Tacitus, "The Murder of Pedanius Secundus"
42. Soon afterwards one of his own slaves murdered the city-prefect, Pedanius
Secundus, either because he had been refused his freedom, for which he had made
a bargain, or in the jealousy of a love in which he could not brook his master's
rivalry. Ancient custom required that the whole slave-establishment which had
dwelt under the same roof should be dragged to execution, when a sudden
gathering of the populace, which was for saving so many innocent lives, brought
matters to actual insurrection. Even in the Senate there was a strong feeling on
the part of those who shrank from extreme rigour, though the majority were
opposed to any innovation. Of these, Caius Cassius, in giving his vote, argued
to the following effect.
43. "Often have I been present, Senators, in this assembly when new decrees were
demanded from us contrary to the customs and laws of our ancestors, and I have
refrained from opposition, not because I doubted but that in all matters the
arrangements of the past were better and fairer and that all changes were for
the worse, but that I might not seem to be exalting my own profession out of an
excessive partiality for ancient precedent. At the same time I thought that any
influence I possess ought not to be destroyed by incessant protests, wishing
that it might remain unimpaired, should the State ever need my counsels. To-day
this has come to pass, since an ex-consul has been murdered in his house by the
treachery of slaves, which not one hindered or divulged, though the Senate's
decree, which threatens the entire slave-establishment with execution, has been
till now unshaken. Vote impunity, in heaven's name, and then who will be
protected by his rank, when the prefecture of the capital has been of no avail
to its holder? Who will be kept safe by the number of his slaves when four
hundred have not protected Pedanius Secundus? Which of us will be rescued by his
domestics, who, even with the dread of punishment before them, regard not our
dangers? Was the murderer, as some do not blush to pretend, avenging his wrongs
because he had bargained about money from his father or because a family-slave
was taken from him? Let us actually decide that the master was justly slain.
44. "Is it your pleasure to search for arguments in a matter already weighed in
the deliberations of wiser men than ourselves? Even if we had now for the first
time to come to a decision, do you believe that a slave took courage to murder
his master without letting fall a threatening word or uttering a rash syllable?
Granted that he concealed his purpose, that he procured his weapon without his
fellows' knowledge. Could he pass the night-guard, could he open the doors of
the chamber, carry in a light, and accomplish the murder, while all were in
ignorance? There are many preliminaries to guilt; if these are divulged by
slaves, we may live singly amid numbers, safe among a trembling throng; lastly,
if we must perish, it will be with vengeance on the guilty. Our ancestors always
suspected the temper of their slaves, even when they were born on the same
estates, or in the same houses with themselves and thus inherited from their
birth an affection for their masters. But now that we have in our households
nations with different customs to our own, with a foreign worship or none at
all, it is only by terror you can hold in such a motley rabble. But, it will be
said, the innocent will perish. Well, even in a beaten army when every tenth man
is felled by the club, the lot falls also on the brave. There is some injustice
in every great precedent, which, though injurious to individuals, has its
compensation in the public advantage."