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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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This artfully compound speech, adapted to excite fear and rage, at once produced the desired effect, and terrified while it inflamed the imperial hearer; but a suspicion resting only on the evidence of a slave, and neutralised by the asseverations of the tortured maids, was not strong enough for this purpose. It was therefore resolved that some person should be found who would confess the guilty commerce, and who might also be plausibly charged with the crime of rebellion. Anicetus was judged a fitting instrument for this purpose; the same who had accomplished the murder of his mother, and, as I have related, commanded the fleet at Misenum; whom the emperor, after that horrid service, held in light esteem, but afterwards in extraordinary detestation; for the ministers of nefarious deeds seem in the eyes of their employers as living reproaches of their iniquity. Him therefore Nero summoned; and told him that he alone had saved the life of the prince from the dark devices of his mother; an opportunity for a service of no less magnitude now presented itself by relieving him from a wife who was his mortal enemy, nor was there need of force or arms; he had only to admit adultery with Octavia. He promised rewards, which he said must indeed be kept a secret for the present, but of great value, and also a delightful retreat; but threatened him with death, if he declined the task. Anicetus, from an inherent perversity of principle, and a facility in crime produced by the horrible transactions in which he had been already engaged, even exceeded his orders in lying, and made confession of the adultery to the friends of the prince, whom he had summoned as a council. He was then banished to Sardinia, where he lived in exile, but not in poverty, and where he died a natural death.
Now Nero in an edict stated that Octavia, in hopes of engaging the fleet in her conspiracy, had corrupted Anicetus the admiral. And forgetting that he had just before accused her of barrenness, he added, that in guilty consciousness of her lust, she had produced abortion, and that all these were clearly proved to him. And he confined her in the island Pandataria. Never was there any exile who touched the hearts of the beholders with deeper compassion; some there were who still remembered to have seen Agrippina banished by Tiberius; the more recent sufferings of Julia were likewise recalled to mind, confined there by Claudius: but they had experienced some happiness, and the recollection of their former splendour proved some alleviation of their present horrors. To Octavia, in the first place, the day of her nuptials was in place of a funeral day, being brought under a roof where she encountered nothing but memorials of woe; her father cut off by poison, and soon afterwards her brother; then a handmaid more influential than her mistress; Poppæa wedded to her husband, only to bring destruction on his lawful wife—and lastly, a crime laid to her charge more intolerable than death in any shape.
And this young lady, in her twentieth year, thrown among centurions and common soldiers, and already bereft of life under the presage of impending woes, did not, however, as yet enjoy the repose of death. After an interval of a few days she was ordered to die, when she protested,“she was now a widow, and only the emperor’s sister”; appealed to the Germanici, the common relatives of Nero and herself; and lastly invoked the name of Agrippina, observing, “that had she lived, her marriage-state would have been made wretched, but she would not have been doomed to destruction.” She was then tied fast with bonds, and her veins opened in every joint; and her death was accelerated by the vapour of a bath, heated to the highest point. A deed of still more atrocious brutality was added; her head was cut off and conveyed to the city for Poppæa to see it. Offerings at the temples were decreed by the fathers on account of these events; a circumstance which I have recorded in order that that all those who shall read the calamities of those times, as they are delivered by me or any other authors, may conclude by anticipation, that as often as a banishment or a murder was perpetrated by the prince’s orders, so often thanks were rendered to the gods; and those acts which in former times were resorted to to distinguish prosperous occurrences, were now made the tokens of public disasters. Still I will not suppress the mention of any decree of the senate which is marked by unheard-of adulation, or the extremity of abject servility.
Nero himself, to make it believed that he enjoyed himself nowhere so much as at Rome, caused banquets to be prepared in the public places, and used the whole city as his house. Remarkable above all others for the display of luxury and the noise it made in the world was the feast given by Tigellinus, which, (says Suetonius), I will describe by way of specimen, that I may not have to repeat the instances of similar prodigality. For this purpose, he built, in the lake of Agrippa, a raft which supported the banquet, which was drawn to and fro by other vessels, the vessels were striped with gold and ivory, and rowed by bands of pathics, who were ranged according to their age, and accomplishments in the science of debauchery. He had procured fowl and venison from remote regions, with sea-fish even from the ocean; upon the margin of the lake were erected brothels, filled with ladies of distinction; over against them naked harlots were exposed to view; now, were beheld obscene gestures and motions; and as soon as darkness came on, all the neighbouring groves and circumjacent dwellings resounded with music, and glared with lights. Nero wallowed in all sorts of defilements, lawful and unlawful, and seemed to leave no atrocity which could add to his pollution, till a few days afterwards he married, as a woman, one of this contaminated herd, named Pythagoras, with all the solemnities of wedlock. The Roman emperor put on the nuptial veil; the augurs, the portion, the bridal bed, the nuptial torches, were all seen; in fine, everything exposed to view which, even in a female, is covered by the night.
THE GREAT FIRE AT ROME; PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS
A Centurion Officer
[64 A.D.]
There followed a dreadful disaster; whether fortuitously, or by the wicked contrivance of the prince, is not determined, for both are asserted by historians; but of all the calamities which ever befell this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible and severe. It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous to mounts Palatine and Cælius; where, by reason of shops in which were kept such goods as minister aliment to fire, the moment it commenced it acquired strength, and being accelerated by the wind, it spread at once through the whole extent of the Circus; for neither were the houses secured by enclosures, nor the temples environed with walls, nor was there any other obstacle to intercept its progress; but the flame, spreading every way impetuously, invaded first the lower regions of the city, then mounted to the higher; then again ravaging the lower, it baffled every effort to extinguish it, by the rapidity of its destructive course, and from the liability of the city to conflagration, in consequence of the narrow and intricate alleys, and the irregularity of the streets in ancient Rome. Add to this, the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves, and those who laboured to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a scene of universal confusion and embarrassment. And while they looked back upon the danger in their rear, they often found themselves beset before, and on their sides; or if they escaped into the quarters adjoining, these too were already seized by the devouring flames; even the parts which they believed remote and exempt, were found to be in the same distress. At last, not knowing what to shun, or where to seek sanctuary, they crowded the streets, and lay along in the open fields. Some, from the loss of their whole substance, even the means of their daily sustenance, others, from affection for their relatives, whom they had not been able to snatch from the flames, suffered themselves to perish in them, though they had opportunity to escape. Neither dared any man offer to check the fire; so repeated were the menaces of many who forbade to extinguish it; and because others openly threw firebrands, with loud declarations that “they had one who authorised them”; whether they did it that they might plunder with the less restraint, or in consequence of orders given.