NERO CLAUDIUS CÆSAR DRUSUS GERMANICUS: 54-68 A.D.
[Sidenote: [54-59 A.D.]]
Brought up in a corrupt court, in the midst of his mother’s guilty
intrigues, Nero soon saw himself surrounded by flatterers apt at
eulogising all his follies and excusing all his crimes. He did not lack
understanding and knew what was right, but no care was taken to check
his vicious inclinations or his vanity with regard to his musical skill.
Yet for a long time after his death the first five years of his reign
were lauded (quinquennium Neronis) as the happiest of the empire. He did,
in fact, reduce taxation in the provinces, contend against luxury, and
assist poor senators with money, and bid fair to take Augustus as his
model. “Oh, that I had never learned to write!” he said one day when a
death-warrant was given him to sign. Another time when the senate was
addressing thanks to him he said, “Wait till I deserve them.” Seneca and
Burrus tried, and for some time with success, to restrain the stormy
passions of their pupil, but Agrippina’s ambition made them break
violently forth.
This imperious woman thought she was going to reign in her son’s name,
and desired to be present at senatorial deliberations. She was much
chagrined at having to content herself with listening behind a curtain.
One day when Nero was giving audience to some Armenian ambassadors she
advanced to take her place beside him and receive homage. But the prince
went to meet her and prevented what the Romans even then would have
regarded as an affront, the intervention of a woman in public affairs.
Leagued with the freedman Pallas, she hoped that nothing would take place
in the palace without her; but Seneca and Burrus, although her creatures,
were resolved to hinder the domination which had degraded Claudius.
Unfortunately, the two ministers, in spite of the austerity of their
lives and teaching, found no other way to combat her influence than by
fostering the prince’s passions. They allowed a number of young women
and dissolute men to gather round the prince. Among the former Agrippina
soon found a rival in the freedwoman Acte. She then changed her tone
and manner, but caresses were of no more avail than anger; and the two
ministers, in order to show her that her power was gone, disgraced the
freedman Pallas.
Then Agrippina broke out into open threats. She would reveal the whole
truth, take Britannicus to the prætorians, and return to its rightful
occupant the throne she had bestowed on an ungrateful son. Nero
forestalled her. On the first day of his reign he had put to death a
member of the imperial family, Silanus by name; the death of his adopted
brother cost him no more. Britannicus, who was only fourteen years old,
was poisoned at a banquet at Nero’s own table. Agrippina, alarmed by
this precocious cruelty, sought defenders for herself. She sounded the
soldiers, and paid graceful attentions to their leaders. Nero, no longer
keeping within bounds, assigned her a dwelling beyond the palace and
scarcely ever saw her. He even listened to an accusation against her and
forced her to answer questions from Seneca and Burrus. She did so, but
haughtily, and spoke harshly to her son, which did not help her to regain
the authority she had lost.
Having got rid of Agrippina, the two ministers governed for some years
with moderation and justice. Several condemnations taught the provincial
governors that their conduct was observed; several taxes were abolished
or reduced. Nero demanded that they should all be repealed. Unfortunately
love of pleasure now possessed him. Dissolute friends, vulgar _liaisons_,
a fatal taste for the theatre, corrupted him from day to day. Seneca
practised his good maxims too little for them to influence the young
emperor. Rome learned with astonishment that her prince ran about the
streets at night disguised as a slave, entering taverns and beating
belated folk at the risk of striking one stronger than himself. A senator
once returned his blows, and had the imprudence next day to apologise.
Nero, remembering the inviolability belonging to his office of tribune,
had him put to death. In the day he went to the theatre, giving trouble
to the custodians, encouraging applause and hissing, exciting tumult,
and taking pleasure in seeing the sovereign people break the benches
and engage in fights in which he himself joined, throwing missiles at a
venture from his elevated seat.
The virtuous sister of Britannicus could not be a fit wife for this
royal débauché. He carried off Poppæa Sabina from her husband Otho.
Poppæa’s ambition found an obstacle in Octavia, and one even stronger in
Agrippina, who was not distressed by her son’s criminal conduct, but was
much averse from seeing him under any influence but her own.
Irritated by her reproaches, Nero at last went so far as to give orders
for her death. Anicetus, commander of the fleet at Misenum, formed a
plot to assassinate the empress. On the pretext of a reconciliation she
was invited to go to Baiæ, and was put on a vessel so built as to part
asunder when out at sea. Agrippina saved herself by swimming and reached
the neighbouring coast, where she took refuge in her villa at the Lucrine
Lake. Nero caused her to be stabbed, and proclaimed that she had killed
herself after a freedman sent by her had been caught in an attempt to
kill him (59 A.D.). Such was the fate of this woman, a granddaughter of
Augustus, and sister, wife, and mother, to three emperors. But revengeful
furies pursued the parricide in spite of the congratulations which Burrus
was base enough to offer him in the name of the soldiers and the thanks
rendered to the gods in all parts of the city at Seneca’s suggestion.
He sought to stifle his remorse by plunging into gross and insensate
debauchery. His most unworthy follies date from this time. The Romans
blushed to see him driving a chariot in the arena and mounting the stage
to sing and play the lyre. We may imagine he stifled his conscience, but
not that he found rest. In Greece, he dared not enter the Eleusinian
temple of which the herald’s voice bid the impious and parricides
avaunt.[b]
During the last two proconsulates the prefecture of Syria had acquired
its greater extension. On the death of Herod Agrippa in 44, his kingdom
of Judea had been definitively annexed to the empire, and was subjected,
as once before, to an imperial procurator, who, while he derived his
fiscal and civil authority directly from the emperor, and acted in a
manner as his viceroy, was nevertheless placed under the military control
of the proconsul. Under court protection some of the Judean procurators,
especially the infamous Felix, the brother of Pallas, and his partner in
the favour of Claudius, had indulged in every excess, till the spirit
of revolt already roused by the threats of Caligula broke out in fierce
but desultory acts of violence. These indeed had been repressed with the
sternness of Rome, not unmingled with some features of barbarity peculiar
to the East. Nevertheless the government had resented the tyranny of
its own officers, which had caused this dangerous insubordination, and
Quadratus, the proconsul, had himself condemned from his tribunal the
indiscretion of the procurator Cumanus. While, however, the authority of
the Syrian proconsul was thus extended over the region of Palestine in
the south, a portion of his northern dependencies was taken from him, and
erected for a time into a separate prefecture.
CORBULO AND THE EAST
[Sidenote: [54-60 A.D.]]
In the year 54 the brave Domitius Corbulo, recalled from his German
command, was deputed to maintain the majesty of the empire in the face
of the Parthians, and defend Armenia from the intrigues or violence with
which they continued to menace it. The forces of Rome in the East were
now divided between Quadratus and Corbulo. To the proconsul of Syria
were left two legions with their auxiliaries, to the new commander were
assigned the other two, while the frontier tributaries were ordered
to serve in either camp, as the policy of the empire should require.
While such was the distribution of the troops, the territory itself was
divided by the line of the Taurus; Cappadocia, together with Galatia, was
entrusted to Corbulo, and constituted a separate province. Here he raised
the levies he required to replace the lazy veterans who had vitiated
the Syrian legions; and here, having further strengthened himself from
the German camps, this stern reviver of discipline prepared his men,
amidst the rocks and snows, to penetrate the fastnesses of Armenia, and
dislodge the Parthians from the gorges of Ararat and Elburz. Tiridates,
the Parthian pretender to the throne of Armenia, in vain opposed him with
arms and treachery.
