igitur amotus Cercinam, Africi maris insulam, quattuordecim annis exilium toleravit. tunc milites ad caedem missi invenere in prominenti litoris nihil laetum opperientem. quorum adventu breve tempus petivit ut suprema mandata uxori Alliariae per litteras daret, cervicemque percussoribus obtulit; constantia mortis haud indignus Sempronio nomine vita degeneraverat. quidam non Roma eos milites, sed ab L. Asprenate pro consule Africae missos tradidere auctore Tiberio, qui famam caedis posse in Asprenatem verti frustra speraverat.
Translation :
Then the soldiers who were sent to slay him, found him on a promontory, expecting no good. On their arrival, he begged a brief interval in which to give by letter his last instructions to his wife Alliaria, and then offered his neck to the executioners, dying with a courage not unworthy of the Sempronian name, which his degenerate life had dishonoured. Some have related that these soldiers were not sent from Rome, but by Lucius Asprenas, proconsul of Africa, on the authority of Tiberius, who had vainly hoped that the infamy of the murder might be shifted on Asprenas.
Edition :
Annales ab excessu divi Augusti. Cornelius Tacitus. Charles Dennis Fisher. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1906.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. reprinted 1942.
