Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/480

 472 GALBA. grateful to the gods themselves, adding, however, that the gods and men alike demanded justice on Tigellinus, the very tutor and prompter of all the tyranny. This good man, however, had taken his measures beforehand, in the shape of a present and a promise to Vinius. Tur- pilianus could not be allowed to escape with life, though his one and only crime had been that he had not betrayed or shown hatred to such a ruler as Nero. But he who had made Nero what he became, and afterwards deserted and betrayed him whom he had so corrupted, was allowed to survive as an instance that yiriius could do any thing, and an advertisement that those that had money to give him need despair of nothing. The people, however, were so possessed with the desire of seeing Tigellinus dragged to execution, that they never ceased to require it at the theatre and in the race-course, till they were checked by an edict from the emperor himself, announcing that Tigellinus could not live' long, being wasted with a con- sumption, and requesting them not to seek to make his government appear cruel and tyrannical So the dis- satisfied populace were laughed at, and Tigellinus made a splendid feast, and sacrificed in thanksgiving for his deliverajice : and after supper, Vinius, rising from the emperor's table, went to revel with Tigelliiius, taking his daughter, a widow, with him ; to whom Tigellinus pre- sented his compliments, with a gift of twenty-five myriads of money, and bade the superintendent of his concubines take oif a rich necklace from her own neck and tie it about hers, the value of it being estirnated at fifteen mjriads. After this, even reasonable acts were censured ; as, for example, the treatment of the Gauls who had been in the conspiracy with Vindex. For people looked upon their abatement of tribute and admission to citizenship as a piece, not of clemency on the part of Galba, but of