The Historians' History of the World 06

Having got rid of Agrippina, the two ministers governed for some years with moderation and justice. Several condemnations taught the provincial governors that their conduct was observed; several taxes were abolished or reduced. Nero demanded that they should all be repealed. Unfortunately love of pleasure now possessed him. Dissolute friends, vulgar liaisons, a fatal taste for the theatre, corrupted him from day to day. Seneca practised his good maxims too little for them to influence the young emperor. Rome learned with astonishment that her prince ran about the streets at night disguised as a slave, entering taverns and beating belated folk at the risk of striking one stronger than himself. A senator once returned his blows, and had the imprudence next day to apologise. Nero, remembering the inviolability belonging to his office of tribune, had him put to death. In the day he went to the theatre, giving trouble to the custodians, encouraging applause and hissing, exciting tumult, and taking pleasure in seeing the sovereign people break the benches and engage in fights in which he himself joined, throwing missiles at a venture from his elevated seat.

The virtuous sister of Britannicus could not be a fit wife for this royal débauché. He carried off Poppæa Sabina from her husband Otho. Poppæa’s ambition found an obstacle in Octavia, and one even stronger in Agrippina, who was not distressed by her son’s criminal conduct, but was much averse from seeing him under any influence but her own.

Irritated by her reproaches, Nero at last went so far as to give orders for her death. Anicetus, commander of the fleet at Misenum, formed a plot to assassinate the empress. On the pretext of a reconciliation she was invited to go to Baiæ, and was put on a vessel so built as to part asunder when out at sea. Agrippina saved herself by swimming and reached the neighbouring coast, where she took refuge in her villa at the Lucrine Lake. Nero caused her to be stabbed, and proclaimed that she had killed herself after a freedman sent by her had been caught in an attempt to kill him (59 A.D.). Such was the fate of this woman, a granddaughter of Augustus, and sister, wife, and mother, to three emperors. But revengeful furies pursued the parricide in spite of the congratulations which Burrus was base enough to offer him in the name of the soldiers and the thanks rendered to the gods in all parts of the city at Seneca’s suggestion. He sought to stifle his remorse by plunging into gross and insensate debauchery. His most unworthy follies date from this time. The Romans blushed to see him driving a chariot in the arena and mounting the stage to sing and play the lyre. We may imagine he stifled his conscience, but not that he found rest. In Greece, he dared not enter the Eleusinian temple of which the herald’s voice bid the impious and parricides avaunt.b

During the last two proconsulates the prefecture of Syria had acquired its greater extension. On the death of Herod Agrippa in 44, his kingdom of Judea had been definitively annexed to the empire, and was subjected, as once before, to an imperial procurator, who, while he derived his fiscal and civil authority directly from the emperor, and acted in a manner as his viceroy, was nevertheless placed under the military control of the proconsul. Under court protection some of the Judean procurators, especially the infamous Felix, the brother of Pallas, and his partner in the favour of Claudius, had indulged in every excess, till the spirit of revolt already roused by the threats of Caligula broke out in fierce but desultory acts of violence. These indeed had been repressed with the sternness of Rome, not unmingled with some features of barbarity peculiar to the East. Nevertheless the government had resented the tyranny of its own officers, which had caused this dangerous insubordination, and Quadratus, the proconsul, had himself condemned from his tribunal the indiscretion of the procurator Cumanus. While, however, the authority of the Syrian proconsul was thus extended over the region of Palestine in the south, a portion of his northern dependencies was taken from him, and erected for a time into a separate prefecture.

CORBULO AND THE EAST

[54-60 A.D.]