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insurrection in Gaul. He made so light of it that some thought he was rejoiced at the occasion which it was likely to offer for plundering those wealthy provinces. During eight days he took his ordinary amusements. At length, stung by the contumelious edicts of Vindex, he wrote to the senate excusing his absence on account of the soreness of his throat, as if, observes the historian, he was to have sung for them; and when he came to Rome he assembled the principal men of both orders, but instead of deliberating with them on the affairs of Gaul, he spent the time in explaining some improvements which he had made in the hydraulic organ, adding that he would shortly produce it in the theatre, if Vindex would allow him.

When however he heard of the revolt of Galba and the Spains, his consternation was extreme. He revolved, it is said, the wildest and most nefarious projects, such as sending persons to kill all the governors of provinces, massacring the exiles and all the Gauls that were at Rome, poisoning the senate, setting fire to the city, and letting the wild beasts loose on the people. He began to levy troops; but his first care was to provide carriages to convey his theatric properties, and to dress and arm a party of his concubines as Amazons to form his guard. The Urban cohorts having refused to serve, he called on all masters to furnish a certain number of their slaves, and he took care to select the most valuable, not even excepting the stewards or amanuenses. He likewise required all persons to give him a part of their property.

Intelligence of further revolts having reached him as he was at dinner, he overturned in his terror the table and broke his two precious Homeric cups, as they were named, from the scenes from Homer which were carved on them. Taking then with him in a golden box some poison prepared for him by Locusta, he went to the Servilian gardens and sent some of his most faithful freedmen to Ostia to get shipping ready. He then tried to prevail on the officers of the guards to accompany his flight, but some excused themselves, others refused, and one even repeated the line of Virgil, Usque adeone mori miserum est? One time he thought of flying to the Parthians, another time to Galba, then of ascending the Rostra and asking public pardon for his transgressions and praying for even the government of Egypt. He retired to rest; but awaking in the middle of the night and finding that his guards had left him, he sprang up and sent for some of his friends. When none came, he arose and went to their houses, but every

door was closed against him. On his return he found his bedchamber pillaged, and his box of poison gone. He sought in vain for some one to kill him. "Have I neither a friend nor an enemy?" cried he, and rushed to the Tiber to throw himself in it. His courage however failed him, and his freedman Phaon having offered a country-house which he had four miles from the city* for a retreat, he mounted a horse, and set out with Sporus and three others, concealed in a dark cloak, with his head covered and a handkerchief before his face. As he was quitting the city the ground seemed to rock beneath him and a broad flash of lightning struck terror to his heart, and as he passed the prætorian camp his ears were assailed by the shouts of the soldiers execrating him and wishing success to Galba. "There they go in pursuit of Nero," observed one of those whom they met; another inquired of them if there was any news of Nero in the city. His horse starting in the road, his handkerchief fell, and he was recognised and saluted by a prætorian soldier. They had to quit their horses and scramble through a thicket to get to the rear of Phaon's villa, and then to wait till an aperture was made in the wall to admit them. Phaon urged him to conceal himself meantime in a sandhole, but he replied that he would not bury himself alive, and taking some water up in his hand from a pool to quench his thirst, he said "This is Nero's prepared water+." He then picked the thorns out of his cloak, and when the aperture was completed he crept through it and lay down on a miserable pallet in a slave's cell. Though suffering from hunger he would not eat the coarse bread that was offered him, but he drank some warm water.

Every one now urged him to lose no time in saving himself from the impending insults. He directed them to dig a grave on the spot and to prepare the requisite water and wood for his funeral meantime he continued weeping and saying "What an artist is lost!" A messenger coming with letters to Phaon, he took them, and reading that he was declared an enemy by the senate and sentenced to be punished more majorum, he inquired what that meant? Being told that it was to be stripped naked, have the head placed in a fork and be scourged to death, he took two daggers he had with him and tried their

* On the other side of the Anio beyond the Sacred Mount.

Decocta. Nero is said to have introduced the practice of boiling water and then cooling it in snow to give it a greater degree of cold.-Plin. N. H. xxxi. 3.

edge, then sheathed them again, saying that the fatal hour was not yet come. One moment he desired Sporus to begin the funeral wail, then he called on some one to set him an example of dying, then he upbraided his own cowardice. At length, hearing the trampling of the horses of those sent to take him, he hurriedly repeated an appropriate line from Homer, and placing a dagger at his throat, with the aid of his secretary Epaphroditus, drove it in. A centurion entering before he was dead put his cloak to the wound, pretending that he was come to his aid. "'Tis too late! Is this your fidelity ?" said the bleeding tyrant, and expired.

Such was the well-merited end of the emperor Nero in the thirty-first year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign. We have not ventured to pollute our pages with the appalling details of his lusts and vices, which historians have transmitted to us; for by so doing we should injure rather than serve the cause of moral purity and of virtue. Monster however as he was, the populace and the prætorian soldiery, missing the gifts and the shows which he used to bestow on them, soon began to regret him, and for many years his tomb continued to be visited and his memory to be held in honour. No more convincing proof could be given of the utter degradation of the Roman people.

