NERO, THE CRUEL
[Illustration: NERO]
Lucius Domitius Nero, the next Roman emperor, was, as we have seen,
the stepson of Claudius and the grandson of the famous Germanicus, who
was a brother of Claudius. His mother was Agrippina II, the sister
of Caligula. This Agrippina became the last wife of Claudius; but
Nero was her son by her former husband, Lucius Domitius. The Domitian
gens, or family, had been a famous one for several generations and the
particular branch of it to which Nero’s father belonged, namely, the
Ahenobarbi, or brazen-beards, had long been prominent for its ability,
its wealth, and its power. At the same time it had been noted for
the faithlessness and ferocity shown by many of its representatives.
Suetonius tells the story that the first Lucius Domitius, the founder
of the line, was the man to whom Castor and Pollux announced the
victory that had taken place at Lake Regillus, when they rode into
Rome, and that his beard was then changed from black to red in token of
that supernatural manifestation. The Ahenobarbi always inherited, it is
said, the complexion as well as the name.
When Nero was three years old his father died. His uncle, the emperor
Caligula, managed to cheat him out of his inheritance, but afterward
the emperor Claudius restored it to him, added to it other property,
and bestowed upon him many honors. His mother sought to have him
properly educated and to have his manners cultivated according to
the best standards of the time. He is said, as a boy, to have been
affectionate, with some aptness to learn, and fond of praise.
As the niece of Claudius, Agrippina had been allowed to occupy a place
in the imperial palace next to the empress Messalina herself. When
Messalina’s dissolute character became manifest to all, Agrippina, as
we have related, took advantage of it to increase her own favor with
the emperor and the interests of her son as a possible successor to the
throne. It was an audacious dream, because he would be thus put in the
place of Britannicus, the emperor’s son by Messalina. After Messalina’s
wretched death, and when Agrippina had reached the summit of her
ambition and had become the wife of Claudius (the Senate having passed
a special edict to sanction this union of an uncle with his niece),
this artful woman was able still more successfully to make her own son
prominent and to keep Britannicus in the background.
We have stated that the philosopher Seneca was called back from the
exile, in which,--probably owing to the hatred of Messalina,--he
had been living on the island of Corsica; and was chosen to be the
special instructor of the young Nero. Seneca was not only a keen
theorist in statesmanship and morals but he was shrewd also in matters
of business, and had a taste for public affairs. He was probably as
good an instructor as could have been found for such a service at that
time. He was, however, very lenient with his royal pupil. He found
in him a coarse nature with strong impulses. He adopted the plan of
trying to allure him to his tasks by indulging him at other times
in his lighter tastes. The young man became proficient in singing,
in playing upon pipes, and in dancing, though these accomplishments
had been disapproved by conservative Romans as inappropriate to the
military life of the conquerors of mankind. But Seneca seems to have
gone further in yielding to Nero’s natural inclinations. He connived at
some of his vices. Surrounded by flatterers and schemers and depraved
caterers to immorality, Nero early imbibed evil principles and adopted
corrupt practices. He was inflated with conceit and bred to foolish
ostentation. The wickedness of his own mother must have gone far to
destroy in him all sentiments of virtue. What could be expected of an
impulsive young man with such an heredity and such an environment?
While he was put forward to be the public advocate of measures that
were popular, Agrippina reserved for Britannicus nothing but neglect.
The attendants of the latter’s childhood, between whom and himself
there had sprung up a mutual affection, were, one by one, removed from
him through her influence, and he was left as much as possible in the
shadow.
When Claudius was dead Agrippina put the climax upon her crafty
management by keeping the announcement from the public until everything
was ready. She even gave out word that her husband was better and
took care to retain Britannicus and his sisters under her close
surveillance. To those in the palace who knew that Claudius was dead
she pretended the greatest grief until noon of the next day. Then, when
Burrus the Prefect walked across the courtyard to present the successor
to the throne to the prætorian guard, it was not Britannicus but Nero
that walked by his side. Some, indeed, ventured to express the murmur:
“Where is Britannicus?”
But there was no one to champion his cause; and so the son of Agrippina
was saluted as the emperor. It is also related that on the first
evening of his imperial power, when a sentinel of the palace came to
ask him for the watchword for the night, he, knowing well to whom he
was indebted for his throne, returned the words, “Optima Mater,”--“The
Best of Mothers.” To what extent this feeling of gratitude was
maintained by him in later years we shall see.
Seneca, poet and philosopher, is said to have written a satire on
the death of the emperor Claudius. The Senate, following foolish
precedents, had declared that he had become a god. This satire
represented him as having become a gourd. The Senate had ascribed
to him divinity. The satire spoke jocosely of his pumpkinity. Some
eulogists of the philosopher are loth to believe the identity, but many
writers contend that this satire was substantially the same as the
well-known ancient writing called the “Play Upon the Death of Nero”
that has come down to us, which bears many of the marks of Seneca’s
style and which describes in a burlesque manner the reception and
disgrace of Claudius among the gods. It is overflowing with contempt
for the emperor, in strange contrast with the almost abject flattery
that Seneca had written of him when he was anxious to win his favor and
so get back from exile. Altogether, it is difficult to relieve Seneca
from the charge of time-serving and hypocrisy. It is so much easier to
write noble sentiments in regard to disinterestedness than it is to
practice them in days of temptation! From ridicule of the dead emperor
the satire goes on to welcome the new one in flowery language. It says:
“As when the bright sun gazes on the world and starts his chariot
on his daily race; so Cæsar breaks upon the earth. Such is the Nero
whom Rome now beholds!”
