Trial and Death
In 66, Cossutianus Capito finally succeeded in convincing Nero to move against Thrasea. Nero may have hoped to 'bury' his attack on Thrasea and simultaneously on Barea Soranus by acting during the visit of the Armenian king Tiridates to Rome; at all events, he began by excluding Thrasea from the reception of Tiridates. Perhaps, as Tacitus suggests, he wished to panic him into some sort of submission, but Thrasea's reaction was merely to inquire what the charges against him were and to ask for time to prepare a defence - the implication being probably that there was no legal basis for proceedings against him. This was likely true, to judge by the bizarre nature of some of the supporting evidence alleged by Capito (such as not sacrificing to the Heavenly Voice of the emperor), but the trial nonetheless took place in the senate. Thrasea, having consulted with his friends, decided not to attend; he also declined the offer of the young Arulenus Rusticus, one of the tribunes, to use his tribunician veto against the decree of the senate, saying that such an action would merely endanger the life of the tribune without saving his own.
On the day of the trial, the meeting-place of the senate was surrounded by armed cohorts of the praetorian guard. A letter from Nero was read, mentioning no names but blaming senior senators for neglecting their public duties; then Capito spoke against Thrasea, and was followed by Eprius Marcellus, whom Tacitus regards as the more effective speaker. No speeches for the defence are mentioned; the senators had little alternative but to vote for the death penalty, in the form of the 'free choice of death' (liberum mortis arbitrium), that is, an order to commit suicide. In a separate action, Barea Soranus and his daughter Servilia were also condemned to death; with Thrasea were condemned, but to lesser penalties, his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus and associates Paconius Agrippinus and Curtius Montanus.
When the news was brought to Thrasea at his suburban villa, where he was entertaining a number of friends and sympathisers, he retired to a bedroom, and had the veins of both his arms opened. Calling to witness the quaestor who had brought the death sentence, he identified the shedding of his blood as a libation to Iuppiter Liberator - Jupiter who gives freedom. The surviving text of Tacitus breaks off at the moment when Thrasea was about to address Demetrius, the Cynic philosopher, with whom he had previously that day held a conversation on the nature of the soul. His death, though painful and protracted, contained allusions to the deaths of Socrates and Cato, and was evidently presented by his biographer Arulenus Rusticus, and probably constructed by himself, as a model of a dignified, calm and humane end.
Read more about this topic: Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus
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