The Centurion too repeated, as matter of glory,
his own language to Drusus, language full of outrage and barbarity, with
the words uttered by him under the agonies of famine; that, at first,
feigning disorder of spirit, he vented, in the style of a madman, dismal
denunciations against Tiberius; but after all hopes of life had forsaken
him, then, in steady and deliberate imprecations, he invoked the direful
vengeance of the Gods, "that as he had slaughtered his son's wife,
slaughtered the son of his brother, and his son's sons, and with
slaughters had filled his own house; so they would in justice to the
ancestors of the slain, in justice to their posterity, doom him to the
dreadful penalties of so many murders." The Senators, in truth, upon this
raised a mighty din, under colour of detesting these imprecations: but it
was dread which possessed them, and amazement, that he who had been once
so dark in the practice of wickedness, and so subtle in the concealment of
his bloody spirit, was arrived at such an utter insensibility of shame,
that he could thus remove, as it were, the covert of the walls, and
represent his own grandson under the ignominious chastisement of a
Centurion, torn by the barbarous stripes of slaves, and imploring in vain
the last sustenance of life.
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