Feeling that the house was warming to this rhetoric, Marcellus
got up as though to leave, exclaiming, 'I am off, Helvidius: I leave
you your senate: you can tyrannize over it under Caesar's nose.'
Vibius Crispus followed Marcellus, and, though both were angry, their
expressions were very different. Marcellus marched out with flashing
eyes, Crispus with a smile on his face. Eventually their friends went
and brought them back. Thus the struggle grew more and more heated
between a well-meaning majority and a small but powerful minority; and
since they were both animated by irreconcilable hatred, the day was
spent in vain recriminations.
At the next sitting Domitian opened by recommending them to forget 44
their grievances and grudges and the unavoidable exigences of the
recent past. Mucianus then at great length moved a motion in favour of
the prosecutors, issuing a mild warning, almost in terms of entreaty,
to those who wanted to revive actions which had been begun and
dropped. Seeing that their attempt at independence was being
thwarted, the senate gave it up. However, that it might not seem as if
the senate's opinion had been flouted and complete impunity granted
for all crimes committed under Nero, Mucianus forced Octavius Sagitta
and Antistius Sosianus, who had returned from exile, to go back to the
islands to which they had been confined. Octavius had committed
adultery with Pontia Postumina, and, on her refusal to marry him, had
murdered her in a fit of jealous fury.
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