The Romans advanced to the walls of Artaxata, which they stormed and
burned, an exploit the glory of which was usurped by Nero himself, the
senate voting supplications in his honour, and consecrating day after
day to the celebration of his victory, till Cassius ventured to demand
a limit to such ruinous profusion. The war however was still prolonged
through a second and a third campaign: the Hyrcanians on the banks of
the Caspian and Aral--so far-reaching was the machinery put in motion
by Corbulo--were encouraged to divert the Parthians from assisting
Tiridates; and communications were held with them by the route of the
Red Sea and the deserts of Baluchistan. At last the Armenian Tigranes,
long retained in custody at Rome, was placed by the proconsul on the
throne of his ancestors. Some portions of his patrimony, however, were
now attached to the sovereignties of Pontus and Cappadocia; a Roman
force was left in garrison at Tigranocerta, to support his precarious
power; and on the death of Quadratus, Corbulo, having achieved the most
brilliant successes in the East of any Roman since Pompey, claimed the
whole province of Syria, and the entire administration of affairs on the
Parthian frontier, as his legitimate reward.
[Sidenote: [60-66 A.D.]]
The union of these vast regions once more under a single ruler, so
contrary, as it would appear, to the emperor’s natural policy, was
extorted perhaps from the fears of Nero, not indeed by actual threats but
by the formidable attitude of his general. An emperor, still a youth,
who had seen no service himself, and had only caught at the shadows of
military renown cast on him by his lieutenants, may have felt misgivings
at the greatness of the real chiefs of his legions. It was from this
jealousy, perhaps, that the career of conquest in Britain was so suddenly
checked after the victory of Suetonius. The position indeed of Corbulo,
the successor of Agrippa and Germanicus, might seem beyond the emperor’s
reach. It could only be balanced by creating similar positions in other
quarters, and the empire was, in fact, at this moment virtually divided
among three or four great commanders, any one of whom was leader of
more numerous forces than could be mustered to oppose him at the seat
of government. Nero was well aware of his danger; but he had not the
courage to insist, on this occasion, on the division of Syria into two
prefectures. He took, as we shall see, a baser precaution, and already
perhaps contemplated the assassination of the lieutenant whom he dared
not control.
It was from Corbulo himself that the proposal came for at least a
temporary division. That gallant general, a man of antique devotion to
military principles, had no views of personal aggrandisement. When the
Parthians, again collecting their forces, made a simultaneous attack on
both Armenia and Syria, Corbulo declared that the double war required the
presence of two chiefs of equal authority. He desired that the province
beyond the Taurus should again be made a separate government. Assuming
in person the defence of the Syrian frontier with three legions, he
transferred Cappadocia and Galatia, with an equal force, to Cæsennius
Pætus, who repaid his generosity by reflecting on the presumed slowness
of his operations. But Pætus was as incapable as he was vain. Having
advanced into Armenia, he was shut up in one of its cities with two
legions, by a superior force, constrained to implore aid from Corbulo,
and at last, when the distance and difficulty of the way precluded the
possibility of succour, to capitulate ignominiously. Vologeses, king
of Parthia, refrained from proceeding to extremities, and treating
the humbled foe as his ancestor had treated Crassus. He pretended to
desire only a fair arrangement of the points in dispute between the
rival empires: and Pætus, having promised that pending this settlement
the legions should be withdrawn from Armenia, was suffered, though not
without grievous indignities, to march out of his captured stronghold,
and retire in haste within the frontiers. Arrived there, Corbulo treated
him with scornful forbearance; but the emperor recalled him from his
post, and the combined forces of the province were once more entrusted to
the only man capable of retrieving the disaster.
Corbulo penetrated into the heart of Armenia by the road which Lucullus
had formerly opened; but the enemy declined to encounter him. Even on the
spot of his ally’s recent triumphs, Tiridates bowed to the demands of the
proconsul, and consented to lay his diadem at the feet of the emperor’s
image, and go to Rome to receive it back from his hand. The claims of the
puppet Tigranes were eventually set aside, and while Tiridates did homage
for his kingdom to Nero, he was suffered to place himself really under
the protection of Vologeses.
THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF BRITAIN
[Sidenote: [61 A.D.]]
The limits of the Roman occupation at the close of the reign of Claudius
were much unsettled. The southern part of the island from the Stour
to the Exe and Severn formed a compact and organised province, from
which only the realm of Cogidubnus, retaining still the character of a
dependent sovereignty, is to be subtracted. Beyond the Stour, again, the
territory of the Iceni constituted another extraneous dependency. The
government of the province was administered from Camulodunum, as its
capital; and the whole country was overawed by the martial attitude of
the Conquering Colony there established. Already, perhaps, the city of
Londinium, though distinguished by no such honourable title, excelled
it as a place of commercial resort. The broad estuary of the Thames,
confronting the waters of the Scheldt and Maas, was favourably placed
for the exchange of British against Gaulish and German products; and
the hill on which the city stood, facing the southern sun and well
adapted for defence, is placed precisely at the spot where first the
river can be crossed conveniently. Swept east and west by the tidal
stream, and traversed north and south by the continuous British roads,
Londinium supplied the whole island with the luxuries of another zone,
just as Massilia had supplied Gaul. Hither led the ways which penetrated
Britain from the ports in the Channel, from Lymne, Richborough, and
Dover. From hence they diverged again to Camulodunum northeast, and to
Verulamium northwest, at the intersection of the chief national lines of
communication.
While the proprætor, who was governor-in-chief of the province,
was occupied on the frontier in military operations, the finances
were administered by a procurator; and whatever extortions he might
countenance, so slight was the apprehension of any formidable resistance
to them that not only the towns, now frequented by thousands of Roman
traders, were left unfortified, but the province itself was suffered to
remain almost entirely denuded of soldiers. The legions now permanently
quartered in Britain were four. Of these the Second, the same which under
the command of Vespasian had recently commanded the southwest, was now
perhaps stationed in the forts on the Severn and Avon, or advanced to
the encampment on the Usk, whence sprang the famous city of Caerleon,
the camp of the Legion. The Ninth was placed in guard over the Iceni,
whose fidelity was not beyond suspicion. We may conjecture that its
headquarters were established as far north as the Wash, where it might
dislocate any combinations these people should attempt to form with their
unsteady neighbours the Brigantes. The Twentieth would be required to
confront the Brigantes also on their western frontier, and to them we may
assign the position on the Deva or Dee, from which the ancient city of
Chester has derived its name, its site, and the foundations, at least,
of its venerable fortifications. There still remained another legion,
the Fourteenth; but neither was this held in reserve in the interior
of the province. The necessities of border warfare required its active
operations among the Welsh mountains, which it penetrated step by step,
and gradually worked its way towards the last asylum of the Druids in
Mona, or Anglesea.