Nero was seventeen years of age when he was thus called to govern the
civilized world. Wearied by the atrocities of his predecessors, the
people could not but welcome the fair-faced youth in whose antecedents
there was not much to excite serious apprehension. His busts represent
him as having at this time a round face, a not displeasing countenance,
and a slight beard. His hair is said to have been yellowish, or sandy.
His figure was not well proportioned,--his neck being thick, his body
large and his legs slender. His eyes were dark gray and their sight was
somewhat impaired. He was careless in his dress, yet fond of finery.
He particularly took care of his locks, arranging them in a manner
somewhat effeminate. He sometimes greatly offended fastidious taste by
going with his feet bare, with his girdle loose, and wearing (even in
public) a sort of dressing-gown. He entered upon his imperial career
with a good degree of physical health and strength.
From his very accession Nero felt uneasy on account of the jealousy of
Britannicus. He knew that the sense of right would assert itself in the
breasts of many in behalf of Britannicus and might become dangerous to
his reign. He therefore proceeded with caution. He pronounced a funeral
oration over Claudius, which Seneca is believed to have composed for
him. In it he made many conciliatory promises. There were not any
of the nobles who had courage to call in question his claims. They
cared not to risk their heads simply for the sake of a mere righteous
succession. They preferred to tolerate him as long as he treated them
with respect. They held the weakness of his title to the throne as a
weapon to be used against him if he should offend them.
Meanwhile Seneca and Burrus, the young emperor’s principal advisers,
did all they could to make his government a good one and so establish
its authority. Their chief difficulties were to control his headstrong
nature and to prevent his mother from exercising too much influence
over him. She, who had supplanted Messalina and had murdered Claudius,
was not going to let her power go, if she could help it. She leagued
herself with Pallas, the wealthy and unprincipled freedman at court,
and it soon became evident that she was making trouble.
Her son, too, at first was too ready to give her honors. She was borne
in public in the same litter with him. She caused coins to be stamped
having her head with his upon them. She sent dispatches to foreign
courts and gave answers to ambassadors. She even ordered the murder
of Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, who was obnoxious to her. Burrus
and Seneca were alarmed at her bold assumptions of authority. They
determined to break down her power at any cost. To draw away Nero
from confiding too much in her they even favored his intrigue with a
freedwoman named Acte, which greatly enraged Agrippina. And this rage
was increased when Nero removed Pallas from his position of influence
and dismissed him from court.
Agrippina then declared herself the patroness of Britannicus,
notwithstanding she had set him aside to bring Nero to the throne, and
she appealed to the army to make that young man now the emperor in
the place of her son. Nero saw there was danger of a revolution. He
therefore adopted the iniquitous course then so common with jealous
rulers. He had Britannicus poisoned. The poison, it is said, was
prepared under the emperor’s own eyes and was administered in the
wine-cup of Britannicus as he sat at a banquet in the palace. The youth
fell back lifeless, but Nero passed the occurrence by as one of the
fits, to which, he said, his brother was subject. That same night the
corpse of Britannicus was solemnly cremated with funeral ceremony on
the Campus Martius.
Nero then tried to divert attention from the event and to cover up his
crime by showering presents, houses, and estates on the favorites of
the palace. The much praised philosopher, Seneca, extolled the clemency
of Nero during this, the first year of his reign; yet this cool and
calculated murder of Britannicus seems to have occurred within the
limits of that year. Seneca probably tried to excuse himself by saying
that, if Nero should not be sustained, Agrippina would flourish in
her power; and that would be worse for the public weal. Meanwhile, he
directed the administration of the national affairs in a manner to
please the Senate and made the first five years of Nero a prosperous
time for the great body of the people. They were afterward spoken of
as a period of great happiness. This must have been largely in contrast
with the great gloom that followed; yet doubtless Nero was to a great
extent then pliant to the advice of his tutor and the prefect.
Nero prudently declined having magnificent statues erected in his
honor. He reserved severe measures for notorious criminals, and seems
even to have been touched at times with emotion of compassion. Seneca,
to increase the youthful emperor’s popularity, circulated an anecdote
of him to the effect that when asked to affix his signature to an order
for the execution of a condemned person he exclaimed:
“How I wish that I did not know how to write.”
But these moments of tenderness seem to have been only of short
duration. The spirit which had been manifested in the poisoning of
Britannicus soon reappeared in other acts of meanness and cruelty. He
had been trained from his childhood in too hard and selfish a school.
