[65-66 A.D.]

At the end of the games, he in a fit of anger gave Poppaa, 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."

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 Poppaa. 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.

[66 A.D.]

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. Î

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

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 I have had in my hands some little pocket-books of his, with some

own.

[54-68 A.D.]

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.

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.

[54-68 A.D.]

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 chamberrobe 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

[54-68 A.D.]

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

H. W.-VOL. VI. P