o laying a charge, Plautianus might be
believed sooner than he, asked him for a written authority, that his
commission might be credited. Blinded by ambition, Plautianus complied,
and forthwith was accused by Saturninus and found guilty; whereas, but
for that written warrant, together with other corroborating proofs,
he must have escaped by his bold denial of the charge. Against the
testimony of a single witness, you have thus some defence, unless
convicted by your own handwriting, or by other circumstantial proof
against which you must guard. A woman, named Epicharis, who had formerly
been a mistress of Nero, was privy to Piso's conspiracy, and thinking it
might be useful to have the help of a certain captain of triremes whom
Nero had among his body-guards, she acquainted him with the plot, but
not with the names of the plotters. This fellow, turning traitor, and
accusing Epicharis to Nero, so stoutly did she deny the charge, that
Nero, confounded by her effrontery, let her go.

In imparting a plot to a single person there are, therefore, two risks:
one, that he may come forward of his own accord to accuse you; the
other, that if arrested on suspicion, or on some proof of his guilt, he
may, on being convicted, in the hope to escape punishment, betray you.
But in neither of these dangers are you left without a defence; since
you may meet the one by ascribing the charge to the malice of your
accuser, and the other by alleging that the witness his been forced by
torture to say what is untrue. The wisest course, however, is to impart
your design to none, but to act like those who have been mentioned
above; or if you impart it, then to one only: for although even in this
course there be a certain degree of danger, it is far less than when
many are admitted to your confidence.

A case nearly resembling that just now noticed, is where an emergency,
so urgent as to leave you no time to provide otherwise for your safety,
constrains you to do to a prince what you see him minded to do to you.
A necessity of this sort leads almost always to the end desired, as two
instances may suffice to show. Among the closest friends and intimates
of the Emperor Commodus, were two captains of the pretorian guards,
Letus and Electus, while among the most favoured of his distresses was
a certain Martia. But because these three often reproved him for his
manner of living, as disgraceful to himself and to his station, he
resolved to rid himself of