The emperor’s mother, Agrippina, was continuing to plot against him,
and her various designs to disenthrone him were, of course, reported to
him. This disturbed him in the midst of the recklessness with which he
was carrying on his debaucheries with his boon companions. “The Best
of Mothers,” as he had called her on his accession, had now become the
worst of his relentless enemies. She seems to have allowed all her
maternal affection for him to be chilled by the disappointment of her
love of personal power.
For our knowledge of those times we are indebted largely to the
“Annals” of Tacitus. Some questions arise as to the reliability of his
accounts. Josephus, who, as a foreigner, may have been more impartial,
says that different historians of Nero’s reign were swayed by opposite
prejudices; yet he believed in the poisoning of Britannicus and in
other cruel murders by Nero now to be related.
Poppæa Sabina, one of the fairest but wickedest women in Rome,
aspired to supplant Octavia, the emperor’s wife, and concentrated her
fascinations upon him. Nero sent her husband to a distant province and
she suffered him to depart without a sigh. Nero’s mother, Agrippina,
was of course much in the way of Poppæa’s designs, so Poppæa laid her
plan most diligently to get rid of the older woman. She taunted the
emperor with being afraid of his mother and put before him all the
movements of Agrippina in the darkest light, until Nero was persuaded.
His regard for his mother was already changed to hatred.
With the aid of Anicetus, the commander of the fleet at Misenum,--who
had a spite against Agrippina,--a plan was formed by which she was
induced to embark on a barge, which, at a given signal, was to break
in pieces. The plan was not successful. The mechanism failed to work.
Yet the sailors managed to tip the ship so that Agrippina and her
companions were thrown into the water. She succeeded by the aid of some
fishermen in reaching the shore in safety. Seeing that her only chance
lay in dissimulation, she sent one of her freedmen to tell her son that
by the mercy of heaven she had escaped from a terrible accident, but
that he need not be alarmed and must not come to her, as she greatly
needed rest and quiet.
When Nero received the account he was thrown into the greatest anxiety,
knowing that now his mother had discovered his plot against her and
would certainly seek revenge. In great agitation of mind he sent for
Burrus and Seneca to come to him instantly. Laying before them the
situation, he looked from one to the other in suspense for their
advice. There was a long and painful silence. At last Seneca asked
Burrus if the soldiers could be trusted to put her to death. When
the reply was given that the prætorians would do nothing to injure a
daughter of Germanicus and that Anicetus should complete the work he
had begun, Anicetus showed himself willing to do so. He trumped up
another charge against Agrippina and hurried off to her villa at Bauli.
There he and his minions found her in a dimly lighted chamber, attended
by a single hand-maid, who immediately rose to steal away.
“Dost thou, too, desert me?” said the wretched Agrippina.
[Illustration: AGRIPPINA II AND NERO]
The armed men surrounded her couch. Anicetus was the first to
strike. The rest immediately followed his example, and she was
dispatched with many blows. Almost with her last breath she cried out
against the perfidy of her ungrateful son.
If we are to believe many writers, Nero never ceased after this murder
of his mother to be troubled with a guilty conscience. Yet he wrote at
the time a letter to the Senate from Naples declaring that his mother
had conspired against his life and that in the confusion caused by her
detection she had miserably perished by her own hand. The disaster of
the ship he declared to have been purely accidental. It is painful
to record the altogether probable fact that the real author of this
shameful document was Seneca, who thus put the emperor’s message into
words for him. It affirmed that the death of the imperious woman should
be regarded as a public benefit. But such declarations from such a
source gave little satisfaction. So widely was Nero believed to be
guilty of Agrippina’s murder that at Rome the sack, the instrument of
death for parricides, was secretly hung about his statues and the names
of the triad of conspicuous matricides, Nero, Orestes, and Alcmæon,
were found posted by night upon the walls. Yet the nobles were servile
enough to welcome him back with honor, and the populace was diverted
and gratified by the new and extravagant shows that he provided
for all. The multitude even cheered him as he threw aside all his
dignity as an emperor and went himself upon the stage as an actor or
drove recklessly in the Circus Maximus as a charioteer. He delighted
in everything sensational and spectacular; in noise and show and
speed--what pleasure he would have taken in locomotives and automobiles
had they existed in his day. It could not be said that the laws were
not respected or that the citizens, as a body, were not at peace. But
there were wild extravagances and follies to startle and distress
the people. And that was not all. There were so much dissipation and
licentiousness in high places that all the best people in the empire
were scandalized and it was evident that the moral strength of the
nation was undermined.
Nero was sowing to the wind and he was sure to reap the whirlwind.
Satirical voices began to make themselves heard. Then Burrus, the
strong soldier and wise counselor, died; and Nero divided his command
between Fenius Rufus, a timid and subservient man, and Tigellinus, one
of his own infamous associates.
The influence of Seneca, which in many respects had tended to wisdom
and moderation, was thus undermined and broken. He had gained nothing
by his temporizing with evil, his policy of compromise and mildness.
