The Historians' History of the World 06

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.]