be shut even against her confession.
At first Callistus, of whom I have already spoken in connection with the assassination of Caius Caesar, Narcissus, who had contrived the death of Appius, and Pallas, who was then in the height of favour, debated whether they might not by secret threats turn Messalina from her passion for Silius, while they concealed all else.Then fearing that they would be themselves involved in ruin, they abandoned the idea, Pallas out of cowardice, and Callistus, from his experience of a former court, remembering that prudent rather than vigorous counsels insure the maintenance of power.Narcissus persevered, only so far changing his plan as not to make her aware beforehand by a single word what was the charge or who was the accuser.Then he eagerly watched his opportunity, and, as the emperor lingered long at Ostia, he sought two of the mistresses to whose society Claudius was especially partial, and, by gifts, by promises, by dwelling on power increased by the wife's fall, he induced them to undertake the work of the informer.