Perhaps Nero himself had become disgusted with him for saying one
thing in his philosophic maxims and pursuing the opposite course in
his practice. He no longer treated Seneca with veneration. Chagrined
and broken-hearted the latter withdrew to a less conspicuous
life. Rubellius Plautus and Sulla, two prominent men, of whom Nero
was jealous, were put to death by the emperor’s order, and at the
instigation of Tigellinus. The assassinations were accomplished
by messengers sent from the imperial court to the provinces where
they lived. Nero pretended to be delivered thus from two dangerous
adversaries and required the Senate to congratulate him. He even
declared to friends that he was now free to celebrate his marriage
with Poppæa, without fear of any rival who might profit by the public
commiseration for his wife Octavia. This woman, who was the daughter of
Claudius and whose life at court had been one of constant distress, was
ruthlessly condemned and seized, upon some arrogant pretext, and her
veins were opened with a knife. Her head was severed from her body and
carried to her enemy, the cruel Poppæa. After this all restraints of
decency and self-respect were thrown off and wild orgies went on in the
imperial palaces.
[Illustration: POPPÆA]
In the tenth year of Nero’s reign Rome was swept by a terrible fire. It
began at the eastern end of the Circus Maximus, between the Palatine
and Cælian hills. It swept along the bases of the Palatine and Aventine
hills, through the Velabrum on the one hand and the Forum on the
other. It raged six days, destroying both private dwellings and public
buildings. Many of the old cherished landmarks of Rome, like the Regia
(or palace) of Numa, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and the Temple of
Vesta, were ruined. When it was thought to have subsided a renewal of
it, or another fire, broke out on the outskirts of the city beneath
the Pincian hill and raged toward the Viminal and the Quirinal. Of
the fourteen districts, or regions of the city, three were entirely
obliterated, while seven others were more or less severely injured. Not
only noted buildings but elegant patrician homes and many rare works of
art,--works that could not be duplicated,--were altogether lost.
The poorer people, of course, were brought into a condition of great
hardship and suffering. The conflagration occurred when the tyrannies
and cruelties of Nero had largely increased the number of his personal
enemies, when mutterings of contempt and hatred against him had become
frequent, and when his iniquitous excesses had led many to believe
that he could be guilty of anything. The fact that some incendiaries
were seen at work, who said they were acting under orders, and the
rumor that while the city was burning Nero had watched the flames from
the tower of his villa, and had there chanted the “Sack of Troy” with
the accompaniment of his own lyre, favored the suspicion that he had
himself caused the awful calamity. Some claimed that he did it in order
that he might rebuild the capital more magnificently and call the new
Rome by his own name. But these suspicions cannot be proved.
It is enough to affirm that under the additional miseries caused by the
fire the people had become bold to express their exasperation with the
existing reign. Not even the imposing religious ceremonies, conducted
to appease the gods, could quiet the popular outcries. Nero seems to
have felt that it was necessary to divert suspicions from himself by
presenting other victims.
Tacitus tells us that to save himself, this emperor sacrificed “those
whom, hated on account of their vices, the vulgar called Christians.”
This name, he says, was derived from one Christus, who was executed
in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
And he adds that “the accursed superstition, for a moment repressed,
spread again, not over Judea only, the source of this evil, but in Rome
also, where all things vile and shameful find room and reception.” This
Neronian persecution, so horrible in its bitterness and bloodshed, we
shall have occasion to consider later in connection with the sufferings
of the early Christian martyrs.
We may remark here that some, such as the historian Gibbon, have found
a difficulty in accepting the plain assertions of Tacitus and Suetonius
on this subject on the ground that there was nothing in the known
habits and teachings of the Christians at this early period to call
down upon them such bitter hatred. They were peaceable citizens and
had hardly yet become distinct from the Jews in the observation of the
Romans. It has been suggested that Tacitus and others, writing some
time after the event, were describing what was really a persecution of
the Jews in Rome and that, because they had incurred the displeasure
of Nero by their turbulent disputes over an expected Christ or over
certain false Christs and because, in Tacitus’ time, the Christians
proclaimed the Christ as having come, the historian had not kept these
facts distinct and was attributing to the Christians an unpopularity
which, so early, belonged to them only as part of the Jews. Merivale
suggests that there may be an element of truth in this theory. That is
to say, the Jews, when persecuted for their Messianic enthusiasm, may
have succeeded in transferring the odium to the Christians as being in
this respect far more intense than themselves.
That Nero did subject the believers of Jesus to great cruelty and that
Paul, if not Peter, suffered martyrdom during his reign have been
accepted beliefs from such early times and are so consistent with the
otherwise well-known caprice and severity of Nero that there seems
no reason to doubt the facts. The Neronian persecution may have been
short and limited to Italy, but it was sharp and bloody. The reckless
tyranny of Nero was supported by the voluptuousness and heartlessness
of his age. The statements of the Apostle Paul in the first chapter
of his Epistle to the Romans are not too strong concerning the gross
immorality of society. Stoicism promulgated, indeed, some noble ideals
and may even have been stimulated to do its best by the challenges of
Christianity, but the body politic was corrupt throughout.
After the great fire Nero addressed himself with zeal to the rebuilding
of Rome. He had a pride in making his capital splendid and especially
in erecting for himself his famous palace called “the Golden House.”
