Messalina, now grown weary of the very facility of her adulteries,
was rushing into strange excesses, when even Silius, either through some
fatal infatuation or because he imagined that, amid the dangers which hung
over him, danger itself was the best safety, urged the breaking off of
all concealment. "They were not," he said, "in such an extremity as to
have to wait for the emperor's old age. Harmless measures were for the
innocent. Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity. |