The Gallic priesthood, proscribed in their own country, would naturally
fly for refuge to Britain: proscribed in Britain, wherever the power
of Rome extended, they retreated, inch by inch, and withdrew from the
massive shrines which still attest their influence on the southern
plains, to the sacred recesses of the little island, surrounded by
boiling tides and clothed with impenetrable thickets. In this gloomy
lair, secure apparently, though shorn of might and dignity, they still
persisted in the practice of their unholy superstition. They strove
perhaps, like the trembling priests of Mexico, to appease the gods, who
seemed to avert from them their faces, with more horrid sacrifices than
ever. Here they retained their places of assembly, their schools, and
their oracles; here was the asylum of the fugitives; here was the sacred
grove, the abode of the awful deity, which in the stillest noon of night
or day the priest himself scarce ventured to enter, lest he should rush
unwitting into the presence of its lord.
Didius had been satisfied with retaining the Roman acquisitions, and
had made no attempt to extend them; and his successor, Veranius, had
contented himself with some trifling incursions into the country of
the Silures. The death of Veranius prevented, perhaps, more important
operations. But he had exercised rigorous discipline in the camp, and
Suetonius Paullinus, who next took the command, found the legions well
equipped and well disposed, and the stations connected by military roads
across the whole breadth of the island. The rumours of the city marked
out this man as a rival to the gallant Corbulo, and great successes
were expected from the measures which he would be prompt in adopting.
Leaving the Second legion on the Usk to keep the Silures in check, and
the Twentieth on the Dee to watch the Brigantes, he joined the quarters
of the Fourteenth, now pushed as far as Segontium on the Menai straits.
He prepared a number of rafts or boats for the passage of the infantry;
the stream at low water was perhaps nearly fordable for cavalry, and the
trusty Batavians on his wings were accustomed to swim by the side of
their horses, clinging by the mane or bridle, across the waters, not less
wide and rapid, of their native Rhine. Still the traject must have been
perilous enough, even if unopposed. But now the farther bank was thronged
with the Britons in dense array, while between their ranks the women,
clad in black and with hair dishevelled, rushed about like furies with
flaming torches, and behind them were seen the Druids raising their hands
to heaven, imprecating curses on the daring invaders.
The Romans were so dismayed at the sight that, as they came to land, they
at first stood motionless to be struck down by every assailant. But this
panic lasted only for a moment. Recalled by the cries of their chiefs
to a sense of discipline, of duty, of danger, they closed their ranks,
advanced their standards, struck, broke, and trampled on the foe before
them, and applied his own torches to his machines and wagons. The rout
was complete; the fugitives, flung back by the sea, had no further place
of retreat. The island was seamed with Roman entrenchments, the groves
cut down or burned, and every trace speedily abolished of the foul rites
by which Hesus had been propitiated or the wall of Taranis consulted.
From this moment the Druids disappear from the page of history; they
were exterminated, we may believe, upon their own altars; for Suetonius
took no half measures. But whatever were his further designs for the
final pacification of the province, they were interrupted by the sudden
outbreak of a revolt in his rear. The Iceni, as has been said, had
submitted, after their great overthrow, to the yoke of the invaders:
their king, Prasutagus, had been allowed indeed to retain his nominal
sovereignty; but he was placed under the control of Roman officials;
his people were required to contribute to the Roman treasury: their
communities were incited to a profuse expenditure to which their
resources were unequal; while the exactions imposed on them were so heavy
that they were compelled to borrow largely, and entangle themselves in
the meshes of the Roman money lenders. The great capitalists of the
city, wealthy courtiers, and prosperous freedmen, advanced the sums
they called for at exorbitant interest; from year to year they found
themselves less able to meet their obligations, and mortgaged property
and person to their unrelenting creditors. Among the immediate causes
of the insurrection which followed, is mentioned the sudden calling in
by Seneca, the richest of philosophers, of the large investments he had
made, which he seemed in danger of losing altogether.
But the oppression of the Romans was not confined to these transactions.
Prasutagus, in the hope of propitiating the provincial government to
his family, had bequeathed his dominions to the republic. He expected
perhaps that his wife and his children, who were also females, if not
allowed to exercise even a nominal sovereignty after him, would at least
be treated in consequence with the respect due to their rank, and secured
in the enjoyment of ample means and consideration. This was the fairest
lot that remained to the families of the dependent chieftains, and the
Romans had not often grudged it them. But an insolent official, placed in
charge of these new acquisitions after the death of Prasutagus, forgot
in their instance what was due to the birth and even the sex of the
wretched princesses. He suspected them perhaps of secreting a portion
of their patrimony, and did not scruple to employ stripes to recover it
from the mother, while he surrendered her tender children to even worse
indignities.
_The War with Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni_
Boadicea, the widowed queen of the Iceni, was a woman of masculine
spirit. Far from succumbing under the cruelty of her tyrants and hiding
the shame of her family, she went forth into the public places, exhibited
the scars of her wounds and the fainting forms of her abused daughters,
and adjured her people to take a desperate revenge. The Iceni were stung
to frenzy at their sovereign’s wrongs, at their own humiliation. The
danger, the madness, of the attempt was considered by none for a moment.
They rose as one man; there was no power at hand to control them; the
Roman officials fled, or, if arrested, were slaughtered; and a vast
multitude, armed and unarmed, rolled southward to overwhelm and extirpate
the intruders. To the Colne, to the Thames, to the sea, the country lay
entirely open. The legions were all removed to a distance, the towns were
unenclosed, the Roman traders settled in them were untrained to arms.
Even the Claudian colony was undefended. The procurator, Catus Decianus,
was at the moment absent, and being pressed for succour, could send
no more than two hundred soldiers for its protection. Little reliance
could be placed on the strength of a few worn-out veterans: the natives,
however specious their assurances, were not unjustly distrusted, for
they too, like the Iceni, had suffered their share of insolence and
ill-treatment. The great temple of Claudius was a standing monument of
their humiliation; for its foundation their estates had been confiscated,
for its support their tribute was required, and they regarded the native
chiefs who had been enrolled in its service as victims or traitors.
Whatever alarm they might feel at the indiscriminate fury of the hordes
descending upon them, they smiled grimly at the panic which more justly
seized the Romans. The guilty objects of national vengeance discovered
the direst prodigies in every event around them. The wailings of their
women, the neighing of their horses, were interpreted as evil omens.
Their theatre was said to have resounded with uncouth noises; the
buildings of the colony had been seen inversely reflected in the waters
of their estuary; and on the ebbing of the tide ghastly remains of human
bodies had been discovered in the ooze. Above all, the statue of Victory,
erected to face the enemies of the republic, had turned its back to the
advancing barbarians and fallen prostrate before them. When the colonists
proposed to throw up hasty entrenchments they were dissuaded from the
work, or impeded in it by the natives, who persisted in declaring that
they had no cause for fear; it was not till the Iceni were actually in
sight, and the treachery of the Trinobantes no longer doubtful, that
they retreated tumultuously within the precincts of the temple, and
strengthened its slender defences to support a sudden attack till succour
could arrive. But the impetuosity of the assault overcame all resistance.
The stronghold was stormed on the second day, and all who had sought
refuge in it, armed and unarmed, given up to slaughter.
Meanwhile the report of this fearful movement had travelled far and wide
through the country. It reached Petilius Cerealis, the commander of the
Ninth legion, which we suppose to have been stationed near the Wash, and
he broke up promptly from his camp to hang on the rear of the insurgents.