This seems to have been a connection and combination, by means of
arches and porticos, of the palaces on the Palatine with others on
the Esquiline. In these buildings, which required several acres, he
followed the Greek models of architecture and ornament. A conspicuous
feature among them was his own colossal statue set up near what is now
called, from it, the Colosseum. To defray the expense of these and
other buildings he exacted or confiscated the wealth of other men and
even stole with impious cupidity some of the rich gifts which had been
placed in the temples. The growing discontent and opposition to him,
therefore, became more manifest among the nobility. Conspiracies were
formed against him. Some of these he was able to put down; but others
sprang up in their places. Sometimes, alarmed by them, he drowned
his fears in a flood of popular flattery gained by his undignified
performances in the circus and the theater both at home and abroad.
When his wife Poppæa died, some asserted that it was a consequence of
his own brutal treatment. One great man after another, some of them
honored by historians as almost personifications of virtue, lost their
lives by poison or by the sword, by assassination or by compelled
suicide, as victims to his jealousy or his covetousness.
Even Seneca, the philosophic instructor of Nero’s youth, had fallen
under his imperial pupil’s displeasure. Nero had no use for Seneca’s
moral precepts and felt that he was no longer helpful to him in the
affairs of State. They were also sharers in too many guilty secrets
for Nero to care for his presence. An attempt was made to involve him
in a charge of treason brought, with truth, against Calpurnius and
others. This charge was not proved against Seneca, but it was made
the most of at court. Not long after this the Prefect Burrus died,
and his successor, Tigellinus, was no friend of Seneca. He inflamed
the emperor’s covetousness for Seneca’s enormous wealth, which then,
he said, was throwing into the shade the splendor of the imperial
household. He also represented Seneca as a rival to him in poetry and
eloquence. All these arguments prevailed with a heart already full of
hatred.
So an order was sent to Seneca that he must die. It was received
without alarm. As time was refused him wherein to remake his will,
he said to the friends around him that he would bequeath to them the
example of his life. He checked their tears and asked them where were
their precepts of philosophy and the fortitude that their studies
should have taught them? Did they not know the cruelty of Nero? Was
it not to be expected that he would make an end of his master and
tutor after murdering his mother and his brother? He begged his wife
Paulina not to enter upon an endless sorrow. The veins of his limbs
were then opened that he might bleed to death, a process that had to be
accelerated by a vapor bath. During his lingering distress he conversed
with those attending him. When Seneca passed away, Nero, though feeling
a grim satisfaction, had really lost the best counselor he ever had.
[Illustration: SENECA]
In many of his writings, this great philosopher rose to a lofty height
of ethical insight and discrimination. He seems to have been truly
anxious to raise the moral tone of society. No man up to his time
had apprehended more clearly than did he that moral light with which
God is ready to light every man that cometh into the world. No man
wrote better of sincerity, courage, contentment, justice, kindness to
others even to the weakest slave, mercy to the wicked, the beauty of
unselfishness, and the mind’s possible superiority to its environment.
He was a great expounder of natural religion as studied by his
observation and by his conscience. Here, for example are a few of his
maxims:
If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade
ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault.
We shall be wise if we desire but little.
If each man takes account of himself and measures his own body he
will know how little it can contain and for how short a time.
Man is born for mutual assistance. You must live for another if you
wish to live for yourself.
We are members of one great body.--Let him who hath conferred a
favor hold his tongue about it.
Man’s best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give or to
take away. The Universe, the grandest and loveliest work of nature,
and the intellect, which was created to observe and admire, are our
special and eternal possessions.
Such examples might be culled in great numbers from his writings. He
seems at times to have been an earnest seeker after God. He declared
that God did not dwell in temples made of wood and stone; that He
did not delight in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His
creatures; that men must believe in Him before they can approach Him,
and that the truest service for Him is to be like unto Him. Some of his
sayings approach the lofty precepts of Christ and His apostles. He is
frequently quoted with approbation by early Christian writers. Yet his
precepts differ from the Scriptural teachings in the fact that some
of them are merely rhetorical and superficial. Others are fragmentary
and inadequate. They are not winnowed from all chaff. At their highest
level also they simply emphasize the demands of the moral law without
offering to man any help for attaining to holiness other than what his
own heroic decision may furnish. In their searching quality some of
them are of a type so Pauline that many have thought that he and Paul,
his contemporary, must have been well acquainted. There is said to
have been a tradition to that effect as early as the fourth century.
Indeed, some early Christian thought he was doing a good service to
write a book that he called “Conversations between Seneca and Paul.”
Its spuriousness is now generally admitted. But we naturally ask: Is it
likely that Seneca knew anything of Paul?
