When Oppianicus was wandering about as a vagabond and an exile, excluded from every quarter,
he went into the Falernian district of Caius Quintilius; there he first fell sick, and had a
very violent illness. As Sassia was with him, and as she was more intimate with a man of the
name of Statius Albius, a citizen of that colony, a man in good health, who was constantly with
her, than that most dissolute husband could endure, while his fortune was unimpaired, and as she
thought that that chaste and legitimate bond of wedlock was dissolved by the condemnation of her
husband, a man of the name of Nicostratus, a faithful slave of Oppianicus's, a man who was very
curious and very truth-telling, is said to have been accustomed to carry a good many tales to
his master. In the meantime, when Oppianicus was becoming convalescent, and could not endure any
longer the profligacy of this Falernian, and after he had come nearer the city,—for he had some
sort of hired house outside the gates,—he is said to have fallen from his horse, and, being a
man in delicate health before, to have hurt his side very badly, and having come to the city in
a state of fever, to have died in a few days. This is the manner of his death, O judges, such as
to have no suspicious circumstance at ale attached to it, or if it has any, they must apply to
some domestic wickedness carried on within his own walls.
After his death Sassia, that abandoned woman, immediately began to devise plots against her
son. She determined to have an investigation made into the death of her husband. She bought of
Aulus Rupilius, whom Habitus had employed as his physician, a slave of the name of
Strato, as if she were following the example of
Habitus in purchasing Diogenes. She said that she was going to investigate the conduct of this
Strato, and of some servant of her own. Besides that,
she begged of that young Oppianicus that slave Nicostratus, whom she thought to be too
talkative, and too faithful to his master, for judicial examination. As Oppianicus was at that
time quite a boy, and as that investigation was being instituted about the death of his own
father, although he thought that that slave was a well-wisher both to himself and to his father,
still he did not venture to refuse anything. The friends and connections of Oppianicus, and many
also of the friends of Sassia herself, honourable men, and accomplished in every sense of the
word, are invited to attend. The investigation is carried on by means of the severest tortures.
When the minds of the slaves had been tried both with hope and fear, to induce them to say
something in the examination, still, compelled (as I imagine) by the authority of those who were
present, and by the power of the tortures, they adhered to the truth, and said that they knew
nothing of the matter.