to have it. He then told his friends that as he could not express his
sense of their merits in the way that he wished, he would leave them the
image of his life, to which, if they attended, they would obtain the fame
of virtue and of constancy in friendship. He checked their tears, showing
that nothing had occurred but what was to have been expected. Then
embracing his wife, he began to console and fortify her, but she declared
her resolution to die with him. Not displeased at her generous devotion,
and happy that one so dear to him should not remain exposed to injury and
misfortune, he gave a ready consent, and the veins in the arms of both
were opened. As Seneca, on account of his age, bled slowly, he caused
those of his legs and thighs to be opened also; and as he suffered very
much, he persuaded his wife to go into another room; and then calling
for amanuenses, he dictated a discourse which was afterward published.
Finding himself going very slowly, he asked his friend the physician,
Statius Annæus, for the hemlock juice which he had provided, and took it,
but it had no effect. He finally went into a warm bath, sprinkling as
he entered it the servants who were about him, and saying, “I pour this
liquor to Jove the Liberator.” The heat caused the blood to flow freely,
and his sufferings at length terminated. His body was burned without any
ceremony, according to the directions which he had given when at the
height of his prosperity.
Paulina did not die at this time; for Nero, who had no enmity against her
and wished to avoid the imputation of gratuitous cruelty, sent orders to
have her saved. She survived her husband a few years, her face and skin
remaining of a deadly paleness in consequence of her great loss of blood.
The military men did not remain undiscovered. Fenius Rufus died like a
coward; the tribunes and centurions, like soldiers. When one of them
named Subrius Flavius was asked by Nero what caused him to forget
his military oath: “I hated you,” said he, “and there was none of
the soldiers more faithful while you deserved to be loved. I began
to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and wife, a
chariot-driver, a player, and an incendiary.” Nothing in the whole affair
cut Nero to the soul like this reply of the gallant soldier.
The consul Vestinus was not implicated by any in the conspiracy; but
Nero hated him; and as he was sitting at dinner with his friends,
some soldiers entered to say that their tribune wanted him. He arose,
went into a chamber, had his veins opened, entered a warm bath, and
died. Lucan when ordered to die had his veins also opened; when he
felt his extremities growing cold, he called to mind some verses of
his _Pharsalia_ which were applicable to his case, and died repeating
them. Senecio Quinctianus and Scevinus and many others died; several
were banished. Natalis, Milichus, and others were rewarded; offerings,
thanksgivings, and so forth were voted in abundance by the senate.
This obsequious body, however, sought to avert the disgrace of the lord
of the Roman world appearing on the stage at the approaching Quinquennial
games, by offering him the victory of song and the crown of eloquence.
But Nero said that there needed not the power nor the influence of the
senate, that he feared not his rivals, and relied on the equity of the
judges. He therefore sang on the stage, and when the people pressed him
to display all his acquirements, he came forth in the theatre, strictly
conforming to all the rules of his art, not sitting down when weary,
wiping his face in his robe, neither spitting nor blowing his nose, and
finally with bended knee and moving his hand, waited in counterfeit
terror for the sentence of the judges.
At the end of the games, he in a fit of anger gave Poppæa, who was
pregnant, a kick in the stomach, which caused her death. Instead of
burning her body, as was now the general custom, he had it embalmed
with the most costly spices and deposited in the monument of the Julian
family. He himself pronounced the funeral oration, in which he praised
her for her beauty, and for being the mother of a divine infant.
The remainder of the year was marked by the death or exile of several
illustrious persons, and by a pestilence which carried off great numbers
of all ranks and ages. “Of the knights and senators,” observes Tacitus,
“the deaths were less to be lamented; they anticipated, as it were, by
the common fate the cruelty of the prince.”
[Sidenote: [66 A.D.]]
The first deaths of the succeeding year (66) were those of P. Anteius,
whose crime was his wealth and the friendship of Agrippina; Ostorius
Scapula, who had distinguished himself in Britain; Annæus Mella, the
father of Lucan; Anicius Cerealis, Rufius Crispinus, and others. They
all died in the same manner, by opening their veins. The most remarkable
death was that of C. Petronius, a man whose elegance and taste in luxury
had recommended him to the special favour of Nero, who regarding him as
his “arbiter of elegance,” valued only that of which Petronius approved.
The envy of Tigellinus being thus excited, he bribed one of Petronius’
slaves to charge his master with being the friend of Scevinus. His death
followed, of course; the mode of it however was peculiar. He caused
his veins to be opened, then closed, then opened again, and so on. He
meantime went on conversing with his friends, not, like a Socrates or a
Seneca, on the immortality of the soul or the opinions of the wise, but
listening to light and wanton verses. He rewarded some of his slaves, he
had others flogged, he dined, he slept; he made, in short, his compulsive
death as like a natural one as possible. He did not, like others, pay
court to Nero or Tigellinus or the men in power, in his will, but he
wrote an account of the vices and crimes of the prince and court under
the names of flagitious men and women, and sent it sealed up to the
emperor. He broke his seal-ring, lest it might be used to the destruction
of innocent persons.
“After the slaughter of so many illustrious men,” says Tacitus, “Nero
at length sought to destroy virtue itself by killing Thraseas Pætus and
Bareas Soranus.” The former, a man of primitive Roman virtue, was hated
by him not merely for his worth, but because he had on various occasions
given public proof of his disapproval of his acts. Such were his going
out of the senate house when the decrees were made on account of the
murder of Agrippina, and his absence from the deification and funeral of
Poppæa. Further than his virtue, we know of no cause of enmity that Nero
could have against Soranus.
The accusers of Thraseas were Capito Cossutianus, whom he had made his
enemy by supporting the Cilician deputies who came to accuse him of
extortion, and Marcellus Eprius, a profligate man of eloquence. A Roman
knight named Ostorius Sabinus appeared as the accuser of Soranus. The
time selected for the destruction of these eminent men was that of the
arrival of the Parthian prince Tiridates, who was coming to Rome to
receive the diadem of Armenia, either in hopes that the domestic crime
would be shrouded by the foreign glory, or, more probably, to give the
Oriental an idea of the imperial power. Thraseas received an order not
to appear among those who went to meet the king; he wrote to Nero,
requiring to know with what he was charged, and asserting his ability to
clear himself if he got an opportunity. Nero in reply said that he would
convoke the senate. Thraseas then consulted with his friends, whether he
would go to the senate house, or expect his doom at home. Opinions were
as usual divided; he however did not go to the senate.
Next morning the temple in which the senate sat was surrounded with
soldiery. Cossutianus and Eprius appeared as the accusers of Thraseas,
his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus, Paconius Agrippinus, and Curtius
Montanus. The general charge against them was passive rather than active
disloyalty, Thraseas being held forth as the seducer and encourager of
the others. Ostorius then came forward and accused Soranus, who was
present, of friendship with Rubellius Plautus and of mal-conduct in
the government of Asia. He added that Servilia, the daughter of the
accused, had given money to fortune-tellers. Servilia was summoned. She
owned the truth, that she had sold her ornaments and given the money
to the soothsayers, but for no impious purpose, only to learn if her
father would escape. Witnesses were then called, and among them, to the
indignation of every virtuous man, appeared P. Egnatius, the client and
friend of Soranus, and a professor of the stoic philosophy, who now had
sold himself to destroy his benefactor by false testimony.
The accused were all condemned, of course; Thraseas, Soranus, and
Servilia to death, the others to exile. Of the circumstances of the
end of Soranus and his daughter, we are not informed. Thraseas having
prevented his wife Arria from following the example of her mother of the
same name, by entreating her not to deprive their daughter of her only
remaining support, caused his veins to be opened in the usual manner; and
as the blood spouted forth, he said to the quæstor who was present, “Let
us pour out to Jove the Liberator. Regard this, young man. May the gods
avert the omen; but you have been born in times when it is expedient to
fortify the mind by examples of constancy.” He died after suffering much
pain.[f]
Suetonius has left us an interesting picture of the personality of the
perverted being who was the cause of all this suffering.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NERO, ACCORDING TO SUETONIUS
[Sidenote: [54-68 A.D.]]