It reached the Twentieth legion at Deva, which awaited the orders of
Suetonius himself, as soon as he should learn on the banks of the Menai
the perils in which the province was involved. The proprætor withdrew
the Fourteenth legion from the smoking groves of Mona, and urged it with
redoubled speed along the highway of Watling street, picking out the best
troops from the Twentieth as he rushed by, and summoning the Second from
Isca to join him in the south. But Pænius Postumus, who commanded this
latter division, neglected to obey his orders, and crouched in terror
behind his fortifications. The Iceni turned boldly upon Cerealis, who was
hanging close upon their heels, and routed his wearied battalions with
great slaughter. The infantry of the Ninth legion was cut to pieces, and
the cavalry alone escaped within their entrenchments. But the barbarians
had not skill nor patience to conduct the siege of a Roman camp. They
left the squadron of Cerealis unmolested, nor did they attempt to force
the scattered posts of the Romans around them. After giving Camulodunum
to the flames, they dispersed throughout the country, plundering and
destroying.
Suetonius, unappalled by the frightful accounts which thronged upon him,
held on his course steadfastly with his single legion, broke through the
scattered bands of the enemy, and reached Londinium without a check. This
place was crowded with Roman residents, crowded still more at this moment
with fugitives from the country towns and villas: but it was undefended
by walls, its population of traders was untrained to arms, and Suetonius
sternly determined to leave it, with all the wealth of the province which
it harboured, to the barbarians, rather than sacrifice his soldiers in a
vain attempt to save it. The policy of the Roman commander was to secure
his communications with Gaul: but he was resolved not to abandon the
country, nor surrender the detachments hemmed in at various points by the
general rising of the Britons.
The precise direction of his movements we can only conjecture. Had
he retired to the southern bank of the Thames, he would probably
have defended the passage of that river; or had the Britons crossed
it unresisted, the historians would not have failed to signalise so
important a success. But the situation of Camulodunum, enclosed in its
old British lines, and backed by the sea, would offer him a secure
retreat where he might defy attack and await reinforcements; and the
insurgents, after their recent triumphs, had abandoned their first
conquests to wreak their fury upon other seats of Roman civilisation.
While, therefore, the Iceni sacked and burned first Verulamium, and next
Londinium, Suetonius probably made a flank march towards Camulodunum, and
kept ahead of their pursuit, till he could choose his own position to
await their attack. In a valley between undulating hills, with woods in
the rear and the ramparts of the British oppidum not far perhaps on his
right flank, he had every advantage for marshalling his slender forces;
and these were increased in number more than in strength by the fugitives
capable of bearing arms, whom he had allowed to cling to his fortunes.
Ten thousand resolute men drew their swords for the Roman Empire in
Britain. The natives, many times their number, spread far and wide over
the open plain before them; but the narrow front of the Romans could be
assailed by only few battalions at once, and the wagons, which conveyed
their accumulated booty and bore their wives and children, thronged the
rear and cut off almost the possibility of retreat.
But flushed with victory, impatient for the slaughter, animated with
desperate resolution to die or conquer, the Britons cast no look or
thought behind them. Boadicea herself drove from rank to rank, from
nation to nation, with her daughters beside her, attesting the outrage
she had endured, the vengeance she had already taken, proclaiming the
gallant deeds of the queens before her, under whom British warriors
had so often triumphed, denouncing as intolerable the yoke of Roman
insolence, and declaring that whatever the men might determine, the women
would now be free or perish. The harangue of Suetonius, on the other
hand, was blunt and sarcastic. He told his men not to mind the multitudes
before them, nor the noise they made; there were more women among them
than men; as for their own numbers, let them remember that in all battles
a few good swordsmen really did the work; the half-armed and dastard
crowds before them would break and fly when they saw again the prowess of
the Roman primipiles.
Thus encouraged, the legionaries could with difficulty be restrained
to await the onset; and as soon as the assailants had exhausted their
missiles, bore down upon them in the wedge-shaped column which had so
often broken Greeks, Gauls, and Carthaginians. The auxiliaries followed
with no less impetuosity. The horsemen, lance in hand, pierced through
the ranks which still kept their ground. But a single charge was enough.
The Britons were in a moment shattered and routed. In another moment,
the Romans had reached the long circumvallation of wagons, among which
the fugitives were scrambling in dismay, slew the cattle and the women
without remorse, and traced with a line of corpses and carcasses the
limits of the British position. We may believe that the massacre was
enormous. The Romans declared that eighty thousand of their enemies
perished, while of their own force they lost only four hundred slain,
and about as many wounded. Boadicea put an end to her life by poison; we
could have wished to hear that the brave barbarian had fallen on a Roman
pike. Suetonius had won the greatest victory of the imperial history;
to complete his triumph, the coward, Postumus, who had shrunk from his
assistance, threw himself, in shame and mortification, on his own sword.
By this utter defeat the British insurrection was paralysed. Throughout
the remainder of the season the Romans kept the field; they received
reinforcements from the German camps, and their scattered cohorts were
gradually brought together in a force which overawed all resistance. The
revolted districts were chastised with fire and sword, and the systematic
devastation inflicted upon them, suffering as they already were from
the neglect of tillage during the brief intoxication of their success,
produced a famine which swept off the seeds of future insurrections. On
both sides a fearful amount of destruction had been committed. Amidst
the overthrow of the great cities of southern Britain, not less than
seventy thousand Roman colonists had perished. The work of twenty years
was in a moment undone. Far and wide every vestige of Roman civilisation
was trodden into the soil. At this day the workmen who dig through the
foundations of the Norman and the Saxon London, strike beneath them upon
the traces of a double Roman city, between which lies a mass of charred
and broken rubbish, attesting the conflagration of the terrible Boadicea.
_Britain again a Peaceful Province_
The temper of Suetonius, as may be supposed from what has been already
recorded of him, was stern and unbending, even beyond the ordinary type
of his nation. No other officer, perhaps, in the Roman armies could have
so turned disaster into victory, and recovered a province at a blow;
but it was not in his character to soothe the conquered, to conciliate
angry passions, to restore the charm of moral superiority. Classicianus,
who succeeded Catus as procurator, complained of him to the emperor, as
wishing to protract hostilities against the exasperated Britons, when
every end might be obtained by conciliation.
A freedman of the court, named Polycletus, was sent on the delicate
mission, to judge between the civil and the military chief, and to take
the measures most fitting for securing peace and obedience. Polycletus
brought with him a large force from Italy and Gaul, and was no less
surprised perhaps than the legions he commanded, to see himself at the
head of a Roman army. Even the barbarians, we are told, derided the
victorious warriors who bowed in submission to the orders of a bondman.
But Polycletus could make himself obeyed at least, if not respected.
The loss of a few vessels on the coast furnished him with a pretext for
removing Suetonius from his command, and transferring it to a consular,
Petronius Turpilianus, whose temper and policy inclined equally to peace.
From the lenity of this proprætor the happiest consequences evidently
ensued. The southern Britons acquiesced in the dominion of Rome, while
the northern were awed into deference to her superior influence. Her
manners, her arts, her commerce, penetrated far into regions yet
unconquered by the sword. Her establishments at Londinium, Verulamium,
and Camulodunum rose again from their ashes. Never was the peaceful
enterprise of her citizens more vigorous and elastic than at this period.
The luxuries of Italy and the provinces, rapidly increasing, required the
extension to the utmost of all her resources. Manufactures and commerce
were pushed forward with unexampled activity.
