flourish and prosper?  If we hesitate to touch a mere ex-quaestor, shall we be any bolder when he has been praetor and consul?  Or do you suppose that the race of tyrants came to an end in Nero?  That is what the people believed who outlived Tiberius or Caligula, and meanwhile there arose one more infamous and more bloody still.[354] We are not afraid of Vespasian.  We trust his years and his natural moderation.  But a good precedent outlives a good sovereign.  Gentlemen, we are growing effete:  we are no longer that senate which, after Nero had been killed, clamoured for the punishment of all informers and their menials according to our ancestors’ rigorous prescription.  The best chance comes on the day after the death of a bad emperor.’

The senate listened to Montanus’s speech with such sympathy that 43 Helvidius began to hope that it might be possible to get a verdict even against Marcellus.  Beginning with a eulogy of Cluvius Rufus, who, though quite as rich and as eloquent as Marcellus, had never brought any one into trouble under Nero, he went on to attack Marcellus, both by contrasting him with Rufus and by pressing home the charge against him.  Feeling that the house was warming to this rhetoric, Marcellus got up as though to leave, exclaiming, ’I am off, Helvidius:  I leave you your senate:  you can tyrannize over it under Caesar’s nose.’  Vibius Crispus followed Marcellus, and, though both were angry, their expressions were very different.  Marcellus marched out with flashing eyes, Crispus with a smile on his face.  Eventually their friends went and brought them back.  Thus the struggle grew more and more heated between a well-meaning majority and a small but powerful minority; and since they were both animated by irreconcilable hatred, the day was spent in vain recriminations.

At the next sitting Domitian opened by recommending them to forget 44 their grievances and grudges and the unavoidable exigences of the recent past.  Mucianus then at great length moved a motion in favour of the prosecutors, issuing a mild warning, almost in terms of entreaty, to those who wanted to revive actions which had been begun and dropped.  Seeing that their attempt at independence was being thwarted, the senate gave it up.  However, that it might not seem as if the senate’s opinion had been flouted and complete impunity granted for all crimes committed under Nero, Mucianus forced Octavius Sagitta and Antistius Sosianus, who had returned from exile, to go back to the islands to which they had been confined.  Octavius had committed adultery with Pontia Postumina, and, on her refusal to marry him, had murdered her in a fit of jealous fury.  Sosianus was an unprincipled scoundrel who had been the ruin of many.[355] The senate had found them both guilty, and passed a heavy sentence of exile, nor had their penalty been remitted, although others were allowed to return.  However, this failed to allay the ill-feeling against Mucianus, for Sosianus and Sagitta, whether they returned or not, were of no importance, whereas people were afraid of the professional prosecutors, who were men of wealth and ability and experts in crime.