[Footnote 101: "If by eloquence is meant the ability to persuade, then
Tacitus," according to Cruttwell, "is the most eloquent historian that
ever existed." His portraits, especially those of Tiberius and Nero,
have been severely criticized by French and English writers, but while
his verdicts have been shaken, they have not been reversed. The world
still fails to doubt their substantial reality. Tacitus, adds
Cruttwell, has probably exercised upon readers a greater power than
any other writer of prose whom Rome produced.]
[Footnote 102: From Book I of the "Annals." The Oxford translation
revised.]
[Footnote 103: Marcellus was the son of Octavia by her husband C.
Claudius Marcellus. He married Julia, a daughter of Augustus.]
[Footnote 104: Agrippa was the leading administrative mind under
Augustus, with whom he had served in the Civil War and in the battle
Actium. The Pantheon, the only complete building of Imperial Rome that
still survives, was finished and dedicated by him. He married as his
third wife Julia, the widow of Marcellus.]
[Footnote 105: Nola lay sixteen miles northeast of Naples. The
reference is to Drusus, son of Tiberius, and to Germanicus, at that
time commanding on the Rhine.]
[Footnote 106: From Book III of the "Annals." The Oxford translation
revised.]
[Footnote 107: This Agrippina was the daughter of Agrippa and Julia.
She married Germanicus, became the mother of Caligula, and was a woman
of lofty character, who died by voluntary starvation after having been
exiled by Tiberius.]
[Footnote 108: It has been conjectured that the two children of
Germanicus here referred to were Caligula, who had gone to the East
with his father, and Julia, who was born in Lesbos.]
[Footnote 109: These children were Nero, Drusus, Agrippina and
Drusilla.]
[Footnote 110: Not the Emperor of that name, who was not born until
121 A.D.]
[Footnote 111: Mother of Tiberius by a husband whom she had married
before she married Augustus.]
[Footnote 112: Julia, daughter of Julius Caesar by his wife Cornelia.]
[Footnote 113: From Book XV of the "Annals." The Oxford translation
revised.]
[Footnote 114: Caius Piso, lender of an unsuccessful conspiracy
against Nero in 65. Other famous Romans of the name of Piso are
Lucius, censor, consul and author; another Lucius whose daughter was
married to Julius Caesar; and Cneius, governor of Syria, who was
accused of murdering Germanicus.]
[Footnote 115: Poppaea Sabina, who once was the wife of Otho and
mistress of Nero. She was afterward divorced from Otho and married to
Nero in 62 A.D. She died from the effects of a kick given by Nero.]
[Footnote 116: From Book XV at the "Annals." The Oxford translator
revised.]
[Footnote 117: Nero.]
[Footnote 118: Suetonius relates that, when some one repeated to Nero
the line "When I am dead, let fire devour the world," he replied, "Let
it be whilst I am living." That author asserts that Nero's purpose
sprung in part from his dislike of old buildings and narrow streets.
During the progress of the fire several men of consular rank met
Nero's domestic servants with torches and combustibles which they were
using to start fires, but did not dare to stay their hands. Livy
asserts that, after it was destroyed by the Gauls, Rome had been
rebuilt with narrow winding streets.]
[Footnote 119: A city in the central Apennines, six miles from Lake
Fucinus.]
[Footnote 120: Near the Esquiline.]
[Footnote 121: The house, gardens, baths and the Pantheon of Agrippa
are here referred to. Nero's gardens were near the Vatican.]
[Footnote 122: The palace of Numa, on the Palatine hill, had been the
mansion of Augustus.]
[Footnote 123: Carlyle, in his essay on Voltaire, refers to this
passage as having been "inserted as a small, transitory, altogether
trifling circumstance, in the history of such a potentate as Nero";
but it has become "to us the most earnest, sad and sternly significant
passage that we know to exist in writing."]
[Footnote 124: Claudius already had expelled the Jews from Rome and
included in their number the followers of Christ. But his edict was
not specifically directed against the Christians. Nero was the first
emperor who persecuted them as professors of a new faith.]
[Footnote 125: From Book III of the "History." The Oxford translation
revised. Pliny, Josephus and Dio all agree that the Capitol was set on
fire by the followers of Vitellius.]
[Footnote 126: Porsena did not actually get into Rome, being induced
to raise the siege when only at its gates.]
[Footnote 127: The capture of Rome by the Gauls under Brennus took
place in 390 B.C. The destruction of the Capitol in the first Civil
War occurred in 83 B.C., during the consulship of Lucius Scipio and
Caius Norbaius. The fire was not started as an act of open violence,
however, but by clandestine incendiaries.]
[Footnote 128: From Book III of the "History." The Oxford translation
revised. Near Cremona had been fought the first battle of Bedriacum by
the armies of Vitellius and Otho, rivals for the imperial throne, Otho
being defeated. A few months later on the same field the army of
Vitellius was overthrown by Vespasian, who succeeded him as emperor.
Vitellius retired to Cremona, which was then placed under siege by
Vespasian, and altho strongly fortified, captured.]
[Footnote 129: Antonius Primus, the chief commander of Vespasian's
forces.]
[Footnote 130: The modern Brescia.]
[Footnote 131: According to Josephus 30,000 of the Vitellians perished
and 4,500 of the followers of Vespasian.]
[Footnote 132: From the Oxford translation revised.]
[Footnote 133: Caligula, not Caius Julius Caesar, is here referred to,
he also having borne the name of Caius.]
[Footnote 134: Now Marseilles, founded by Phoenicians, who
introduced, there a degree of Greek culture which long made the city
famous.]
[Footnote 135: A brother of the Emperor Otho.]
[Footnote 136: Agricola was Consul in 77 A.D., and had for colleague
Domitian, afterward Emperor.]