The products of Britain, rude as they were, consisting of raw materials
chiefly, were demanded with an insatiable appetite by the cities of Gaul
and Germany, and exchanged for arts and letters, which at least decked
her servitude with silken fetters. The best of the Roman commanders,--and
there were some, we may believe, among them both thoughtful and
humane,--while they acknowledged they had no right to conquer, yet
believed that their conquests were a blessing. The best of the native
chiefs--and some too of them may have wished for the real happiness of
their countrymen,--acknowledged, perhaps, that while freedom is the
noblest instrument of virtue, it only degrades the vicious to the lowest
depths of barbarism.[e]
BURRUS AND SENECA
[Sidenote: [59-62 A.D.]]
In Rome meanwhile the public evils grew daily more oppressive, and the
means of redress were decreasing. It was now that Burrus died (62 A.D.),
whether by poison or disease is uncertain; that it was disease was
inferred from the fact that, his throat gradually swelling internally
and the passage being closed up, he ceased to breathe. Many asserted
that, by the order of Nero, under colour of applying a remedy, his palate
was anointed with a poisonous drug, and that Burrus, having discovered
the treachery, when the prince came to visit him, turned his face and
eyes another way, and to his repeated inquiries about his health, made
no other answer than this: “I am well.” At Rome the sense of his loss
was deep and lasting, as well from the memory of his virtue as from
the spiritless simplicity of one of his successors, and the flaming
enormities and adulteries of the other. For Nero had created two captains
of the prætorian guards--namely, Fenius Rufus for his popularity, in
consequence of his administration of the public stores without deriving
any profit from it; and Sophonius Tigellinus, purely from partiality to
the inveterate lewdness and infamy of the man; and their influence was
according to their known manner of life. Tigellinus held greater sway
over the mind of Nero, and was admitted to share in his most secret
debaucheries; Rufus flourished in the good opinion of the people and
soldiery, which he found a denial to him with the emperor.
[Illustration: NERO
(From a bust in the Louvre Museum)]
The death of Burrus made an inroad upon the influence of Seneca; as good
counsels had no longer the same force now that one of the champions
of virtue was removed; and Nero naturally inclined to follow the more
depraved, who assailed Seneca with various imputations: that he had
already accumulated enormous wealth, far surpassing the measure of a
citizen, and was still increasing it; that he was alienating from the
emperor and diverting to himself the affections of the citizens; that
he sought to outdo the prince in the elegance of his gardens and the
splendour of his villas. They laid to his charge also that he claimed
a monopoly in the glory of eloquence; and that after Nero conceived
a passion for versifying, he had employed himself in it with unusual
assiduity; for, to the recreations of the prince he was an open
enemy--disparaged his vigour in the managing of horses, ridiculed his
vocal powers whenever he sang; with what view did he endeavour to effect
that in the whole republic nothing should go down which was not the
product of his ingenuity? Surely Nero was past weakness of childhood, and
arrived at the prime of youth; he ought now to discard his pedagogue,
furnished as he was with instructors the most accomplished, even his own
ancestors.
Seneca was not unapprised of the efforts of his calumniators, as they
were disclosed to him by such as retained some concern for the interests
of virtue; and as the emperor manifested daily more shyness towards him,
he besought an opportunity of speaking to him, and having obtained it,
thus began: “This is the fourteenth year, Cæsar, since I was summoned to
train you for your high destiny; and the eighth since your advancement to
the empire. During the intervening period, you have showered such honours
and riches upon me, that nothing is wanting to complete my felicity but
the capacity to use them with moderation. I shall quote great examples,
such as are adapted, not to my station and fortune, but to yours.
Augustus, from whom you are the fourth in descent, granted to Marcus
Agrippa leave to retreat to Mytilene, and to Caius Mæcenas he allowed,
even in Rome itself, a retirement as complete as in any foreign country;
the former his companion in the wars, the other long harassed at Rome
with manifold occupations and public cares; both received rewards ample
indeed, but proportioned to their services. For myself, what other claims
upon your munificence have I been able to advance, except my literary
attainments, nursed, so to speak, in the shades of retirement, and which
have been rendered famous, because I am believed to have assisted your
early years in the acquisition of learning; a glorious reward for such
a service! But you encompassed me with boundless favours, unnumbered
riches; so that when I ruminate upon my situation, as I often do, I
say to myself, Can it be that I, the son of a knight, the native of a
province, am ranked among the chief men of Rome? Has my upstart name
acquired splendour among the nobles of the land, and men who glory in a
long line of honoured ancestors? Where then is that philosophic spirit
which professed to be satisfied with scanty supplies? Is it employed in
adorning such gardens as these, in pacing majestically through these
suburban retreats? Does it abound in estates so extensive as these, and
in such immense sums put out at interest? One plea only occurs to my
thoughts; that it becomes not me to oppose your bounties.
“But both of us have now filled up our measure; you, of all that the
bounty of a prince could confer upon his friend; I, of all that a friend
could accept from the bounty of his prince. Every addition can only
furnish fresh materials for envy, which, indeed, like all other earthly
things, lies prostrate beneath your towering greatness, but weighs
heavily on me; I require assistance. Thus, in the same manner as, were I
weary and faint with the toils of warfare or a journey, I should implore
indulgence, so in this journey of life, old as I am, and unequal even to
the lightest cares, since I am unable longer to sustain the weight of
my own riches, I seek protection. Order your own stewards to undertake
the direction of my fortune, and to annex it to your own; nor shall I by
this plunge myself into poverty; but having surrendered those things by
whose splendour I am exposed to the assaults of envy, all the time which
is set apart for the care of gardens and villas I shall apply once more
to the cultivation of my mind. To you vigour remains more than enough,
and the possession of imperial power established during so many years.
We, your friends, who are more advanced in years, may take our turn of
repose. This, too, will redound to your glory, that you had elevated to
the highest posts those who could put up with a humble condition.”
To this speech, Nero replied much in this manner: “That I am able thus
on the moment to combat your studied reasonings, is the first benefit
which I acknowledge to have derived from you, who have taught me not
only to speak on subjects previously considered, but also to deliver my
sentiments extemporaneously. It is true, my direct ancestor Augustus
allowed Agrippa and Mæcenas to pass their time in retirement after their
toils, but at that period of life when his authority protected him,
whatever was the extent or nature of the concession he made to them; but
nevertheless he divested neither of them of the rewards he had conferred
upon them. They had earned them in war and civil perils; for in these
the earlier days of Augustus were occupied; nor would your sword or
your hands have been wanting had I been engaged in military affairs.
But what my existing circumstances required you rendered; you nursed my
childhood and directed my youth by your moral lessons, your counsel,
and your precepts; and the favours you have bestowed on me, will never
perish while life remains. Those you have received from me, your gardens,
capital, and country seats, are liable to the accidents of fortune; and
though they may appear of great extent, yet many men, by no means equal
to you in accomplishments, have enjoyed more. I am ashamed to instance
freedmen, who in point of riches cut a greater figure than you; and when
I consider this, I see occasion to blush that a man who holds the highest
place in my esteem, does not as yet transcend all others in the gifts of
fortune.
