Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/496

 488 OTHO. Besides, nothing gratified or gained the whole Roman people more than his justice in relation to Tigellinus. It was not seen how he was in fact already suffering punish- ment, not only by the very terror of retribution which he saw the whole city requiring as a just debt, but with several incurable diseases also ; not to mention those unhallowed frightful excesses among impure and prosti- tuted women, to which, at the very close of life, his lewd nature clung, and in them gasjsed out, as it were, its last ; these, in the opinion of all reasonable men, being them- selves the extremest punishment, and equal to many deaths. But it was felt like a grievance by people in general that he continued yet to see the light of day, who had been the occasion of the loss of it to so many persons, and such persons, as had died by his means. Wherefore Otho ordered him to be sent for, just as he was contriving his escape by means of some vessels that lay ready for him on the coast near where he lived, in the neighborhood of Sinuessa. At first he endeavored to corrupt the messenger, by a large sum of money, to favor his design ; but when he found this was to no pur- pose, he made ' him as considerable a present, as if he had really connived at it, only entreating him to stay till he had shaved; and so took that opportunity, and with his razor despatched himself And while giving the people this most righteous satis- faction of their desires, for himself he seemed to have no sort of regard for any private injuries of his own. And at first, to please the populace, he did not refuse to be called Nero in the theatre, and did not interfere when some persons displayed Nero's statues to public view. And Cluvius Rufus says,* imperial letters, such as are was governor of Spain. Adop- he should add the name of Nero lively, which seems to be the best to his own in the same way as that
 * Cluvius Rufus, at this time, of two readings, would mean that