In stature Nero was a little below the common size; his body spotted,
and of a disagreeable appearance; his hair inclined to yellow; his
countenance fair, rather than handsome; his eyes gray and dull, his
neck fat, his belly prominent, legs very slender, but his constitution
healthful. For, though extravagantly luxurious in his way of living,
he had, in the course of fourteen years, only three fits of sickness,
which were so slight, that he neither forbore the use of wine, nor made
any alteration in his usual diet. In his dress, and the care of his
person, he was so indecent, that he had his hair cut in rings one above
another; and when he was in Achaia, let it grow long behind; and appeared
abroad for the most part in the dress which he used at table, with a
handkerchief about his neck, his coat loose upon him, and without shoes.
He was entered, when a boy, in almost all the liberal sciences; but his
mother diverted him from the study of philosophy, as unsuitable to one
who was to be an emperor; and his master Seneca discouraged him from
reading the old orators, that he might keep him the longer in admiration
of himself. He was much addicted to poetry, and composed verses both with
pleasure and ease: nor did he, as some think, publish those of other
authors for his own. I have had in my hands some little pocket-books
of his, with some well-known verses, all of his own writing, and
written in such a manner, that it was very evident from the blotting and
interlining, that they had not been transcribed from a copy, nor dictated
by another, but written by the composer of them.
He had likewise a great taste for painting, and moulding of images, but
of all things an extravagant desire of popular applause, being a rival
of every man who was upon any account admired by the people. It was the
general belief, that, after the prizes he won by his performances upon
the stage, he would the next lustrum have entered amongst the wrestlers
at the Olympic games. For he was continually practising in that way; nor
did he attend in Greece that kind of solemnity any otherwise, than as the
judges used to do, sitting upon the ground in the Stadium. And if a pair
of wrestlers happened to get without the limits assigned them, he would
with his own hands bring them back into their proper place.
[Illustration: A NIGHT WATCHMAN OF ROME, SHOWING THE BELLS WORN ON HIS
JACKET]
Towards the end of his life, he made a public vow, that if he continued
in the peaceable enjoyment of the empire, he would, in the games which
he intended to give for his success against the insurgents, appear upon
the stage, to manage the water-organ, as also to play upon the flutes and
bagpipe, and upon the day concluding those diversions, would act his part
in a play, and dance to the story of Turnus in Virgil. And there are some
who say, that he put to death the player Paris as a dangerous rival.
He had an invincible desire, but capriciously directed, of rendering
himself famous through all succeeding ages. He therefore took from
several things and places their former appellations, and gave them new
names derived from his own. He called the month of April, too, Neroneus,
and had a design to change the name of Rome into that of Neropolis.
He thought there was no other use of riches and money than to squander
them away profusely; regarding all those as sordid wretches who kept
their expenses within due bounds; and extolling those as truly noble and
generous souls, who lavished away and wasted all before them. He never
wore the same garment twice. He would game for four hundred thousand
sesterces for every spot that came up upon the tali. He used to fish with
a golden net, drawn by silken cords of the finest scarlet colour. It is
said that he never travelled with less than a thousand carts attending
him with his baggage: the mules being all shod with silver, and their
drivers dressed in scarlet clothes of the finest wool; and a numerous
train of footmen, and Africans, with bracelets on their arms, and mounted
upon horses in splendid trappings.
He was a despiser of all religious worship, except that of the Syrian
goddess; but at last he regarded her so little that he spurned her, being
now engaged in another superstition, in which he invariably persisted.
For having received from some obscure plebeian a little image of a girl,
as a preservative against plots, and discovering a conspiracy immediately
after, he constantly worshipped, and with three sacrifices a day, his
imaginary protectress, as the greatest amongst the gods. He was likewise
desirous to have it thought that he had from the information of that
deity a knowledge of future events. A few months before he died, he
offered several sacrifices, to consult the entrails of the victims; but
could never obtain any favourable intimations from them.[d]
MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF NERO AND HIS TIMES
The youth who at the age of seventeen years had been called to govern
the civilised world, is represented in his busts and medals as handsome
in countenance, but, as Suetonius remarks, without grace or winningness
of expression. His hair was not the bright auburn of Apollo, the delight
of the Romans, to which it was so often likened, but yellowish or sandy;
his figure, though of middle stature, was ill-proportioned, the neck was
thick and sensual, the stomach prominent, the legs slender. His skin, it
is added, was blotched or pimpled; but this, it may be supposed, was the
effect of intemperance in his later years; his eyes were dark gray or
greenish, and their sight defective, which may account perhaps for the
scowl which seems to mark their expression. His health, notwithstanding
his excesses, continued good to the end, and it was only from anxious
concern for his voice that he wrapped his throat in kerchiefs, like
a confirmed valetudinarian. In his dress there was a mixture of
slovenliness and finery; in the arrangement of his cherished locks he was
exceedingly careful, piling them in tiers above the crown, and letting
them fall from thence over the shoulders, a fashion which was reputed
not less indecent, or at least effeminate, than the looseness of his
cincture, the bareness of his feet, and the lightness of the chamber-robe
in which he did not scruple to appear in public.
We may trace perhaps to the character of his master, and to the kind
of education he was likely to receive from him, the ardent love of
admiration, ill-directed as it was, which distinguished the pupil of
Seneca. To this constant anxiety to compete with rivals, and triumph over
them, however trifling the objects on which it was exercised, may be
ascribed the indifference Nero evidently felt to the title of divinity,
which in his inordinate vanity he might have been expected to claim. He
wanted to be admired as the first among men, not to be adored as a god.
He could not be Apollo, and contend at the same time for the prize of
the Pythian games; he could not be Hercules, and carry off the chaplet
at Nemea; he could not be Jupiter, and gain the victory at the great
contest of Olympia--distinctions on which his soul was bent from an early
period of his career, and which, as we shall see, he lived eventually to
achieve. His courtiers might, if they pleased, pronounce his likeness to
these or any other divinities; but to make him actually divine was to rob
him of the honours he so vehemently affected. The poets might predict
his apotheosis after death, and doubtless the verses in which Lucan, at
that time his friend and companion, challenged him to choose what godship
he would assume in heaven, and where he would fix his throne, imploring
him to take his seat in the middle of the universe, lest if he leaned
ever so little from the centre the world should be thrown by his august
weight from its eternal balance--such verses were doubtless accepted as
a fitting tribute to the germ of a divine existence hereafter to blossom
into flower. But the ardour with which Nero aspired to distinctions among
mortal men was itself a guarantee against his usurping the character of
the impassive godhead, which can neither enjoy a triumph nor suffer a
disgrace.
Nor again, though described by Tacitus as _lusting after the incredible_,
had Nero the same passion as Caligula for realising apparent
impossibilities to prove his superhuman power. He was not impelled in a
career of marvels by restless and aimless pride. Once removed from the
sphere of theatrical shows and contests, he had no higher notion of his
position than as enabling him to accumulate, to multiply, or to enlarge
the commonest objects of luxury. He never travelled, it is asserted, with
less than a thousand carriages in his train. His banquets were those of
the noble debauchees of the day on a still vaster scale of expense; in
the height of his extravagance, he would equip his actors with masks or
wands covered with genuine pearls; he would stake four hundred thousand
sesterces on a single cast of the dice; he bathed in unguents, and
stimulated his friends to expend four millions on the perfumes alone of a
single supper. His presents to favourites were sums of money many times
greater than had ever been given to favourites before; his buildings
were colonnades longer, halls wider, towers higher, than had been raised
by his predecessors. His projected canal from Puteoli to Rome would
only have been the longest of canals; the attempt he latterly made to
cut through the isthmus of Corinth was only a repetition of previous
attempts, neither better planned, nor more steadfastly persevered in.