“But while you have attained maturity of years, and have yet vigour
enough for business and the enjoyment of the fruits of your toils, I am
only performing the early stages of the imperial career; unless perhaps
you deem less of yourself than Vitellius, who was thrice consul; and
think that I should fall short of Claudius. But my liberality is unable
to make up to you a fortune equal to that which Volusius amassed during
years of parsimony. If in any respect I deviate from the right path,
owing to the proneness to error natural to youth, you should rather
recall my wandering steps, and guide that strength which you have
adorned, by more intense efforts to assist me. It is not your moderation,
if you give back your wealth, nor your retirement, if you forsake
your prince, on which the tongues of all men will be employed; but my
rapaciousness, and the dread of my cruelty. But suppose your self-command
should form the great theme of public applause; still it will reflect
no honour upon the character of a wise man, to reap a harvest of
glory to himself from a proceeding by which he brings infamy upon his
friend.” To these words he added kisses and embraces; framed as he was
by nature, and trained by habit, to veil his rancour under the guise of
hollow compliments. Seneca presented his thanks; the universal close of
conferences with a sovereign; he changed, however, the methods of his
former state of power, put a stop to the conflux of visitors, avoided
a train of attendants, and seldom appeared in the streets of the city;
pretending that his health was in an unfavourable state, or that he was
detained at home by philosophical pursuits.
OCTAVIA PUT TO DEATH
[Sidenote: [62-64 A.D.]]
Nero, having received the decree of the senate, and perceiving that all
his villainies passed for acts of exemplary merit, rudely repudiated
his wife, Octavia, alleging “that she was barren,” and then espoused
Poppæa. This woman, who had been long the concubine of Nero, and, as her
adulterer and her husband, exercising absolute sway over him, suborned
one of Octavia’s domestics to accuse her of an amour with a slave.
Eucerus, a native of Alexandria, a skilful flute-player, was marked out
as the object of the charge; her maids were examined upon the rack, and
though some of them, overcome by the intensity of the torture, made
false admissions, the major part persisted in vindicating the purity of
their mistress. She was however put away in the first instance under the
specious formality of a legal divorce, and the house of Burrus, with the
estate of Plautus, ill-omened gift, were assigned to her; soon after she
was banished into Campania, and a guard of soldiers placed over her. This
led to frequent and undisguised complaints among the populace, who are
comparatively unrestrained by prudential motives, and from the mediocrity
of their circumstances are exposed to fewer dangers. They had an effect
upon Nero, who in consequence recalled Octavia from banishment, but
without the slightest misgiving at his atrocious villainy.
Forthwith the people went up to the Capitol in transport, and at length
poured forth unfeigned thanks to the gods. They threw down the statues
of Poppæa, carried those of Octavia upon their shoulders, wreathed them
with garlands, and placed them on the Forum and the temples. They even
went to offer the tribute of their applause to the prince; the prince was
made the object of their grateful adoration. And now they were filling
the palace with their crowd and clamour, when parties of soldiers were
sent out, who by beating them and threatening them with the sword,
terrified and dispersed them. Whatever was overthrown during the tumult
was restored, and the tokens of honour to Poppæa replaced. This woman,
ever prone to atrocities from the impulse of hatred, and now stimulated
by her fears also, lest either a more violent outbreak of popular
violence should take place, or Nero should succumb to the inclination
of the people, threw herself at his knees, and said therewith, “her
circumstances were not in that state that she should contend about her
marriage with him, though that object was dearer to her than life; but
her very life was placed in imminent jeopardy by the dependents and
slaves of Octavia, who calling themselves the people of Rome, had dared
to commit acts in time of peace which were seldom produced by war. But
those arms were taken up against the prince; they only wanted a leader,
and a civil commotion once excited, they would soon find one. Octavia
has only to leave Campania and come into the city; when at her nod, in
her absence, such tumults were raised. But if this were not the object,
what crime had she committed? Whom had she offended? Was it because
she was about to give a genuine offspring to the family of the Cæsars,
that the Roman people chose that the spawn of an Egyptian flute-player
should be palmed upon the imperial eminence? To sum up all, if that
step was essential to the public weal, he should call home his mistress
voluntarily rather than by compulsion, or consult his safety by a
righteous retribution. The first commotion had subsided under moderate
applications, but if they should despair of Octavia’s being the wife of
Nero, they would give her another husband.”
This artfully compound speech, adapted to excite fear and rage, at once
produced the desired effect, and terrified while it inflamed the imperial
hearer; but a suspicion resting only on the evidence of a slave, and
neutralised by the asseverations of the tortured maids, was not strong
enough for this purpose. It was therefore resolved that some person
should be found who would confess the guilty commerce, and who might also
be plausibly charged with the crime of rebellion. Anicetus was judged
a fitting instrument for this purpose; the same who had accomplished
the murder of his mother, and, as I have related, commanded the fleet
at Misenum; whom the emperor, after that horrid service, held in light
esteem, but afterwards in extraordinary detestation; for the ministers of
nefarious deeds seem in the eyes of their employers as living reproaches
of their iniquity. Him therefore Nero summoned; and told him that he
alone had saved the life of the prince from the dark devices of his
mother; an opportunity for a service of no less magnitude now presented
itself by relieving him from a wife who was his mortal enemy, nor was
there need of force or arms; he had only to admit adultery with Octavia.
He promised rewards, which he said must indeed be kept a secret for
the present, but of great value, and also a delightful retreat; but
threatened him with death, if he declined the task. Anicetus, from an
inherent perversity of principle, and a facility in crime produced by the
horrible transactions in which he had been already engaged, even exceeded
his orders in lying, and made confession of the adultery to the friends
of the prince, whom he had summoned as a council. He was then banished to
Sardinia, where he lived in exile, but not in poverty, and where he died
a natural death.
Now Nero in an edict stated that Octavia, in hopes of engaging the fleet
in her conspiracy, had corrupted Anicetus the admiral. And forgetting
that he had just before accused her of barrenness, he added, that in
guilty consciousness of her lust, she had produced abortion, and that
all these were clearly proved to him. And he confined her in the island
Pandataria. Never was there any exile who touched the hearts of the
beholders with deeper compassion; some there were who still remembered
to have seen Agrippina banished by Tiberius; the more recent sufferings
of Julia were likewise recalled to mind, confined there by Claudius:
but they had experienced some happiness, and the recollection of their
former splendour proved some alleviation of their present horrors. To
Octavia, in the first place, the day of her nuptials was in place of a
funeral day, being brought under a roof where she encountered nothing
but memorials of woe; her father cut off by poison, and soon afterwards
her brother; then a handmaid more influential than her mistress; Poppæa
wedded to her husband, only to bring destruction on his lawful wife--and
lastly, a crime laid to her charge more intolerable than death in any
shape.
And this young lady, in her twentieth year, thrown among centurions
and common soldiers, and already bereft of life under the presage of
impending woes, did not, however, as yet enjoy the repose of death. After
an interval of a few days she was ordered to die, when she protested,“she
was now a widow, and only the emperor’s sister”; appealed to the
Germanici, the common relatives of Nero and herself; and lastly invoked
the name of Agrippina, observing, “that had she lived, her marriage-state
would have been made wretched, but she would not have been doomed to
destruction.” She was then tied fast with bonds, and her veins opened
in every joint; and her death was accelerated by the vapour of a bath,
heated to the highest point. A deed of still more atrocious brutality
was added; her head was cut off and conveyed to the city for Poppæa to
see it. Offerings at the temples were decreed by the fathers on account
of these events; a circumstance which I have recorded in order that that
all those who shall read the calamities of those times, as they are
delivered by me or any other authors, may conclude by anticipation, that
as often as a banishment or a murder was perpetrated by the prince’s
orders, so often thanks were rendered to the gods; and those acts which
in former times were resorted to to distinguish prosperous occurrences,
were now made the tokens of public disasters. Still I will not suppress
the mention of any decree of the senate which is marked by unheard-of
adulation, or the extremity of abject servility.
