you to do. You purchased
neither position nor safety by that savage piece of cruelty. We may
put up with the pleas of those wretches who prefer to ruin others
rather than endanger their own lives. But your father's banishment had
guaranteed your security. His property had been divided amongst his
creditors.[352] You were not of an age to stand for office. Nero had
nothing either to hope or to fear from you. Your talents were as yet
untried and you had never exerted them in any man's defence, yet your
lust for blood, your insatiable ambition, led you to stain your young
hands in the blood of Rome's nobility. At one swoop you caused the
ruin of innocent youths, of old and distinguished statesmen, of
high-born ladies; and out of the country's disaster you secured for
yourself the spoils of two ex-consuls,[353] stuffed seven million
sesterces into your purse, and shone with the reflected glory of a
priesthood. You would blame Nero's lack of enterprise because he took
one household at a time, thus causing unnecessary fatigue to himself
and his informers, when he might have ruined the whole senate at a
single word. Why, gentlemen, you must indeed keep and preserve to
yourselves a counsellor of such ready resource. Let each generation
have its good examples: and as our old men follow Eprius Marcellus or
Vibius Crispus, let the rising generation emulate Regulus. Villainy
finds followers even when it fails. What if it 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 o