In his schemes there was nothing new or original. Nero was devoid of
the imagination which throws an air of wild grandeur over the character
of Caligula. The notion that he burned Rome on purpose to have an
opportunity of rebuilding it more magnificently would have been more
applicable, as it seems to me, to his predecessor than to him. But within
the paltry sphere of his degraded taste he claimed to be pre-eminent. As
a mime or player he was not satisfied with any single class of parts,
or any one department of exhibition. After rivalling Apollo in song and
the Sun in charioteering, he aspired to display the courage and vigour
of Hercules, and a lion was duly prepared, drugged or fed to stupor,
to be strangled in his arms, or brained with a stroke of his club. He
acted, he sang, he played, he danced. He insisted on representing men and
heroes, gods and even goddesses. To affect the woman indeed, in dress,
voice, and gesture, was a transformation in which he took a childish
pleasure, restrained by no sense of dignity or decency. He adopted his
superstitions, as well as his garb and habits, from Syria, from his
Parthian and Armenian guests, or from the diviners and necromancers
of the credulous East. To the art of magic he devoted wealth, energy,
natural abilities, in short, all his resources; but Nature, says Pliny,
was too strong for him. His failure to divine the future, or raise the
spirits of the dead, was noted by the wise as a signal demonstration
of the futility of magical pretensions. For none of the accustomed
divinities of Rome did he evince any respect, nor for places consecrated
by the national religion; but he reverenced the Syrian Astarte, till in a
fit of vexation he renounced her protection, and insulted her image. At
last his sole object of veneration was a little figure of a girl, which
he always wore as a talisman about him, affecting to learn from it the
secrets of futurity.
Such were the miserable interests of this infatuated creature, the victim
of licentious indulgence, a child prematurely stunted both in mind and
body, surrounded on the throne not by generals and statesmen, but by
troops of slaves or freedmen, by players and dancers lost to all sense
of decency themselves, and seeking only their advancement at the expense
of their master and of mankind; surrendered by loose women to still
more despicable minions, and ruled by the most cruel and profligate of
ministers. Helius and Tigellinus, Doryphorus and Sporus, are among the
most hateful names of the imperial history; into the abominations of
their career it would be pollution merely to look. No wonder that, when
encircled by so loathsome a crew he saw the proud citizens prostrate at
his feet, he could exclaim that no prince before him had known the extent
of his power. But though at their patron’s command statues and arches
might rise in honour of these infamous companions, it may be said for the
credit of the people, that they received much less of lip-worship than
their predecessors, Sejanus, Pallas, and Narcissus.
There seems indeed to have risen, at least in the later years of this
principate, a marked separation between the court and the nobility; the
senators shrank from the presence of a man who so openly degraded his
name and lineage; they fled the contact of his dissolute associates;
they entered into widespread conspiracies against him, to which they
had never been provoked by the tyranny of his predecessors; and they
had the merit of incurring his petulant displeasure, with many a threat
to extinguish their order altogether, and give the provinces to his
knights and freedmen. “I hate you, Cæsar,” exclaimed the most refined
of his flatterers, “because you are a senator.” Accordingly this
emperor, notwithstanding the pomp and splendour of his shows and public
appearances, seems to have been left for the most part to the mercenary
attendance of his personal favourites, protected only by a troop of spies
and informers, and the vilest portion of the pampered populace, from the
general detestation of respectable citizens.[18]
The cruelties of Nero’s later years were the more fearful, perhaps, from
their apparent caprice. He had no politic object, such as may be ascribed
to Tiberius--of policy indeed he was incapable. Except that his murders
were commonly prompted by need or fear, and therefore fell oftenest on
the rich and powerful, it can hardly be said that one class suffered from
them more terribly than another.
Undoubtedly, however, the senate furnished the longest list of victims to
the tyrant’s barbarity. The greatest and noblest were the most exposed
to the prince’s evil eye, which lighted upon them equally at public
ceremonials and private receptions, and marked them for immolation
at every fresh burst of ill-humour. The proscriptions to which this
body was subjected under the four Claudian Cæsars reduced its numbers
considerably, more, indeed, it may be imagined, than was replaced by the
ordinary sources of replenishment. Claudius, among his other reforms,
sought to restore the balance by a special measure, and such was probably
the object of his revision of the senate, the last of the kind we read
of; but the decline must have been accelerated under Nero, without check
or counteraction. Nero, reckless equally of the past and future, felt
no anxiety to maintain the numbers of that historic assembly; and the
various causes, besides the emperor’s tyranny, which were always at work
to extinguish the oldest families, must have acted with terrible force on
the effete branches of the ancient aristocracy. But if its numbers were
reduced, no less were its employments also diminished.
Under the lax discipline of Nero and of Tigellinus appointments to office
abroad would be the prize of interest and favour, guided neither by
routine nor by discretion; at home the boards and commissions established
by Augustus would fall into disuse. Pensions and sinecures, though
such corruptions are not known to us at Rome by name, would doubtless
abound, but of real business there would be less and less. Intrigue and
peculation would flourish in a soil protected from the air of public
opinion, and the strong hand of central control.
The passive endurance which marked the conduct of the senate under the
imperial persecutions seems to bespeak a consciousness of its own guilt
towards the state, and it compounded for its monopoly of unquestioned
abuses by bowing to the yoke of a jealous and domineering master. We
discover in Seneca no reliance on the senate. He never speaks of it as a
living guardian of the virtues of Roman society. And yet, notwithstanding
this abandonment of its high prerogative, it still exercised a moral
power. Its mere title could awaken associations which thrilled from pulse
to pulse. It was still regarded by the men of ancient name and blood as
the true head or heart of the empire, rather than the upstart Claudius or
Domitius, who might wear the purple and wield the sword. To the men of
words and phrases the emperor was still an accident,--the senate was an
eternal fact,--at a time when rhetoric might make revolutions, though it
could not regenerate society. To them it was still the symbol of liberty,
at a time when liberty and Cæsar were regarded as two gladiators sword in
hand, pitted against each other in mortal combat. This venerable image of
its ancient majesty was preserved to it by the proscriptions themselves
by which it suffered; for as often as a murdered Scribonius or Pompeius
was replaced in the chairs of office by a Rubellius, a Lollius, or a
Vitellius, the principle of its vitality was in fact invigorated by the
infusion of new plebeian blood.
As fast indeed as the tyrant’s exigencies required the confiscation
of the great estates of nobles, and the overthrow of great families,
his caprice and favour were elevating new men from the inferior orders
to succeed to their distinctions, and to rival them in their vast
possessions. Nero never kept his money. All he robbed, all he extorted,
was squandered as abruptly as it was acquired, and shrewd Roman
money-makers were always waiting upon his necessities, and sweeping the
properties of his victims into their stores for a small part of their
value in specie. Of the vast sums amassed by the freedmen of Claudius and
his successors some records have been preserved to us; but the freedmen
were a class peculiarly obnoxious to remark, and it is probable that
knights and senators were at the same time, and by similar compliances,
raising fortunes not less enormous, who have escaped the designating
finger of history. Though the grinding processes to which the colossal
properties of the nobles were subjected must on the whole have broken
down the average amount of their revenues far below the rate at which it
figured under the republic and the first Cæsars, we must not suppose that
the current set all in one direction, or that the age of Claudius and
Nero was not also a period of great private accumulations. The wealth of
individuals and of the upper ranks at Rome generally reached perhaps its
greatest height at this culminating epoch.
