Oderint dum metuant. 432
> I scorn their hatred, if they do but fear me.He would often inveigh against all the senators without exception, as clients of Sejanus, and informers against his mother and brothers, producing the memorials which he had pretended to burn, and excusing the cruelty of Tiberius as necessary, since it was impossible to question the veracity of such a number of accusers 433.
He continually reproached the whole equestrian order, as devoting themselves to nothing but acting on the stage, and fighting as gladiators. Being incensed at the people’s applauding a party at the Circensian games in opposition to him, he exclaimed, “I wish the Roman people had but one neck.” 434
When Tetrinius, the highwayman, was denounced, he said his persecutors too were all Tetrinius’s. Five Retiarii 435, in tunics, fighting in a company, yielded without a struggle to the same number of opponents; and being ordered to be slain, one of them taking up his lance again, killed all the conquerors. This he lamented in a proclamation as a most cruel butchery, and cursed all those who had borne the sight of it.
XXXI. He used also to complain aloud of the state of the times, because it was not rendered remarkable by any public (274) calamities; for, while the reign of Augustus had been made memorable to posterity by the disaster of Varus 436, and that of Tiberius by the fall of the theatre at Fidenae 437, his was likely to pass into oblivion, from an uninterrupted series of prosperity. And, at times, he wished for some terrible slaughter of his troops, a famine, a pestilence, conflagrations, or an earthquake.