" And elsewhere she irritates his wrath against the army as
accomplices for the time, and as a body of men "qui, nisi opprimuntur,
opprimunt." We may be sure of the result. After commending her zeal for
her own family, he says, "Ego vero et ejus liberis parcam, et genero, et
uxori; et ad senatum scribam ne aut proscriptio gravior sit, aut poena
crudelior;" adding that, had his counsels prevailed, not even Cassius
himself should have perished. As to his relatives, "Why," he asks, "should
I speak of pardon to them, who indeed have done no wrong, and are
blameless even in purpose?" Accordingly, his letter of intercession to the
senate protests, that, so far from asking for further victims to the crime
of Avidius Cassius, would to God he could call back from the dead many of
those who had fallen! With immense applause, and with turbulent
acclamations, the senate granted all his requests "in consideration of his
philosophy, of his long-suffering, of his learning and accomplishments, of
his nobility, of his innocence." And until a monster arose who delighted
in the blood of the guiltless, it is recorded that the posterity of
Avidius Cassius lived in security, and were admitted to honors and public
distinctions by favor of him, whose life and empire that memorable traitor
had sought to undermine under the favor of his guileless master's too
confiding magnanimity.
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