Descending, however, from the high places of the Roman world, we find
beneath them a commonalty suffering also a social revolution, undergoing
a rapid transition, and presenting the elements of two rival classes, or
even hostile camps, in the bosom of the city. The clients and retainers
of the old nobility, whether freed or freeborn, still formed the pith
and marrow of the commonwealth; still leaning their humble tenements
against the great lords’ mansions, still respecting them as their patrons
and advisers, still attending their levees, and waiting for the daily
complement of the _sportula_ at their doors, they regarded them as the
real chiefs of the state, and held them equals of Cæsar himself. The
death or exile of their august protector might strike them with surprise
and indignation; but when they looked around and counted their numbers,
they felt their own insignificance, and quailed beneath the blow in
silence. They saw that there was growing up beside them a vast class
of patronless proletaries, the scum of the streets and lanes, slaves,
freedmen, foreigners, men of base trades and infamous employments, or
of ruined fortunes, who, having none but Cæsar himself to depend on,
threw the weight of their numbers in his scale, and earned his doles
and entertainments by lavish caresses, and deeds corresponding to their
promises. These have been called the lazzaroni of ancient Rome; in
idleness, indeed, and mendicancy they deserve the title; but they were
the paupers of a world-wide empire, and the crumbs on which they fed
fell from the tables of kings and princes. The wealth of millions of
subjects was lavished on these mendicant masters. For days together,
on the oft-recurring occasion of an imperial festival, valuables of
all kinds were thrown pell-mell among them, rare and costly birds were
lavished upon them by thousands, provisions of every kind, costly robes,
gold and silver, pearls and jewels, pictures, slaves and horses, and
even tamed wild beasts. At last, in the progress of this wild profusion,
ships, houses, and estates were bestowed by lottery on these waiters upon
Cæsar’s providence.
This extravagance was retained without relaxation throughout Nero’s
reign; had he paused in it for a moment the days of his power would
have been few. The rumour that he was about to quit Rome for the East
caused murmurs of discontent, and forced him to consult the gods, and
pretend to be deterred by signs of their displeasure from carrying his
design into effect. When at last, as we shall see, he actually visited
Greece, he left behind him a confidential minister, to keep the stream
of his liberality flowing, at whatever cost and by whatever measures of
spoliation. Absent or present, he flung to these pampered supporters
a portion of every confiscated fortune; the emperor and his people
hunted together, and the division of the prey was made apparently to
the satisfaction of both equally. Capricious as were the blows he dealt
around him, this class alone he took care never to offend, and even
the charge of firing the city fell lightly on the ears of the almost
houseless multitude, whose losses at least had been fully compensated by
plunder. The clients of the condemned nobles were kept effectually in
check by this hungry crowd, yelling over every carcass with the prospect
of a feast. Nero, in the height of his tyranny and alarm, had no need
to increase the number of his prætorians; the lazzaroni of Rome were
a bodyguard surrounding him in every public place, and watching the
entrances and exits at his palace gates.
Such were the chief distinctions of class at this period among the Roman
people, the so-called lords of mankind, and beyond them lay the great
world of the provincials, their subjects. But if these were subjects in
name, they were now become in fact the true Roman people; they alone
retained real freedom of action within the limits of the empire; they
were allowed to labour, and they enjoyed the bulk at least of the fruits
of industry; they rarely saw the hateful presence of the emperor, and
knew only by report the loathsome character of his courtiers and their
orgies. And if sometimes the thunderbolt might fall among them, it struck
only the highest eminences; the multitude was safe as it was innocent.
The extortion of the proconsul in the province was not to be compared
in wantonness or severity with the reckless pillage of the emperor in
the capital, nearer home. The petulance of a proconsul’s wife was hardly
tolerated abroad, while at home the prince’s worst atrocities were
stimulated by female cupidity. The taxation of the subject, if heavier in
some respects than that of the citizen, was at least tolerably regular;
the extraordinary demands which Nero made towards the rebuilding of Rome
were an exception to the routine of fiscal imposts. But, above all, the
provincials had changed place with their masters in being now the armed
force of the empire.
[Illustration: ROMAN CAVALRYMAN]
The citizen had almost ceased to wield the sword. Even the prætorians
were recruited from Italy, not from Rome herself; and among them
thousands were doubtless foreign born, the offscourings of the provinces,
who had thrown themselves on the shores of Italy to seek their fortunes
in a sphere abandoned by the indolence of their masters. The prætorian,
like the proletary of the city, was highly cherished by the emperor.
He had his rights and privileges which raised him above every other
military conscript. While the legionary served at ten _asses_ a day
for thirty or forty years, exposed to the risks of war, fatigue, and
climate, nor regained his liberty and safety till age had blanched
his hair and stiffened his limbs, the prætorian lived quietly at Rome
under the lax discipline of a stative camp; he enjoyed double pay, and
claimed dismissal after sixteen years’ service. He had his regular dole
of corn, his occasional largess, his extraordinary donative whenever
an opportunity had occurred to prove his fidelity. Tiberius, on the
fall of Sejanus, had given him 1000 _asses_; Claudius had paid for the
purple with a sum of 150,000,000 of sesterces; Nero had followed these
examples, and established them as the rule of the succession; on the
overthrow of Piso’s conspiracy he had requited his prætorians with 2000
sesterces apiece. Thus caressed, the favoured cohorts of the guard became
the firmest support of the prince, their creature, and under the sway of
military traditions, from which even they were not exempt, regarded their
oath of allegiance with strict fidelity. This fidelity, indeed, they
considered due to the imperator himself rather than to the senate and
people, whom they equally despised; they were satisfied with the power of
making the Cæsars, and as yet were far from conceiving in their minds the
idea of unmaking them again.
But far different was the case with the legions in the provinces. The
legionary was still less Roman than the prætorian. If to a great extent
the recruits for the frontier camps were still levied from the class
which possessed the nominal franchise of the city, yet these citizens
were themselves, for the most part, new-enfranchised provincials; they
had received Latin or Roman rights as a boon from the emperor, or perhaps
purchased them for the sake of their fiscal immunities. Romans in blood
or even Italians the legionaries no longer were. They were supported by
ample levies of auxiliaries, avowedly of foreign extraction, generally
transferred from their homes to a camp at a far distant station; Silures
and Brigantes to the Danube; Tungri and Suevi to the borders of Wales;
Iberians to the Euphrates; Numidians to the Rhine. Amidst the clang of
dissonant languages that resounded through the camp the Latin was the
least heard and understood.
Yet the word of command was still Roman, and the chief officers were
Roman also; the affections of this soldiery, long estranged from the
emperor and the senate, were attached to the tribune and the legatus;
and the murmurs of the nobles at home, which moved the sympathy of their
kinsmen on the frontier, met a deep response in the devotion of these
sons of the eagles to their accustomed leaders. The vast distance of the
great camps of the empire from one another, and the frequent change of
their officers, together with the motives of jealousy which the emperors
nourished between them, helped to prevent these legions from joining in
a common cause when disaffection menaced an outbreak in any particular
quarter. They made some partial attempts to supplant the prætorians by
carrying one of their own chiefs to power; but every endeavour of the
kind had been hitherto baffled by the want of concert among them. More
success was to attend the efforts in the near future.
In the year 63 A.D., Nero, we are told, was preparing to visit the East
in person. Some indeed asserted that his object was only to behold the
wonders of Egypt, and the interest of the citizens was just then directed
towards that mysterious region by the discoveries of an exploring party,
which had recently ascended the Nile nine hundred miles above Syene.