Nero himself, to make it believed that he enjoyed himself nowhere so
much as at Rome, caused banquets to be prepared in the public places,
and used the whole city as his house. Remarkable above all others for
the display of luxury and the noise it made in the world was the feast
given by Tigellinus, which, (says Suetonius), I will describe by way
of specimen, that I may not have to repeat the instances of similar
prodigality. For this purpose, he built, in the lake of Agrippa, a raft
which supported the banquet, which was drawn to and fro by other vessels,
the vessels were striped with gold and ivory, and rowed by bands of
pathics, who were ranged according to their age, and accomplishments
in the science of debauchery. He had procured fowl and venison from
remote regions, with sea-fish even from the ocean; upon the margin of
the lake were erected brothels, filled with ladies of distinction;
over against them naked harlots were exposed to view; now, were beheld
obscene gestures and motions; and as soon as darkness came on, all the
neighbouring groves and circumjacent dwellings resounded with music, and
glared with lights. Nero wallowed in all sorts of defilements, lawful
and unlawful, and seemed to leave no atrocity which could add to his
pollution, till a few days afterwards he married, as a woman, one of this
contaminated herd, named Pythagoras, with all the solemnities of wedlock.
The Roman emperor put on the nuptial veil; the augurs, the portion, the
bridal bed, the nuptial torches, were all seen; in fine, everything
exposed to view which, even in a female, is covered by the night.
THE GREAT FIRE AT ROME; PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS
[Illustration: A CENTURION OFFICER]
[Sidenote: [64 A.D.]]
There followed a dreadful disaster; whether fortuitously, or by the
wicked contrivance of the prince, is not determined, for both are
asserted by historians; but of all the calamities which ever befell
this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible and severe.
It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous to mounts
Palatine and Cælius; where, by reason of shops in which were kept such
goods as minister aliment to fire, the moment it commenced it acquired
strength, and being accelerated by the wind, it spread at once through
the whole extent of the Circus; for neither were the houses secured by
enclosures, nor the temples environed with walls, nor was there any other
obstacle to intercept its progress; but the flame, spreading every way
impetuously, invaded first the lower regions of the city, then mounted
to the higher; then again ravaging the lower, it baffled every effort to
extinguish it, by the rapidity of its destructive course, and from the
liability of the city to conflagration, in consequence of the narrow and
intricate alleys, and the irregularity of the streets in ancient Rome.
Add to this, the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of
the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide
for themselves, and those who laboured to assist others; these dragging
the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering;
altogether created a scene of universal confusion and embarrassment. And
while they looked back upon the danger in their rear, they often found
themselves beset before, and on their sides; or if they escaped into
the quarters adjoining, these too were already seized by the devouring
flames; even the parts which they believed remote and exempt, were found
to be in the same distress. At last, not knowing what to shun, or where
to seek sanctuary, they crowded the streets, and lay along in the open
fields. Some, from the loss of their whole substance, even the means of
their daily sustenance, others, from affection for their relatives, whom
they had not been able to snatch from the flames, suffered themselves to
perish in them, though they had opportunity to escape. Neither dared any
man offer to check the fire; so repeated were the menaces of many who
forbade to extinguish it; and because others openly threw firebrands,
with loud declarations that “they had one who authorised them”; whether
they did it that they might plunder with the less restraint, or in
consequence of orders given.
Nero, who was at that juncture sojourning at Antium, did not return
to the city till the fire approached that quarter of his house which
connected the palace with the gardens of Mæcenas; nor could it, however,
be prevented from devouring the house and palace, and everything
around. But for the relief of the people, thus destitute, and driven
from their dwellings, he opened the Field of Mars and the monumental
edifices erected by Agrippa, and even his own gardens. He likewise reared
temporary houses for the reception of the forlorn multitude, and from
Ostia and the neighbouring cities, were brought up the river household
necessaries; and the price of grain was reduced to three sesterces the
measure. All which proceedings, though of a popular character, were
thrown away, because a rumour had become universally current, that “at
the very time when the city was in flames, Nero, going on the stage of
his private theatre, sang, ‘The Destruction of Troy,’ assimilating the
present disaster to that catastrophe of ancient times.”
At length, on the sixth day, the conflagration was stayed at the foot of
Esquiline, by pulling down an immense quantity of buildings, so that an
open space, and, as it were, void air, might check the raging element by
breaking the continuity. But ere the consternation had subsided, the fire
broke out afresh, with no little violence, but in regions more spacious,
and therefore with less destruction of human life; but more extensive
havoc was made of the temples, and the porticoes dedicated to amusement.
This conflagration, too, was the subject of more censorious remark, as
it arose in the Æmilian possessions of Tigellinus; and Nero seemed to
aim at the glory of building a new city, and calling it by his own name;
for, of the fourteen sections into which Rome is divided, four were still
standing entire, three were levelled with the ground, and in the seven
others there remained only here and there a few remnants of houses,
shattered and half consumed.
Nero appropriated to his own purposes the ruins of his city, and founded
upon them a palace [the “Golden House”] in which the old-fashioned,
and, in those luxurious times, common ornaments of gold and precious
stones, were not so much the objects of attraction as lands and lakes;
in one part, woods like vast preserves; in another part, open spaces and
expansive prospects. The projectors and superintendents of this plan
were Severus and Celer, men of such ingenuity and daring enterprise
as to attempt to conquer by art the obstacles of nature, and fool
away the treasures of the prince; they had even undertaken to sink a
navigable canal from the lake Avernus to the mouth of the Tiber, over
an arid shore, or through opposing mountains: nor indeed does there
occur anything of a humid nature for supplying water, except the Pontine
marshes; the rest is either craggy rock or a parched soil; and had it
even been possible to break through these obstructions, the toil had
been intolerable, and disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who
longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might
to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus: and to this day there
remain traces of his abortive project.
But the rest of the old site not occupied by his palace was laid out,
not as after the Gallic fire, without discrimination and regularity, but
with the lines of streets measured out, broad spaces left for transit,
the height of the buildings limited, open areas left, and porticoes
added to protect the front of the clustered dwellings. These porticoes
Nero engaged to rear at his own expense, and then to deliver to each
proprietor the areas about them cleared. He moreover proposed rewards
proportioned to every man’s rank and private substance, and fixed a day
within which, if their houses, single or clustered, were finished, they
should receive them. He appointed the marshes of Ostia for a receptacle
of the rubbish, and that the vessels which had conveyed grain up the
Tiber should return laden with rubbish; that the buildings themselves
should be raised to a certain portion of their height without beams,
and arched with stone from the quarries of Gabii or Alba, that stone
being proof against fire; that over the water springs, which had been
improperly intercepted by private individuals, overseers should be
placed, to provide for their flowing in greater abundance, and in a
greater number of places, for the supply of the public; that every
housekeeper should have in his yard means for extinguishing fire;
neither should there be party walls, but every house should be enclosed
by its own walls. These regulations, which were favourably received, in
consideration of their utility, were also a source of beauty to the new
city; yet some there were who believed that the ancient form was more
conducive to health, as from the narrowness of the streets, and the
height of the buildings the rays of the sun were more excluded; whereas
now, the spacious breadth of the streets, without any shade to protect
it, was more intensely heated in warm weather.