On one hand, we may answer on general principles that a man in the
high position of Seneca would not be likely to come into contact with
despised and persecuted people, such as the Jews (and especially the
Christians) then were. Most stoics would rather repel such company
superciliously. On the other hand, we know that Paul had been tried in
Corinth by Marcus Annæus Gallio, Seneca’s brother, and that at Paul’s
arrival at Rome he was put under the charge of Burrus, the prefect
of the Prætorian Guard, who was Seneca’s friend. It is possible that
through one of these, especially the latter, the philosopher may have
heard of the apostle and in the course of his philosophic inquiries
may have gone to hear him in disguise or listened to reports of his
preaching, which was causing a stir among the Jews. He may thus have
used ideas the source of which he would not deign to acknowledge.
Whether this was true or not, it is probable that Paul and Peter were
before long much respected by some members of the Annæan family to
which Seneca belonged. Lanciani tells us that in 1867 an inscription
was found in a tomb at Ostia such as is here reproduced.
While it is clearly a pagan inscription, shown by the invocation
letters D . M (Diis Manibus,--to the gods of the lower regions,--)
Marcus Annæus, the father, who placed the inscription, seems to have
been named for Paul, and the Marcus Annæus, the “dearest son,” whom
it commemorates, to have been named for both Paul and Peter. The
occurrence of the two names together
+---------------------+
| D . M |
| M. ANNÆO |
| PAULO . PETRO |
| M. ANNÆUS . PAULUS |
| FILIO . CARISSIMO |
+---------------------+
make it altogether probable that both these apostles had been held in
great honor by this particular household, and that a suggestion of a
friendship with Christians is not wholly arbitrary.
Seneca was one of the greatest of the Stoics. “The Stoical philosophy,”
says Frederick Farrar, “may be compared to a torch, which flings a
faint gleam here and there in the dusky recesses of a mighty cavern,
while Christianity may be compared to the sun, pouring into the inmost
depths of the same cavern its sevenfold illumination. The torch had
a value and a brightness of its own; but, compared to the dawning of
that new glory, it appears to be dim and ineffectual, even though
its brightness was a real brightness and had been drawn from the
same ethereal source.” Concerning the close of life, Seneca wrote to
Lucilius:
I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside all
artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting myself
whether I really speak or merely feel as a brave man should:
whether all these words of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled
against fortune were mere pretense and pantomime. What you have
really achieved will then be manifest when your end is near.
Alas! the trouble with Seneca was that which puts all the great moral
philosophers so far below Christ and even his apostles, namely, that
he so failed to live up to the precepts that he wrote. It was when he
descended from the plane of theory and sentiment to that of practice in
daily life that he often ignobly failed.
No complete biography of him has come down to us. The curtain rises and
falls over separated scenes in his life. But we know enough to mark his
strange inconsistencies. His temporizing management of his imperial
pupil, his accumulation of great wealth while he was extolling poverty,
his mingling among the extravagancies and corruptions of the imperial
court, his apparent failure to express any condemnation of the murders
of Britannicus and Agrippina, and his apology for the latter of these
horrors, which he wrote for Nero, are enough to be mentioned. It must
be admitted that he had a very hard place to fill as an adviser of
the emperor, and was often, doubtless, sorely perplexed to know what
course of action would be best for the public welfare, but he cannot be
acquitted of consent to some of Nero’s crimes.
It was from the Roman army at last that retribution came to the cruel
tyrant. He had become uneasy at the murmurs and the gloom that had
manifestly increased among the people at his capital. He went for
relief to his rural resorts in Campania. Reports of discontent there
came to him from the provinces. The army camps contained many who
were brooding over wrongs he had done them and were waiting for their
revenge.
Among the prominent military men of the day was Servius Sulpicius
Galba, who had for some years ruled under the imperial government over
a portion of Spain. Descended from an honored family, this man had also
achieved for himself renown and was popular with the soldiers. He was,
therefore, an object of jealousy to Nero, though he was seventy-three
years of age. While Nero was absent from Italy, making exhibitions of
himself in public theaters and circuses, in Greece, Galba received some
overtures from Caius Julius Vindex, a Roman general in Gaul, who hated
Nero for some of his exactions. Vindex felt that there was no chance
for himself to be the successor of Nero, but he fixed his eyes on Galba
as a possible chief. Galba hesitated to lead a revolution. Meanwhile
the plottings of Vindex were discovered and that officer committed
suicide.
Galba then felt that he must be more than ever an object of hatred
to Nero’s cruelty, and that he might as well proceed in an attempt
to restore prosperity to the empire. He harangued the soldiers. They
saluted him as emperor, but he would not as yet receive any title but
that of Legate of the Senate and Roman people. He, however, enlisted
more young men and prepared for a campaign. When the Roman general,
Virginius Rufus of lower Germany, entered into communication with
him, the news spread far and wide that Nero’s fall was sure. Otho,
Nero’s former companion, from his distant station on the shore of the
Atlantic, sent messages of cheer to Galba. Roman legions in other parts
of the world also respectively hailed their own chiefs as emperor. The
empire seemed to be breaking up into pieces.