Others believed that he had no intention of proceeding beyond Greece; but
it seems probable that his views were really more extensive, and that he
contemplated throwing himself into the quarters of the Syrian legions,
and checking by his presence the ambition of the proconsul, perhaps
seizing an opportunity to overthrow him. But, whatever Nero’s project
may have been, it was frustrated, as we have seen, by the occurrence of
the fire at Rome. The affairs of the next three years have been already
related: the conspiracies which were concerted against the emperor at
home, his redoubled efforts to secure the favour of the populace, and his
cruel precaution of destroying every man of eminence who might become
the centre of fresh machinations to his prejudice. In the year 66 he at
last found leisure to execute his scheme of travel, so far, at least, as
to visit Greece; where he presented himself at the public spectacles,
and gratified his passion for dancing and singing before promiscuous
assemblages, with still less reserve than at home. All the states which
held musical contests had hastened, even before his arrival, to humour
him with the offer of their prizes, and Nero had received their envoys
with the highest honours, and invited them to his table. When one of
them begged him to give a specimen of his singing, and his skill was
rapturously applauded, he declared that the Greeks alone had ears, and
alone deserved the honour of hearing him.
NERO IN GREECE
[Sidenote: [66-68 A.D.]]
Nero remained in Greece to the beginning of the year 68. He was attended
by courtiers and court-followers of all descriptions, and many, it was
affirmed, of the chief nobility were invited to accompany him, that he
might slay them more securely at a distance from the city. However this
may be, the ministers of his luxury and panders to his vices formed the
most conspicuous portion of his escort; for he seems to have prosecuted
his enormities among the despised Greeks more shamelessly than ever.
The great ambition of the imperator, now following in the track of
Mummius, Flamininus, Agrippa, and Augustus, was to gain the distinction
of a Periodonicus, or victor in the whole circle of the games; for in
compliment to him, the contests which recurred in successive years at
Olympia, Nemea, Delphi, and Corinth were all to be enacted during his
residence in the country. Nor was this the only irregularity admitted. At
Olympia he demanded a musical contest, such as had never been practised
there before; at the isthmus he contended in tragedy and comedy, which
also was contrary to the local usage. The exertions of Nero were not
confined to playing, singing, and acting. He presented himself also as
a charioteer, nor was he ashamed to receive the prize even when he had
fallen with car and horses to the ground. Wherever he went he challenged
the most famous artists to contend with him, and extorted every prize
from every competitor. A Roman consular enacted the part of herald, and
proclaimed in the astonished ears of Greece, “Nero the Emperor is Victor,
and he crowns the People of Rome, and the World which is his own.”
The flattery of the Greeks deserved substantial acknowledgment, and
Nero was prepared to make a sacrifice for the purpose. He negotiated an
exchange of provinces for the senate, resigning the imperial prison-house
of Sardinia, and receiving in its place the prefecture of Achaia. He then
proclaimed, in the Forum at Corinth, the freedom and immunity of the
province, while he awarded to his judges the honour of Roman citizenship,
together with large presents in money. Another project ascribed to him,
magnificent and useful in itself, may have had no other object in his
mind than to render him famous in history; in almost any other human
being we should look for some worthier motive for it. This was the
cutting of the isthmus of Corinth, a measure often before proposed and
attempted but never achieved. The work was commenced, convicts were
condemned to labour upon it, and among them the learned stoic Musonius
Rufus, removed from Gyarus, whither he had been banished as an accomplice
in Piso’s conspiracy, was seen by another philosopher handling the spade
and pick-axe. But men of science from Egypt assured the emperor that, if
the work were effected, the waters of the Corinthian Gulf, being higher
than the Saronic, would submerge the island of Ægina, and after Nero’s
departure the design was promptly abandoned. The Romans regarded its
frustration as a judgment perhaps on his unnatural pride. In commencing
the work with a sacrifice, it had been remarked, as an instance of the
hatred he bore the senate, that he had prayed simply that it might turn
out well for the emperor and the people of Rome.
It is not impossible, however, that there may have been a politic motive
in this visit to Greece, such as has been suggested for the expedition
of Caius into Gaul. Fresh disturbances had broken out in Judea; the
cruelties of Gessius Florus had excited a sedition, which Cestius
Gallus advanced to Jerusalem from Antioch to repress. But here he had
encountered the people in arms, and had been suddenly overpowered
and slain. The Jews were elated with success and hopeless of pardon;
it was soon evident that the great war which must decide the fate of
their country, and with it of the Roman Empire in the East, so often
threatened, so long delayed, had commenced. But Corbulo was almost on the
spot; his legions were mighty, his name still mightier; such forces under
such a leader might be trusted to do the work of Rome thoroughly in any
quarter. Nevertheless the jealousy of the wretched prince prevailed over
all concern for the interests of his country. He trembled at the increase
of influence this new war might bring to his formidable proconsul. This
was the moment he chose for repairing in person to the threshold of his
province, and summoning the man he feared to attend upon him in Greece.
At the same time he ordered Vespasian, who had already distinguished
himself in the British war, but had acquired as yet no dangerous
pre-eminence, to take command of the forces destined for Palestine.
Corbulo must have known that he was superseded; he must have felt his
summons as a disgrace; he must have apprehended personal danger. Yet had
he known that every step he took westward was bringing him straight to
his doom, such was his fidelity as a soldier that he would have obeyed
without hesitation. No sooner had he arrived at Cenchreæ, the port of
Corinth, than he was met by emissaries from Nero bearing him the order
to despatch himself. Without murmur, he plunged a sword into his heart,
exclaiming as he struck the blow, “Rightly served!” [67 A.D.].
Nor was the gallant Corbulo the tyrant’s only victim. At the same time he
summoned two brothers, Rufus and Proculus, of the great Scribonian house,
who commanded in the two Germanies, to meet him in Greece, under pretence
of conferring with them on state affairs. The summons was in fact a
recall, and the pretence which accompanied it could hardly have deceived
them; yet they too obeyed with the same alacrity as Corbulo, and fell,
perhaps not unwittingly, into the same snare. Some specific charges were
laid against them; but no opportunity was given them of meeting them, nor
were they allowed to see the emperor. They killed themselves in despair.
Although, during his sojourn in Greece, Nero traversed the province in
every direction, it was observed that he refrained from visiting either
Athens or Sparta. With respect to the city of Lycurgus it was affirmed
merely that he kept aloof from it lest the austerity of its usages should
prove irksome to him; but he dared not enter the abode of the Erinyes,
from dread of their vengeance on his crimes. Another account said that
he was deterred from initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis, which
was denied, under direst imprecations, to the impious and impure. Of
these awful legends of Grecian antiquity but a faint and confused echo
resounded in Italy. To the Latin or the Sabine it little mattered whether
the murderer shrank from Athens or Eleusis, whether it was the avenging
Furies or the pure goddess of the mysteries before whom he trembled
to appear. Give but freedom to the people, they said, to declare what
they really think, and who so base as to hesitate between Seneca and
Nero--Nero, who more than once deserved the sack, the serpent, and the
ape, the instruments of death for parricide. True, Orestes by divine
command had slain his mother; but he at least avenged the death of a
father--Nero had assisted at the slaughter of Claudius; Orestes spared
at least his wife and sister--Nero had murdered both; Orestes had not
poisoned a kinsman--Nero had mingled aconite for many: above all, Orestes
had never sung upon the stage, nor chanted, like Nero, the fall of Ilium.
This it seems was the crown and climax of his crimes, the last and worst
of the indignities he heaped on Rome; this was the deed for which the
sword of the avenger was most fitly drawn. “For such,” exclaims Juvenal,
“forsooth, were the acts, such were the arts of our high-born prince,
proud to degrade himself on a foreign stage, and earn the paltry chaplets
of the Grecian games. Let him lay before the image of Domitius the mantle
of Thyestes, the mask of Antigone or Melanippe; let him hang his votive
lyre on the marble statue of Augustus.”
