Lucan, after long denying all knowledge of the design, corrupted by the promise of impunity, was guilty of the incredible baseness of making up for the slowness of his confession by its completeness, and of naming among the conspirators his chief friend Gallus and Pollio, and his own mother Atilla.

The woman Ephicharis, slave though she had once been, alone showed the slightest constancy, and, by her brave unshaken reticence under the most excruciating and varied tortures, put to shame the pusillanimous treachery of senators and knights.

On the second day, when, with limbs too dislocated to admit of her standing, she was again brought to the presence of her executioners, she succeeded, by a sudden movement, in strangling herself with her own girdle.
[Footnote 35: See Juv._Sat_.viii.

212.] In the hurry and alarm of the moment the slightest show of resolution would have achieved the object of the conspiracy.

Fenius Rufus had not yet been named among the conspirators, and as he sat by the side of the Emperor, and presided over the torture of his associates, Subrius Flavus made him a secret sign to inquire whether even then and there he should stab Nero.