When Nero’s attention was first called to the handwriting on the wall,
as it were, he treated it with contempt and expressed satisfaction
at the prospect of confiscating to his own uses the estates of these
traitors. He lingered for a while, ridiculously seeking applause for
himself by his participation in public entertainments at Naples. After
he returned to Rome he dedicated a temple to Poppæa. But he spent much
time in trifles, playing and singing and driving the chariot in the
circus. When courier after courier dashed into Rome bringing tidings
of the rebellion of this or that province, he summoned troops from
Illyricum and brought sailors from the fleet at Ostia to defend the
city. He threatened to recall the foreign magistrates and disgrace
them. He called upon the populace, whom he had pampered, to rise in
his behalf or he would let loose his lions upon them. He declared he
would massacre those Senators who would not stand by him. Finally, he
said he would meet the approaching revolutionists unarmed, trusting to
his beauty, his tears, and his persuasive voice. Meanwhile the truly
patriotic were happy in the increasing expectation of some deliverance
from his yoke.
He had reached Rome in February. By June his cause was hopeless. Galba,
it is true, with his forces, had not arrived. But the Prætorian Guard
had been turned against him by their prefect, Nymphidius, to whom the
camp had been given up by Tigellinus. When told that his last hope of
assistance had deceived him, Nero started up from his couch at supper
in his Golden House, dashed his choicest cups, which he had been
using, to the ground, borrowed a vial of poison and went out to walk
restlessly in the neighboring gardens. Afterward he conjured some of
the military officers to join him in flight. They all either found
excuses or openly refused. Then one, bolder than the rest, said to
him:
“Is it then so hard to die?”
He would have gone and thrown himself into the Tiber. One of his
freedmen, named Phaon, offered his villa as a refuge. It was about
four miles from Rome. It is easily identified still, situated between
the Via Salaria and the Via Nomentana. For this he started, wearing a
rough dress and barefoot and with a mantle of coarse material about
his shoulders and face. In this disguise he was mounted on a horse and
was accompanied by four friends, Phaon, Epaphroditus (who was another
wealthy freedman, the secretary or librarian of Nero), Sporus, and one
more whose name is not given. He passed through the city gate at early
dawn, not far from the Prætorian camp. Some accounts declare that he
could hear soldiers cursing his name and declaring that Galba would
be his successor. It is said that thunder and lightning and the shock
of earthquake added to the excitement of the hour, while the sky was
draped with heavy black clouds. They met some people hurrying into the
city. One asked what news there might be from the palace.
[Illustration: NOMENTANA BRIDGE]
Before crossing the Nomentana bridge, over the Anio, a bridge that is
still standing, Nero’s horse shied, frightened at a dead man lying by
the roadside. This caused the emperor’s disguise to slip aside for
a moment, so that a messenger from the Prætorian camp, passing just
then, recognized his face. Near the fourth milestone they turned aside
and followed a path through a canebrake along the edge of a ditch,
now called the Fosso della Cecchina. This brought them to the rear of
Phaon’s villa, for they had not approached the main entrance that they
might escape observation. A hole had to be made in the back wall of the
house. When it was completed, they crept through it into a bath-room,
where Nero threw himself upon a pallet. His comrades urged him at
once to escape by suicide from the indignities which would be heaped
upon him by his foes as soon as he was captured. Presently word was
brought to him that the Senate had decreed his death as an enemy to
Rome. Terrified at this Nero took two daggers from his bosom, and with
many grimaces tried their edges, one after another, and then laid them
down, saying that the moment for him to use them had not yet come. Then
he implored some one to set him the example of suicide. He reproached
himself for his timidity.
“Fie, fie, Nero!” he cried, “Courage, man; come!”
Hearing then the sound of horsemen sent to seize him alive, he placed a
weapon to his throat and his freedman Epaphroditus drove it home. This
was on the ninth of June, in the 14th year of his reign and when he was
at the age of thirty years and six months.
He was the last of the Julian family. Though few were disposed to
weep at his departure and though multitudes throughout the empire
felt relief when they heard of it, his body was not refused a decent
burial. By the consent of Icelus, representing Galba, the newly
elected emperor, Ecloge and Alexandra, who had been the nurses of his
childhood, with Acte, who had been a companion in his vices, and the
three men who had accompanied him in his flight furnished the money for
the cremation of his body, with suitable ceremonies.
The three women brought the ashes and placed them in the tomb of the
Domitian family. This stood on a spur of the Pincian Hill, not far
behind the present church of Santa Maria del Popolo, just inside the
city gate and in the square of the same name. Lanciani speaks of the
discovery (in a very recent year, on the exact spot of Nero’s suicide)
of the tomb of Claudia Ecloge, the old nurse who had been so devoted
to the emperor when a child. The fields around the spot for hundreds
of feet in every direction are said to have been strewn with the usual
ruins of a villa of the first century and the finding of this simple
slab is a most pathetic incident, in view of the details that we have
described. Lord Byron says in “Don Juan”:
When Nero perished by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroyed,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,
Of nations freed and the world overjoyed,
Some hands unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb,--
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness done, when power
Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.
The stone slab on which is inscribed the simple epitaph of Ecloge is
in the Capitoline Museum. Perhaps it was by her own request, in tender
recollections of earlier days and also of her part in the preparations
of his body for its cremation, that she was buried on the scene of her
infamous nurseling’s death.