Beneath this veil of rhetoric lies a truth which it is the province
of history to remark. The Romans, from age to age, viewed their own
times in a very different light from that in which they have appeared
to posterity. The notion of Juvenal that the acting and singing of
Nero were in fact his most flagrant enormities was felt no doubt, even
in his own day, as a wild exaggeration; nevertheless it points to the
principle, then still in vigour, of the practical religion of antiquity,
the principle of faith in its social traditions. With cruelty and
oppression the Romans were so familiar that Nero’s atrocities in this
respect, so harrowing to our feelings, made little impression upon them;
but his desecration of their national manners, his abandonment of the
_mos majorum_, the usage of his ancestors, startled them like impiety or
sacrilege. They were not aware how far they had really drifted from the
habits of antiquity, how much of foreign poison they had admitted into
their veins. Theoretically they still held in sanctimonious horror the
customs of the stranger; foreign usages might be innocent, nay, laudable,
in their own place, but to introduce them into Rome was a monstrous
sin, a sin, not against the gods in whom they no longer believed, but
against the nation, in which they believed more intensely perhaps than
ever. The state or nation was itself gradually assuming in their eyes the
personality of a distinct divinity, in which all other divinities were
absorbed; the Hellenism which Nero vaunted was apostasy from the goddess
Roma.
[Illustration: ROMAN BRONZE KETTLE]
The Greeks on the other hand would regard, we may suppose, with more
indulgence the caprices of their imperial visitor; they were accustomed
to flatter, and in this instance there was some excuse for flattering a
humour so flattering to themselves. The miserable vices he paraded before
them were too like their own, at least in their period of corruption,
to elicit strong moral reprobation. Nevertheless, if we may credit
our accounts, he found more effectual means of disgusting them. The
imperial tyranny was always pursued, as by its shadow, by profuse and
fatal expenditure. It seemed unable to move without the attendance of a
crowd of harpies, ever demanding their prey with maw insatiable. Every
day required fresh plunder; every day proscriptions and confiscations
revealed the prince’s necessities, and if these for a moment slackened
for want of victims, his hands were laid on the monuments of art, on
every object on which money could be raised throughout the devoted land.
The temples as well as the dwellings and the forums of Greece were
ransacked again for the costliest and most cherished treasures, to be
sold by auction to the highest bidder, or redeemed at exorbitant prices
by their unhappy owners. Greece was powerless to resist, and her murmurs
were drowned in the acclamations of the hired applauders; but she felt
her wrongs deeply, and the pretended boon of freedom, accompanied by a
precarious immunity, was regarded perhaps as an insult rather than a
favour.
Rome at least, it might be hoped, would breathe again during the absence
of her hateful tormentor. But this, we are assured, was as far from her
as ever. Her condition had become even more miserable. The emperor had
given the government of Italy to a freedman named Helius, and this minion
exercised cruelty and rapine at his own caprice, not even deigning to
ask the prince’s pleasure beforehand on the executions and confiscations
he commanded. Yet Helius was not unfaithful to his master’s interests.
On the first symptoms of danger from discontent in the city or the
provinces, for such symptoms began at last to threaten, he urged him
to hasten back to the seat of government, and it was Nero’s obstinacy
alone that postponed his return for some months. “You admonish me, you
entreat me,” replied the infatuated wretch, “to present myself again at
Rome; nay, but you should rather dissuade me from returning, until I have
reaped my full harvest of laurels.” This harvest was not yet gathered in,
and the cries of the keeper of the city, already trembling for the fate
of the empire, were disregarded, while there yet remained a stadium to be
trodden, or a chaplet to be won, in Greece. At the commencement, however,
of the year 68 the aspect of affairs had become still more serious. Plots
for the subversion of the government were believed to be rife in the
armies of the West. The heads of administration at Rome knew not whom of
their officers in Gaul or Spain to trust. Deep gloom had settled down
on the upper classes in the capital; the temper of the populace itself,
so long the stay of Nero’s tyranny, was uncertain. Helius again urged
him to hasten his return. He crossed over to Greece to confer with him
in person. He repeated his instances with increasing fervour. At last,
when there seemed no more of fame or booty to be wrung from Greece,
Nero deigned to take ship, though the season of navigation had not yet
commenced, and urged his prow through stormy seas to the haven of Puteoli.
NERO’S RETURN TO ITALY AND TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO ROME
At Delphi he had consulted the oracle about his future fortunes, and had
been warned, we are told, against the seventy-third year, a response
which seemed to the youth of thirty to portend a great length of days,
but was found in the sequel to have another and a fatal signification.
Fortified, however, by this delusion, he had returned to Italy with
little anxiety, and when some of the precious objects that followed in
his train were lost by shipwreck, he vaunted in the plenitude of his
self-assurance that the fishes themselves would restore them. After
losing and again recovering both Britain and Armenia, his confidence in
his good fortune had become, it is said, unbounded. It was at Naples, he
remembered, that he had commenced his long course of artistic victories.
Now arrived at the height of his glory, he determined to celebrate his
successes by a triumphal entry into the Campanian capital, with a team
of milk-white horses. The walls were broken down to admit the chariot of
the Hieronicus, and the same extravagance was repeated when he entered
Antium, his native place, and the Albanum, his favourite residence,
and once more, when he presented himself before Rome. He drove in pomp
through the city, in the chariot in which Augustus had triumphed,
with the flutist Diodorus by his side, arrayed in a purple robe, and
a mantle blazing with golden stars, wearing on his head the Olympian
coronal, and waving the Pythian in his hand. He was preceded by a long
train of attendants bearing aloft his other chaplets and the titles of
all his victories; he was followed by his five thousand _augustani_,
with loud and measured acclamations, as the soldiers who shared his
glory. The procession passed through the Circus, some arches of which
were demolished to admit it, and thence to the Velabrum and the Forum,
skirting the base of the Palatine to the Porta Mugionis, the chief
ascent to the hill and the temple of Apollo on its summit. The sacrifice
of victims, the flinging of odours, and every other accompaniment of a
military triumph, were duly observed in this mock solemnity; the statues
of the emperor were decked with crowns and lyres; the citizens hailed
their hero with the titles of Nero-Apollo and Nero-Hercules, invoking
his divine voice, and pronouncing all who heard it blessed. The affair
was concluded by the striking of medals, on which Nero was represented,
to the shame and horror of all genuine patriots, in the garb of a
flute-player.
DISCONTENT IN THE PROVINCES
[Sidenote: [68 A.D.]]
But the hour of retribution was at hand. Notwithstanding the servile
flattery of the senate, and the triumphs and supplications it had
decreed, Nero felt uneasy at the murmurs no longer stifled, and the
undissembled gloom which now surrounded him in his capital, and withdrew
himself from Rome to the freer air of Campania. Meanwhile the discontent
repressed in the city was finding vent in the provinces, and the camps,
thronged as they were with kinsmen of the mocked and injured senators,
were brooding over projects of revenge. Among the most distinguished of
the officers who at this time held commands and enjoyed the confidence of
their soldiers, was Servius Sulpicius Galba, who for several years had
governed the Hither Spain. Connected with the first families of Rome,
and descended from many heroes of the camp and Forum, this man stood
high in public regard, and in the admiration of the emperors themselves,
for his courage, his skill, and his austerity. He had deserved well of
Caligula for the vigour with which, at a critical moment, he drew up
the reins of discipline in the Rhenish camps; still better of Claudius
for refusing the offer of his own soldiers to raise him to empire on
Caligula’s death. He had held command in Aquitania, and was for two years
proconsul of Africa; he had received the triumphal ornaments, and had
been admitted to the priestly colleges of the Titii, the Quindecemvirs,
and the Augustales. Full of years and honours, he had retired from public
employment through the first half of Nero’s principate, till summoned to
preside over the Tarraconensis. He exercised his powers with vigilance
and a harshness which perhaps was salutary, until the emperor’s growing
jealousy warned him to shroud his reputation under the veil of indolence
or even neglect, and thus he escaped the fate of Corbulo, and lived to
avenge it. Galba was in his seventy-third year. In his childhood he had
been brought, it was reported, with others of the young nobility, to
salute the aged Augustus; and the emperor, taking him playfully by the
cheek, had said, “And thou too, child, shalt one day taste our empire.”
