_ ROME had gone mad for a long time, so that the world-conquering
city seemed ready at last to tear itself to pieces for want of
leadership. Even before the last hour of the Apostles had struck,
Pisoaes conspiracy appeared; and then such merciless reaping of
aeome's highest heads, that even to those who saw divinity in
Nero, he seemed at last a divinity of death. Mourning fell on the
city, terror took its lodgment in houses and in hearts, but porticos
were crowned with ivy and flowers, for it was not permitted to
show sorrow for the dead. People waking in the morning asked
themselves whose turn would come next. The retinue of ghosts
following Caesar increased every day.
Piso paid for the conspiracy with his head; after him followed
Seneca, and Lucan, Fenius Rufus, and Plautius Lateranus, and
Flavius Scevinus, and Afranius Quinetianus, and the dissolute
companion of Casar's madnesses, Tullius Serieeio, ataed Proculus,
and Araricus, and Tugurhuis, and Gratus, and Silanus, and
Proximus, -- once devoted with his whole soul to Nero, -- and
Sulpicius Asper. Some were destroyed by their own insignificance,
some by fear, some by wealth, others by bravery. Caesar,
astonished at the very number of the conspirators, covered the
walls with soldiery and held the city as if by siege, sending out
daily centurions with sentences of death to suspected houses. The
condemned humiliated themselves in letters filled with flattery,
thanking Caesar for his sentences, and leaving him a part of their
property, so as to save the rest for their children. It seemed, at last,
that Nero was exceeding every measure on purpose to convince
himself of the degree in which men had grown abject, and how
long they would endure bloody rule. After the conspirators, their
relatives were executed; then their friends, and even simple
acquaintances. Dwellers in lordly mansions built after the fire,
when they went out on the street, felt sure of seeing a
whole row of funerals. Pompeius, Cornelius, Martialis, Flavius
Nepos, and Statius Domitius died because accused of lack of love
for Caesar; Novius Priscus, as a friend of Seneca. Rufius Crispus
was deprived of the right of fire and water because on a time he
had been the husband of Poppaea. The great Thrasea was ruined
by his virtue; many paid with their lives for noble origin; even
Poppaea fell a victim to the momentary rage of Nero.
The Senate crouched before the dreadful ruler; it raised a temple in
his honor, made an offering in favor of his voice, crowned his
statues, appointed priests to him as to a divinity. Senators,
trembling in their souls, went to the Palatine to magnify the song
of the "Periodonices," and go wild with him amid orgies of naked
bodies, wine, and flowers.
But meanwhile from below, in the field soaked in blood and tears,
rose the sowing of Peter, stronger and stronger every moment. _