" The
writers of that time relate, "that as it was a thing unheard, for a virgin
to suffer capital punishment, she was deflowered by the executioner just
before he tied the rope; and that being both strangled, the tender bodies
of these children were cast into the place where the carcasses of
malefactors are exposed, before they are flung into the Tiber."...
BOOK VI
A.D. 32-37.
Cneius Domitius and Camillus Scribonianus had begun their Consulship, when
the Emperor, having crossed the channel between Capreae [Footnote: Capri.]
and Surrentum, [Footnote: Sorrento.] sailed along the shore of Campania;
unresolved whether he should proceed to Rome; or counterfeiting a show of
coming, because he had determined not to come. He often approached to the
neighbourhood of the city, and even visited the gardens upon the Tiber;
but at last resumed his old retirement, the gloomy rocks and solitude of
the sea, ashamed of his cruelties, and abominable lusts; in which he
rioted so outrageously, that after the fashion of royal tyrants, the
children of ingenuous parentage became the objects of his pollution: nor
in them was he struck with a lovely face only, or the graces of their
persons; but in some their amiable and childish innocence, in others their
nobility and the glory of their ancestors, became the provocatives of his
unnatural passion.
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