On looking through the reigns of the four immediate successors of Augustus, one cannot fail to be struck with the singular failure of all the projects of that prince for securing the happiness of the Roman world. It can hardly be deemed fortuitous that such monsters should have attained to unlimited power, and those should not be regarded as superstitious who see in this event a fulfilment of that great law of the moral world, the visitation on the children of the sins and errors of the parents. The Roman nobles had in the last century of the republic robbed and oppressed the people of the provinces in the most nefarious manner*, and by their civil contentions at home they had demoralised the people and caused the downfall of public liberty; their descendants were therefore the victims of the most capricious and merciless of tyrannies, against which neither virtue nor innocence was a security. For we may observe that with slight exceptions it was solely against the noble and wealthy that the cruelties of the emperors were directed.

*The Verrine orations of Cicero are an eternal monument of their infamy.

The whole of the people of Rome, we may say nobles and plebeians alike, were debased and degraded. Though we may not place implicit faith in the exaggerated statements of the declaimers and satirists of the time, we yet must recognise the foundation of truth on which their exaggerations rest. The nobles were sunk in luxury and sensuality to a degree rarely equaled. Vice, unrestrained by that regard to appearance and public opinion which acts as so salutary a check in modern times, reigned in their splendid mansions and boldly affronted the public view. Still all were not equally debased. In the history of the times, we meet with many splendid examples of virtue, and had we the records of private life we should probably find much to flatter our more exalted views of human nature. They in general cultivated literature. The rigid precepts of the Stoic doctrine were adopted by those of more lofty aspirations; the votaries of sensual enjoyment professed the degenerated system of Epicurus.

The common people, now sunk into the condition of mere lazzaroni, living on the bounty or charity of the sovereign, and utterly destitute of even the semblance of political power, thought only of the public games*, and contended with more passion for the success of the blue or green faction of the Circus than their forefathers had shown for the elevation of a Scipio or a Marius to the highest dignities of the state. They were also completely brutalised by the constant view of the slaughter of gladiators, the combats of men with the wild beasts to which they were exposed, and the massacre of animals, many brought for the purpose from the most distant regions, in the amphitheatre. For such were the amusements with which the emperors, continuing in truth only the usage of the commonwealth, sought to gratify the populace of Rome.

The fine rural population of Italy, the hardy yeomanry and stout farm-labourers whose vigour and courage had won the victories which gave Rome her empire, had been greatly diminished. Tillage had ceased in a great measure; and Italy, divided into huge estates, the latifundia of the nobles, contained only vineyards, oliveyards, pastures and forests, in which all the labour was performed by gangs of slaves†. The *"Ex quo suffragia nulli

Vendimus effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim
Imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se
Continet, atque duas tantum res anxius optat,
Panem et Circenses."-Juv. Sat. x. 77.

† Columella, i. 3.

corn which was to relieve the wants of the imperial city was all supplied by Africa and Egypt; the existence of the Roman people was at the mercy of the winds, and any one who could obtain the possession even of Egypt* might hope to starve the capital. In every point of view this policy was bad; it should be the object of every prudent government to maintain a sound agricultural population; and no great nation should ever suffer itself to become dependent for its food on the selfishness or caprice of strangers.

Literature had greatly declined after the time of Augustus. The only historian of any note remaining from this period is C. Velleius Paterculus, an agreeable and ingenious writer, but the courtly flatterer of the tyrant Tiberius. The philosophic writings of Seneca display a pure morality conveyed in a style affected and epigrammatic, which, attractive from its very faults, operated very injuriously on the literature of the age. Of the actions of Seneca we have had occasion to speak in the preceding pages; and it is clear that his life did not strictly correspond with the high-strained principles of the Stoic philosophy which he professed. He is accused by Dion of having caused the insurrection of the Britons in the reign of Nero by his avarice, and that historian hints that the charge of adultery against him was not without foundation. On the other hand, Tacitus always speaks of him with great respect. Seneca, in effect, as he himself frequently confesses, had the failings of a man; he was rich, he increased his wealth in the ordinary Roman manner by putting his money out at interest in the provinces; he lived in a splendid manner; but he was moderate and temperate in his habits, and kind and amiable in all the relations of private life, and we should not hesitate to regard him as a good man. The unfortunate circumstances under which he was placed with respect to his imperial pupil, may plead his excuse for such of his public acts as are morally objectionable.

Of the poets of this period we possess only two, M. Annæus Lucanus, the nephew of Seneca, and A. Persius Flaccus. Both of these poets embraced the Stoic philosophy, and both died young. Lucan, following the example of Ennius, sought the materials of a narrative poem in the history of Rome. But his subject, the war between Cæsar and Pompeius, was too recent an event, and the poet was therefore impeded in his *See Tac. Ann. ii. 59.

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