When the noble Thrasea had been condemned to death by Nero, the officer who brought the tidings found him walking in the portico of his house. He had already opened his veins, and as he stretched out his arms the blood began to flow. Calling the quæstor to him, and sprinkling the blood upon the floor, he said: "Let us make a libation to Jove the Deliverer. Behold, young man, and may the gods avert the omen, but you are fallen upon such times that it may be useful to fortify your mind by examples of unflinching firmness." Arria, his wife, wished to share her husband's fate, but he bade her live for their daughter's sake.
There were many women who presented examples of the same unflinching firmness for the encouragement of their own sex. The mother of Thrasea's wife, whose name was also Arria, exhibited a strength of mind and a magnanimity of spirit equal to that of the noblest Romans in the best days of the Republic. Duruy recounts two episodes in the career of this noble woman which illustrate all we have claimed for her as one of the best of her sex.
"Arria's husband, Cæcina Pætus, and his son were affected with a serious malady; the son died. His mother took such measures respecting the funeral that the father knew nothing of it. Every time she entered his room she gave him news of the sufferer,--he had not slept badly, or perhaps he was recovering his appetite; and when she could no longer restrain her tears she went out for a moment, and then returned with dry eyes and a calm face, having left her grief behind her. At a later period, her husband, being concerned in the conspiracy of Scribonianus, was captured and taken to Rome. He was put on board a ship, and Arria begged the soldiers to allow her to go with him, 'You cannot refuse,' she said to them, 'to a man of consular rank a few slaves to wait on him and dress him; I alone will do him these services.' As they continued inexorable, she hired a fishing boat and followed across the Adriatic the vessel in which her husband was conveyed. At Rome, she met the wife of Scribonianus, who attempted to speak to her. 'How can I listen to you,' she said to her, 'who have seen your husband killed in your arms, and who are still alive?' Foreseeing the condemnation of Pætus, she determined not to survive him. Thrasea, her son-in-law, begged her to give up this determination. 'Is it your wish, then,' he said to her, 'if I should be compelled to die, that your daughter should die with me?' 'If she shall have lived as long and as united a life with you as I with Pætus, it is my wish,' was the reply. Her family watched her carefully, to prevent her fatal design. 'You are wasting your time,' she said; 'you will make me die a more painful death, but it is not in your power to prevent me from dying.' Thereupon she dashed her head against the wall with such violence that she fell down as if dead. When she recovered her senses, she said to them: 'I have already warned you that I should find some means of death, however hard, if you denied me an easy one.' We cannot wonder that, to decide her hesitating husband, she struck herself a fatal blow with a poniard; then handed him the weapon, saying: 'Pætus, it gives no pain.'"