Tiberius, it was added, had learned from the diviners the splendid
destiny that awaited his old age, but had remarked complacently that to
himself it could not matter. Nero, it seems, whom these prognostications
touched more nearly, either forgot, or was lulled to false security about
them.
Early in the winter of 68, while Nero was still absent in Greece, Galba
received overtures from C. Julius Vindex, prefect of the Farther Gaul,
for a simultaneous rising. Vindex was himself a Gallico-Roman, scion of
a royal house in Aquitania, adopted into the imperial gens; but while he
imbibed the pride of a Roman, he retained the impetuous spirit of his
ancestors; and the enormities of Nero, aggravated no doubt in his esteem
by his exactions in Gaul itself, roused his determination to overthrow
him without a view to personal aggrandisement. The time indeed was yet
far distant when a foreigner could even conceive the idea of gaining the
purple. But he fixed his eyes on Galba, as the ablest of the class from
which fortune could make an emperor, and it was with vexation that he
found the old chief too cautious to be driven headlong into a revolt, the
event of which might seem so doubtful.
Galba indeed had good reason to hesitate. Nero set a price on the head
of Vindex, whose designs were speedily revealed to him, and though the
forces of the Gaulish province were disposed to follow their chief, the
more powerful legions of lower Germany, under Virginius Rufus, were in
full march against them. The armies met at Vesontio, and there Vindex and
Virginius, at a private interview, agreed to conspire together, but their
troops could come to no such understanding; the Virginians attacked the
soldiers of Vindex, and almost cut them to pieces. Vindex thereupon, with
the haste and levity of his race, threw himself on his sword, and the
rebellion seemed for a moment to be crushed.
GALBA IS SALUTED IMPERATOR BY HIS SOLDIERS
But Galba had become alarmed for his own safety. He had received
communications from a rebel, all whose acts were well known to the
government. He had been urged to proclaim himself emperor, and no refusal
on his part could efface the crime of having been judged worthy of such a
distinction. Indeed, so at least he pretended, he had already intercepted
orders from Nero to take his life, and a plot for his assassination
was opportunely detected among a company of slaves presented him by a
freedman of the emperor. Thus impelled to provide for his own safety, he
called his troops together, and setting before them the images of the
tyrant’s noblest victims, harangued them on the state of public affairs.
The soldiers saluted him as imperator, but he would only allow himself to
be styled Legatus of the senate and the people. He proceeded, however,
at once to prorogue all civil business, and provide for immediate war
by raising forces, both legionary and auxiliary, from the youth of the
province. At the same time he convened the notables of the country, to
give perhaps a civil colour to his military enterprise. The Gallic and
Germanic legions, now reunited, after the death of Vindex, had offered
to raise Virginius to the purple; they conjured him to assume the
title of imperator, and inscribed on his busts the names of Cæsar and
Augustus. But he steadily refused the honours thrust upon him, erased
the obnoxious letters, and at length persuaded his admirers to leave the
decision of affairs to the authorities at home. He entered, however,
into communication with Galba, who had now, it seems, determined on the
attempt, and the news was bruited far and wide that Gaul and Spain had
revolted, and that the empire had passed irrevocably from the monster
Nero.
At once it appeared how many pretenders to power might exist in the bosom
of the provincial camps. The fatal secret of the empire, that a prince
might be created elsewhere than at Rome, so long undiscovered, so alien,
as was supposed, from the sentiments of the age, was revealed in more
than one quarter. Not in Gaul and Spain only, but in Africa and lower
Germany, the legions were ready to make an emperor of their own chief.
Clodius Macer in the one, Fonteius Capito in the other, were proclaimed
by the soldiers. At the same time Salvius Otho, Nero’s ancient favourite,
who was weary of his long oblivion on the shores of the Atlantic,
declared himself a supporter of Galba, and lent him his own slaves and
plate, to swell his retinue and increase his resources. The civil wars
had again begun.
[Illustration: ROMAN METHOD OF ATTACK FROM ABOVE]
Such was the march of disaffection, the first anticipations of which had
been revealed to Helius before the end of 66, and had induced him to urge
the emperor, first by letter and afterwards in person, to hasten home.
Nero, as we have seen, could not be persuaded to regard them seriously,
or postpone to their consideration his paltry gratifications and
amusements. After his return to Rome he had again quitted it for Naples
in March, 68, and it was on the 19th of that month, the anniversary of
Agrippina’s murder, while presiding at a gymnastic exhibition, that
he received the news of the revolt of Vindex. Still he treated the
announcement with contempt, and even expressed satisfaction at the
prospect of new confiscations. He witnessed the contests with unabated
interest, and retired from them to a banquet. Interrupted by fresh and
more alarming despatches, he resented them with petulant ill-humour;
for eight days he would neither issue orders nor be spoken to on the
subject. Finally arrived a manifesto from Vindex himself, which moved him
to send a message to the senate, requiring it to denounce the rebel as a
public enemy; but he excused himself from appearing in person, alleging
a cold or sore throat, which he must nurse for the conservation of his
voice. Nothing so much incensed him as Vindex calling him Ahenobarbus
instead of Nero, and disparaging his skill in singing. “Had they ever
heard a better performer?” he asked peevishly of all around him. He now
hurried trembling to Rome; but he was reassured, we are told, on the
way by noticing a sculpture which represented a Gallic soldier dragged
headlong by a Roman knight. Accordingly, with his usual levity, instead
of consulting in full senate, or haranguing on the state of affairs in
the Forum, he held a hasty conversation with a few only of his nobles,
and passed the day in explaining to them a new water-organ, on which he
proposed, he said, “with Vindex’s good leave,” to perform in public.
He completed and dedicated a temple to Poppæa: once more he celebrated
the games of the circus, once more he played and sang, and drove the
chariot. But it was for the last time. Vindex had fallen, but Galba,
it was now announced, had raised the standard of revolt. The rebel’s
property in Rome was immediately confiscated, to which he replied by
selling under the spear the emperor’s estates in Spain. The hour of
retribution, long delayed, was now swiftly advancing; courier after
courier was dashing through the gates, bringing news of the defection of
generals and legions. The revolt of Virginius was no longer doubtful.
At this intelligence the puny tyrant fainted; coming to himself he
tore his robes and smote his head, with pusillanimous wailings. To the
consolations of his nurse he replied, with the cries of an infant, “never
was such ill-fortune as his; other Cæsars had fallen by the sword, he
alone must lose the empire still living.” At last he recollected himself
sufficiently to summon troops from Illyricum for the defence of Italy;
but these, it was found, were in correspondence with the enemy. Another
resource, which served only to show to what straits he was driven, was
to land sailors from the fleet at Ostia, and form them into a legion.
Then he invoked the pampered populace to arise in his behalf, and dressed
up courtesans and dancers as Amazons to attend his march; next moment
he exclaimed that he would take ship for Alexandria, and there earn
subsistence by singing in the streets. Again he launched into invectives
against the magistrates abroad, threatening to recall and disgrace them
throughout his dominions; the provinces he would give up to pillage,
he would slay every Gaul in the city, he would massacre the senate, he
would let loose the lions on the populace, he would lay Rome in ashes.
Finally, the tyrant’s vein exhausted, he proposed in woman’s mood to meet
the rebels unarmed, trusting in his beauty, his tears, and the persuasive
tones of his voice, to win them to obedience.