Such were the provisions made by human counsels. The gods were next
addressed with expiations; and recourse had to the Sibyl’s books. By
admonition from them, to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine supplicatory
sacrifices were made, and Juno was propitiated by the matrons, first in
the Capitol, then upon the nearest shore, where, by water drawn from
the sea, the temple and image of the goddess were besprinkled; and the
ceremony of placing the goddess in her sacred chair, and her vigil,
were celebrated by ladies who had husbands. But not all the relief that
could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow,
nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed
to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the
conflagration. Hence, to suppress the rumour, he falsely charged with the
guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the Christians, who
were hated for their enormities. Accordingly, first those were seized
who confessed they were Christians; next, on their information, a vast
multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city,
as of hating the human race. And in their deaths they were also made
the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild
beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire
to, and when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero
offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian
game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit
of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. Whence a feeling of
compassion arose towards the sufferers, because they seemed not to be cut
off for the public good, but victims to the ferocity of one man.[c]
In order to compensate for his prodigality in games and spectacles; to
cover the expense of his purposeless edifices, above all, of his golden
house; of his festivals, one of which cost four million sesterces for
perfume alone; his extravagance in furniture and in clothes, of which he
wore new ones each day, his distributions of bread, meat, game, clothes,
money, and even precious stones, among the populace in return for their
applause for his verses and singing; finally, I say, to compensate for
all this wild expenditure, he multiplied proscriptions and sentences
which carried with them the confiscation of property. Even office became
a source of revenue, for he only bestowed it on condition that he should
have a share in the profits. The provinces were thus again pillaged. It
was not for this they had so loudly saluted the establishment of the
empire, and they came within a measurable distance of its dissolution in
the last years of this reign.[b]
CONSPIRACY MET BY CRUELTY AND PERSECUTION
[Sidenote: [65 A.D.]]
Men, however, were grown weary of being the objects of the tyrannic
caprice of a profligate youth; and a widely extended conspiracy to remove
him and give the supreme power to C. Piso, a nobleman of many popular
qualities, was organised (65). Men of all ranks, civil and military, were
engaged in it,--senators, knights, tribunes, and centurions,--some, as is
usual, on public, some on private grounds. While they were yet undecided
where it were best to fall on Nero, a courtesan named Epicharis, who had
a knowledge (it is not known how obtained) of the plot, wearied of their
indecision, attempted to gain over the officers of the fleet at Misenum.
She made the first trial of an officer named Volusius Proculus, who had
been one of the agents in the murder of Agrippina, and who complained of
the ill return he had met with, and menaced revenge. She communicated to
him the fact of there being a conspiracy, and proposed to him to join in
it; but Proculus, hoping to gain a reward by this new service, went and
gave information to Nero. Epicharis was seized; but as she had mentioned
no names, and Proculus had no witnesses, nothing could be made of the
matter. She was, however, kept in prison.
The conspirators became alarmed; and lest they should be betrayed, they
resolved to delay acting no longer, but to fall on the tyrant at the
Circensian games. The plan arranged was that Plautius Lateranus, the
consul-elect, a man of great courage and bodily strength, should sue to
the emperor for relief to his family affairs, and in so doing should
grasp his knees and throw him down, and that then the officers should
despatch him with their swords. Meantime Piso should be waiting at the
adjacent temple of Ceres; and when Nero was no more, the prefect Fenius
Rufus and others should come and convey him to the camp.
Notwithstanding the number and variety of persons engaged in the
plot, the secret had been kept with wonderful fidelity. Accident,
however, revealed it as it was on the very eve of execution. Among the
conspirators was a senator named Flavius Scevinus, who, though dissolved
in luxury, was one of the most eager. He had insisted on having the
first part in the assassination, for which purpose he had provided a
dagger taken from a temple. The night before the attack was to be made
he gave this dagger to one of his freedmen, named Milichus, to grind and
sharpen. He at the same time sealed his will, giving freedom to some,
gifts to others of his slaves. He supped more luxuriously than usual,
and though he affected great cheerfulness, it was manifest from his air
that he had something of importance on his mind. He also directed his
freedman to prepare bandages for wounds. The freedman, who was either
already in the secret, or had his suspicions now excited, consulted
with his wife, and at her impulsion set off at daylight and revealed
his suspicions to Epaphroditus, one of Nero’s freedmen, by whom he was
conducted to the emperor. On his information Scevinus was arrested; but
he gave a plausible explanation of everything but the bandages, which he
positively denied. He might have escaped were it not that Milichus’ wife
suggested that Antonius Natalis had conversed a great deal with him in
secret of late, and that they were both intimate with Piso. Natalis was
then sent for; and as he and Scevinus did not agree in their accounts of
the conversation which they had, they were menaced with torture. Natalis’
courage gave way; he named Piso and Seneca. Scevinus, either through
weakness or thinking that all was known, named several others, among whom
were Annæus Lucanus the poet, the nephew of Seneca, Tullius Senecio, and
Afranius Quinctianus. These at first denied everything. At length, on the
promise of pardon, they discovered some of their nearest friends, Lucan
even naming his own mother Atilla.
Nero now called to mind the information of Proculus, and he ordered
Epicharis to be put to the torture. But no pain could overcome the
constancy of the heroic woman; and next day, as from her weak state she
was carried in a chair to undergo the torture anew, she contrived to
fasten her belt to the arched back of the chair, and thus to strangle
herself.
When the discovery was first made, some of the bolder spirits urged Piso
to hasten to the camp or to ascend the rostra, and endeavour to excite
the soldiers or the people to rise against Nero. But he had not energy
for such a course, and he lingered at home till his house was surrounded
by soldiers. He then opened his veins, leaving a will filled, for the
sake of his wife, a profligate woman, with the grossest adulation of
Nero. Lateranus died like a hero, with profound silence; and though the
tribune who presided at the execution was one of the conspirators, he
never reproached him.
But the object of Nero’s most deadly enmity was Seneca. All that was
against this illustrious man was that Natalis said that Piso had one
time sent him to Seneca, who was ill, to see how he was, and to complain
of his not admitting him, and that Seneca replied that it was for the
good of neither that they should meet frequently, but that his health
depended on Piso’s safety. The tribune Granius Silvanus (also one of the
conspirators) was sent to Seneca, who was now at his villa four miles
from Rome, to examine him respecting the conversation with Natalis.
He found him at table with his wife, Pompeia Paulina, and two of his
friends. Seneca’s account agreed with that of Natalis; his meaning, he
said, had been perfectly innocent. When the tribune made his report to
Nero and his privy council--Poppæa and Tigellinus--he was asked if Seneca
meditated a voluntary death. On his reply that he showed no signs of fear
or perturbation, he was ordered to go back and bid him die. Silvanus, it
is said, called on Fenius on his way and asked him if he should obey the
orders; but Fenius, with that want of spirit which was the ruin of them
all, bade him obey. Silvanus when he arrived sent in a centurion with the
fatal mandate.