[Sidenote:—­15—­] The population of Rome, on hearing the report, though horrified were nevertheless joyful, because they thought that now he would surely come to ruin.  Nearly all of the senators pretended to rejoice at what had taken place, participated in Nero’s pleasure, and voted many measures of which they thought he would be glad.  Publius Thrasea Paetus had also come to the senate-house and listened to the letter.  When, however, the reading was done, he at once rose without making any comment and went out.  Thus what he would have said he could not, and what he could have said he would not.  He behaved in the same way under all other conditions.  For he used to say:  “If it were a matter of Nero’s putting only me to death, I could easily pardon the rest who load him with flatteries.  But since among those even who praise him so excessively he has gotten rid of some and will yet destroy others, why should one stoop to indecent behavior and perish like a slave, when like a freeman one may pay the debt to nature?  There shall be talk of me hereafter, but of these men not a word save for the single fact that they were killed.”  Such was the kind of man Thrasea showed himself, and he would always encourage himself by saying:  “Nero can kill me, but he can not harm me.”

[Sidenote:—­16—­] When Nero after his mother’s murder reentered Rome, people paid him reverence in public, but in private so long as any one could speak frankly with safety they tore his character to very tatters.  And first they hung by night a piece of hide on one of his statues to signify that he himself ought to have a hiding.  Second, they threw down in the Forum a baby to which was fastened a board, saying:  “I will not take you up for fear you may slay your mother.”

At Nero’s entrance into Rome they took down the statues of Agrippina.  But there was one which they did not cut loose soon enough, and so they threw over it a cloth which gave it the appearance of being veiled.  Thereupon somebody at once affixed to the statue the following inscription:  “I am abashed and thou art unashamed.”

In many quarters at once, also, might be read the inscription: 

  “Nero, Orestes, Alemeon, matricides.”

Persons could actually be heard saying in so many words:  “Nero put his mother out of the way.”  Not a few lodged information that certain persons had spoken in this way, their object being not so much to destroy those whom they accused as to bring reproach, on Nero.  Hence he would admit no suit of that kind, either not wishing that the rumor should become more widespread by such means, or out of utter contempt for what was said.  However, in the midst of the sacrifices offered in memory of Agrippina according to decree, the sun suffered a total eclipse and the stars could be seen.  Also, the elephants drawing the chariot of Augustus entered the hippodrome and went as far as the senators’ seats, but at that point they stopped and refused to proceed farther.  And the event which one might most readily conjecture to have taken place through divine means was that a thunderbolt descended upon his dinner and consumed it all as it was being brought to him, like some tremendous harpy snatching away his food.