The Exile of Scribonianus

Translation

In the consulship of Faustus Sulla and Salvius Otho, Furius Scribonianus was driven into exile, on the grounds that he was investigating the end of the emperor through Chaldaean astrologers. His mother Vibia was attached to the charge, as being intolerant of her earlier misfortune (for she had been banished). Scribonianus' father Camillus had raised arms throughout Dalmatia; and the emperor interpreted this as an act of clemency, that he was preserving a hostile family line for a second time. Nevertheless, the exile did not have a long life afterwards: whether he was killed by an accidental death or by poison, people reported as each believed. A decree of the Senate was passed concerning the expulsion of astrologers from Italy - harsh and ineffective. Then those senators were praised in a speech by the emperor who voluntarily withdrew from the senatorial order on account of straitened family finances, and those were expelled who by remaining added shamelessness to poverty.