[Illustration: A CENTURION OFFICER]
Meanwhile the excitement among the knights and senators at the prospect
of deliverance kept pace with the progress of revolt abroad. Portents
were occurring at their doors. Blood rained on the Alban Mount; the gates
of the Julian sepulchre burst open of their own accord. The Hundred Days
of Nero were drawing rapidly to a close. He had landed in Italy about the
end of February, and now at the beginning of June his cause had already
become hopeless. Galba, though steadfast in his resolution, had not yet
set his troops in motion; nevertheless, Nero was no longer safe in the
city. The people, at first indifferent, were now clamouring against him;
for there was a dearth of provisions, and a vessel, just arrived from
Alexandria, was found, to their disgust, to bear not grain, but fine sand
for the wrestlers in the amphitheatre. The prætorians had been seduced by
their prefect Nymphidius, to whom the camp was abandoned by the flight
of Tigellinus. Nero was left without advisers; the senators stood aloof;
of Helius, lately so powerful and energetic, we hear nothing. Terrified
by dreams, stung by ridicule or desertion, when his last hope of succour
was announced to have deceived him the wretched tyrant started from his
couch at supper, upset the tables, and dashed his choicest vessels to
the ground; then taking poison from Locusta and placing it in a golden
casket, he crossed from the palace to the Servilian gardens, and sent his
trustiest freedmen to secure a galley at Ostia. He conjured some tribunes
and centurions, with a handful of guards, to join his flight; but all
refused, and one blunter than the rest exclaimed tauntingly, “Is it then
so hard to die?”
THE DEATH OF NERO
At last at midnight, finding that even the sentinels had left their
posts, he sent or rushed himself to assemble his attendants. Every door
was closed; he knocked, but no answer came. Returning to his chamber,
he found the slaves fled, the furniture pillaged, the case of poison
removed. Not a guard, not a gladiator, was at hand, to pierce his
throat. “I have neither friend nor foe,” he exclaimed. He would have
thrown himself into the Tiber, but his courage failed him. He must have
time, he said, and repose to collect his spirits for suicide, and his
freedman Phaon at last offered him his villa in the suburbs, four miles
from the city. In undress and bare-footed, throwing a rough cloak over
his shoulders, and a kerchief across his face, he glided through the
doors, mounted a horse, and, attended by Sporus and three others, passed
the city gates with the dawn of the summer morning. The Nomentane road
led him beneath the wall of the prætorians, whom he might hear uttering
curses against him, and pledging vows to Galba; and the early travellers
from the country asked him, as they met, “What news of Nero?” or remarked
to one another, “These men are pursuing the tyrant.” Thunder and
lightning, and a shock of earthquake, added horror to the moment. Nero’s
horse started at a dead body on the roadside, the kerchief fell from his
face, and a prætorian passing by recognised and saluted him.
At the fourth milestone the party quitted the highway, alighted from
their horses, and scrambled on foot through a cane-brake, laying their
own cloaks to tread on, to the rear of the promised villa. Phaon now
desired Nero to crouch in a sand-pit hard by, while he contrived to open
the drain from the bathroom, and so admit him unperceived; but he vowed
he would not go alive, as he said, underground, and remained trembling
beneath the wall. Taking water from a puddle in his hand, “This,” he
said, “is the famous Drink of Nero.” At last a hole was made, through
which he crept on all fours into a narrow chamber of the house, and
there threw himself on a pallet. The coarse bread that was offered him
he could not eat, but swallowed a little tepid water. Still he lingered,
his companions urging him to seek refuge, without delay, from the insults
about to be heaped on him. He ordered them to dig a grave, and lay down
himself to give the measure; he desired them to collect bits of marble to
decorate his sepulchre, and prepare water to cleanse and wood to burn his
corpse, sighing meanwhile, and muttering, “What an artist to perish!”
Presently a slave of Phaon’s brought papers from Rome, which Nero
snatched from him, and read that the senate had proclaimed him an enemy,
and decreed his death, in the ancient fashion. He asked what that was;
and was informed that the culprit was stripped, his head placed in a
fork, and his body smitten with the stick till death. Terrified at this
announcement, he took two daggers from his bosom, tried their edge one
after the other, and again laid them down, alleging that the moment
was not yet arrived. Then he called on Sporus to commence his funeral
lamentations; then he implored some of the party to set him the example;
once and again he reproached himself with his own timidity. “Fie!
Nero, fie!” he muttered in Greek, “courage, man! come, rouse thee!”
Suddenly was heard the trampling of horsemen, sent to seize the culprit
alive. Then at last, with a verse of Homer hastily ejaculated, “Sound
of swift-footed steeds strikes on my ears,” he placed a weapon to his
breast, and the slave Epaphroditus drove it home.
The blow was scarcely struck, when the centurion rushed in, and,
thrusting his cloak against the wound, pretended he was come to help
him. The dying wretch could only murmur, “Too late,” and, “Is this your
fidelity?” and expired with a horrid stare on his countenance. He had
adjured his attendants to burn his body, and not let the foe bear off his
head, and this was now allowed him; the corpse was consumed with haste
and imperfectly, but at least without mutilation.
Nero perished on the 9th of June, 68 A.D., at the age of thirty years and
six months, in the fourteenth year of his principate. The child borne him
by Poppæa had died in infancy, and a subsequent marriage with Statilia
Messallina had proved unfruitful. The stock of the Julii, refreshed in
vain by grafts from the Octavii, the Claudii, and the Domitii, had been
reduced to his single person, and with Nero the adoptive race of the
great dictator was extinguished. The first of the Cæsars had married
four times, the second thrice, the third twice, the fourth thrice
again, the fifth six times, and lastly, the sixth thrice also. Of these
repeated unions, a large number had borne offspring, yet no descendants
of them survived. A few had lived to old age, many reached maturity,
some were cut off by early sickness, the end of others was premature and
mysterious; but a large proportion were victims of domestic jealousy and
politic assassination.
With Nero we bid farewell to the Cæsars, at the same time we bid farewell
to the state of things which the Cæsars created and maintained. We turn
over a page in Roman history. On the verge of a new epoch we would treat
with grave respect even the monster with whom the old epoch closes; we
may think it well that the corpse even of Nero was unmutilated; that he
was buried decently in the Domitian gardens on the Pincian; that though
the people evinced a thoughtless triumph at his death, as if it promised
them a freedom which they could neither use nor understand, some unknown
hands were found to strew flowers on his sepulchre, and the rival king of
Parthia adjured the senate to do honour to his memory.
Undoubtedly the Romans regarded with peculiar feeling the death of the
last of the Cæsars. Nero was cut off in early youth; he perished in
obscurity; he was entombed in a private sepulchre, with no manifestation
of national concern, such as had thrown a gleam of interest over the
least regretted of his predecessors. Yet these circumstances would
not have sufficed to impart a deep mystery to the event, without the
predisposition of the people to imagine that the dynasty which had ruled
them for four generations could not suddenly pass away, finally and
irrevocably. The idea that Nero still survived, and the expectation of
his return to power, continued long to linger among them. More than one
pretender arose to claim his empire, and twenty years later a false Nero
was protected by the Parthians, among whom he had taken refuge, and only
surrendered to the repeated and vehement demands of the Roman government.
This popular anticipation was the foundation, perhaps, of the common
persuasion of the Christians, that he should revisit the earth in the
character of Antichrist; and possibly that Jerusalem itself would be the
scene.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[18] [Apologists are not wanting who assert that it was chiefly Nero’s
contempt for Roman customs which alienated the “respectable citizens”;
that these citizens were really more brutal than Nero; and that the
emperor’s chief fault was criminal indulgence towards his courtiers,
rather than cruelty. Such views illustrate the curious oscillations of
historical criticism, to which we have so often had occasion to refer.
Even the most sympathetic and flattering view of Nero presents him as at
least reflecting the conditions of a society in some respects monstrous.]
[Illustration]