[176]
After his death Sassia, that abandoned woman, immediately began to devise plots against her
son. She determined to have an investigation made into the death of her husband. She bought of
Aulus Rupilius, whom Habitus had employed as his physician, a slave of the name of Strato, as if she were following the example of Habitus in
purchasing Diogenes. She said that she was going to investigate the conduct of this Strato, and of some servant of her own. Besides that, she
begged of that young Oppianicus that slave Nicostratus, whom she thought to be too talkative,
and too faithful to his master, for judicial examination. As Oppianicus was at that time quite
a boy, and as that investigation was being instituted about the death of his own father,
although he thought that that slave was a well-wisher both to himself and to his father, still
he did not venture to refuse anything. The friends and connections of Oppianicus, and many
also of the friends of Sassia herself, honourable men, and accomplished in every sense of the
word, are invited to attend. The investigation is carried on by means of the severest
tortures. When the minds of the slaves had been tried both with hope and fear, to induce them
to say something in the examination, still, compelled (as I imagine) by the authority of those
who were present, and by the power of the tortures, they adhered to the truth, and said that
they knew nothing of the matter.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.