Speaking with pain and deliberation, Antonia dictated for Tiberius facts that she hated to acknowledge and that he would hate to hear. She had uncovered a great conspiracy. The sensational story would surprise few in Rome, although few would ever have voiced it, least of all to the Emperor. Here in this sheltered house Antonia's realization of it had been desperately slow to emerge, but those close to her had revealed the plot. She had not taken their word; she made her own investigations. Because of her privileged position she possessed the courage to inform Tiberius, and she supported all her accusations with telling detail. She did not spare even the parts that convicted her own daughter.

She told the Emperor how his friend the Praetorian commander Sejanus had been plotting to gain complete power. His feared position had ensured the allegiance of many senators and many of the imperial freedmen who governed the Empire; leading figures in the army had been bribed. Recent honors had been heaped upon Sejanus, increasing his own ambition and the control he wielded throughout Rome. He had moved in on the Imperial House by marrying one of his relatives, Aelia Paetina, to Antonia's son Claudius, by betrothing his daughter to Claudius' son (though the boy had died), and now after several attempts by persuading the Emperor to agree that he himself might marry Antonia's daughter. But he had already seduced Livilla, then either poisoned her husband or persuaded her to do it, and schemed to ally himself by marriage to the Imperial House in order to legitimize his own position as a future emperor. His own ex-wife, recently divorced, was now prepared to speak as a witness against him.

Sejanus planned to eliminate Caligula, the more prominent of the Emperor's heirs. If the old man refused to die of his own accord, the Guard commander clearly intended to destroy Tiberius himself.

* * *

The dictation completed, Caenis managed to keep her face expressionless. At a brusque nod from Antonia, she fetched the necessary materials from her workbasket and absorbed herself in the letter's careful transcription to a scroll.