There is an old tradition that the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo was
founded by Pope Pascal II in the early part of the eleventh century
on the site of the tombs of the Domitii and the burial place of Nero,
because he would thus free the place from the demons that were supposed
to haunt it. In the sixteenth century it was the Augustinian Convent
(now suppressed) adjoining this church that was the lodging place
of the monk Martin Luther on his visit to Rome. On his arrival he
prostrated himself on the earth and exclaimed in the language of an old
pilgrim hymn:
“I salute thee, O holy Rome, sacred with the blood of the martyrs.”
Then he celebrated mass in the church. Before he departed from
Rome,--having very different feelings from those with which he had
entered it, and soon to become a great reformer,--he celebrated mass in
this church again. It contains many grand old tombs and fine works of
art. In the center of the square, between four spouting lions, rises
the Egyptian obelisk, which the Emperor Augustus erected in B. C. 10,
in the ancient Circus Maximus to commemorate the subjugation of Egypt.
Its hieroglyphic inscription is said to mention the names of Meneptah
and Rameses III (1326 and 1273 B. C.).
Hawthorne in his “Marble Faun,” that book which has become a very
classic for its reproduction of modern Roman life and spirit, says:
All Roman works and ruins, whether of the empire, the far-off
Republic or the still more distant Kings, assume a transient,
visionary and impalpable character when we think that this
indestructible monument supplied one of the recollections which
Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt into the desert. Perchance
on beholding the cloudy pillar and the fiery column they whispered
awe-stricken to one another: “In its shape it is like that old
obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen on the borders
of the Nile.”
And now that very obelisk, with hardly a trace of decay upon it, is the
first thing that the modern traveler sees after entering the Flaminian
gate. Egyptian monarchs, Roman emperors, the leader of the Protestant
Reformation:--what widely different historic names are conjured up
for us by these adjacent memorials. Near the church the carriage
driveway now leads up from terrace to terrace to the public garden on
the Pincian Hill. Here the modern landscape artists have laid out a
charming resort, reminding us of the ancient and luxurious gardens of
Lucullus which stood near the same spot. Until 1840 this beautiful park
had been for centuries a desolate waste; and here in the middle ages
the ghost of Nero was believed to be forever wandering. On pleasant
afternoons, and especially on Sunday afternoon, many fine equipages
may now be seen moving along its avenues, for it is the fashionable
promenade of the Roman aristocracy, and from it a fine view over the
city, taking in the dome of Saint Peter’s, may be enjoyed. The military
band discourses excellent music. The occupants of the carriages greet
each other with bows and smiles. Pedestrians loiter and converse. In
this strange old city, including so many strata of memories and so
cosmopolitan in its society, modern gayeties and venerable antiquities
jostle one another. In the midst of the living and festive throng one’s
mind can rove back through history and think of this and that famous
event, significant or tragic and widely separated in time, which have
occurred upon the ground over which he is passing.
POSTSCRIPT
In these brief reviews, which we have now made of the careers of the
five great Cæsars of the New Testament period, we have caught many
impressions of the dark character of that world into which Christ came
and in which His kingdom had to make its first spiritual conquests. It
was an age of vast wealth and power, but these were concentrated in
the hands of a few. Enormous sums were spent on ostentatious displays,
on epicurean feasts, and on sumptuous couches. The great masses of men
were poor and ignorant indeed. Selfish luxury and extravagance mocked
at abject beggary and despair. Multitudes were always on the verge of
starvation. Little children were frequently exposed to die. It was
an age of cynical unbelief as to the great verities of God and the
soul, and at the same time one of trifling and absurd superstition.
Philosophical groping after truth was accompanied by deep sadness.
Dissipation found its penalty in cloyed disgust. Suicide was not only
frequent but approved by some of the great teachers. Cold cruelty was
the minister to unbridled ambition. It was a time of sanguinary combats
in the arena and of widespread slavery. The old Roman virtues of the
stern and faithful type had largely expired. Never was there an age in
which all forms of vice displayed more openly their methods and their
achievements. As men became more polished in artistic culture they
seemed to become more vile in personal conduct. The poet Horace said:
The age of our fathers, worse than that of our grandsires, has
produced us, who are yet baser and who are doomed to give birth to
a still more degraded offspring.
Seneca wrote:
All things are full of iniquity and vice; more crime is committed
than can be remedied by restraint. We struggle in a huge contest
of criminality. Daily the passion for sin is greater. The shame in
committing it is less.
From these quotations, and many others that might be collected, we see
that society in Rome at that time presented a picture at once repellent
and most pathetic. It had developed enormous moral and spiritual needs,
which no human wisdom nor power could satisfy. It was weary and heavy
laden, and was sighing for rest. Yet the day was at hand.
The Light of the World had come.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed. Some names and place-names are spelled differently than in
modern usage.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
“Facing page n” in the illustration captions have been removed, and
some illustrations have been slightly moved.
Reading devices that cannot display some of the characters in this
eBook may substitute question marks or other placeholders.
End of Project Gutenberg's Under Cæsars' Shadow, by Henry Francis Colby