[68 A.D.]

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,

[68 A.D.]

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.

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

[68 A.D.] 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.

A CENTURION

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?"

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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 barefooted, 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.

[68 A.D.]

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 Poppaa 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