On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Adressed to Caius (61-65)

For it is said that the wretched man was compelled to kill himself with his own hand; and his wife, too, experienced the same misery, even though she indeed had at one time been believed to be on the most intimate terms of familiarity with Caius; but they say that none of the allurements of love are

But after Macro and all his house had been sacrificed, Caius then began to design a third more grievous piece of treachery still. His father-in-law had been Marcus Silanus, a man full of wisdom, and very illustrious by birth. He, after his daughter had died by an early death, still was very attentive and affectionate to Caius, showing all imaginable regard for him, not so much like a father-in-law as like an actual father, and he hoped that he should find that Caius also entertained equal good will towards him, transforming himself according to the principles of equality from a son-in-law into a son; but he was, without knowing it, cherishing mistaken opinions, and deluding himself,

for he was continually uttering affectionate speeches, keeping back nothing which could tend to the amelioration and improvement of Caius’s disposition and way of life and mode of government, speaking with all freedom, and looking upon his own surpassing nobility of birth and nearness of connexion by marriage as circumstances which gave him grounds for great familiarity and openness, for his daughter had been dead only a very short time, so that the laws and bonds which bind such kinsmen were scarcely destroyed, and one may almost say were still quivering with life, some relics of the breath of vitality being still left, as it were, and remaining warm in the body.

But Caius, looking upon every admonition as an insult, because he fancied that he himself was the wisest and most virtuous of all men, and moreover the most valorous and the most just, hated all who ventured to offer him instruction more than even his avowed enemies.

Therefore, looking on Silanus as a bore, who only wished to check the impetuosity and indulgence of his appetites, and discarding all recollection of and regard for his deceased wife, he treacherously put her father to death, who was also his own father-in-law.