ROME had gone mad for a long time, so that the world-conquering city
seemed ready at last to tear itself to pieces for want of leadership.
Even before the last hour of the Apostles had struck, Piso’s conspiracy
appeared; and then such merciless reaping of Rome’s highest heads, that
even to those who saw divinity in Nero, he seemed at last a divinity of
death. Mourning fell on the city, terror took its lodgment in houses and
in hearts, but porticos were crowned with ivy and flowers, for it was
not permitted to show sorrow for the dead. People waking in the morning
asked themselves whose turn would come next. The retinue of ghosts
following Cæsar increased every day.
Piso paid for the conspiracy with his head; after him followed Seneca,
and Lucan, Fenius Rufus, and Plautius Lateranus, and Flavius Scevinus,
and Afranius Quinetianus, and the dissolute companion of Cæsar’s
madnesses, Tullius Senecio, and Proculus, and Araricus, and Tugurinus,
and Gratus, and Silanus, and Proximus,--once devoted with his whole
soul to Nero,--and Sulpicius Asper. Some were destroyed by their own
insignificance, some by fear, some by wealth, others by bravery. Cæsar,
astonished at the very number of the conspirators, covered the walls
with soldiery and held the city as if by siege, sending out daily
centurions with sentences of death to suspected houses. The condemned
humiliated themselves in letters filled with flattery, thanking Cæsar
for his sentences, and leaving him a part of their property, so as to
save the rest for their children. It seemed, at last, that Nero was
exceeding every measure on purpose to convince himself of the degree in
which men had grown abject, and how long they would endure bloody
rule. After the conspirators, their relatives were executed; then their
friends, and even simple acquaintances. Dwellers in lordly mansions
built after the fire, when they went out on the street, felt sure of
seeing a whole row of funerals. Pompeius, Cornelius, Martialis, Flavius
Nepos, and Statius Domitius died because accused of lack of love
for Cæsar; Novius Priscus, as a friend of Seneca. Rufius Crispus was
deprived of the right of fire and water because on a time he had been
the husband of Poppæa. The great Thrasea was ruined by his virtue; many
paid with their lives for noble origin; even Poppæa fell a victim to the
momentary rage of Nero.
The Senate crouched before the dreadful ruler; it raised a temple in
his honor, made an offering in favor of his voice, crowned his statues,
appointed priests to him as to a divinity. Senators, trembling in their
souls, went to the Palatine to magnify the song of the “Periodonices,”
and go wild with him amid orgies of naked bodies, wine, and flowers.
But meanwhile from below, in the field soaked in blood and tears, rose
the sowing of Peter, stronger and stronger every moment.