kindred and friends yet in safety, it may even be thought an additional
felicity that he was thus withdrawn from impending evils. For, as we have
heard him express his wishes of continuing to the dawn of the present
auspicious day, and beholding Trajan in the imperial seat,--wishes in
which he formed a certain presage of the event; so it is a great
consolation, that by his untimely end he escaped that latter period, in
which Domitian, not by intervals and remissions, but by a continued, and,
as it were, a single act, aimed at the destruction of the commonwealth.
[148]

45. Agricola did not behold the senate-house besieged, and the senators
enclosed by a circle of arms; [149] and in one havoc the massacre of so
many consular men, the flight and banishment of so many honorable women.
As yet Carus Metius [150] was distinguished only by a single victory; the
counsels of Messalinus [151] resounded only through the Albanian citadel;
[152] and Massa Baebius [153] was himself among the accused. Soon after,
our own hands [154] dragged Helvidius [155] to prison; ourselves were
tortured with the spectacle of Mauricus and Rusticus, [156] and sprinkled
with the innocent blood of Senecio. [157]

Even Nero withdrew his eyes from the cruelties he commanded. Under
Domitian, it was the principal part of our miseries to behold and to be
beheld: when our sighs were registered; and that stern countenance, with
its settled redness, [158] his defence against shame, was employed in
noting the pallid horror of so many spectators. Happy, O Agricola! not
only in the splendor of your life, but in the seasonableness of your
death. With resignation and cheerfulness, from the testimony of those who
were present in your last moments, did you meet your fate, as if striving
to the utmost of your power to make the emperor appear guiltless. But to
myself and your daughter, besides the anguish of losing a parent, the