Agrippina’s bold stroke had been completely successful. Its suddenness had disarmed opposition: only a few voices were raised for Britannicus; nor is there any doubt that Rome was prepared to welcome the new emperor with genuine enthusiasm. To his descent from Germanicus and from Augustus he owed a prestige which was strengthened by the general belief in his own good qualities. He was young, generous, and genial. His abilities, really considerable, were skilfully assisted and magnified by Seneca’s ready dexterity, while the existence of his worse qualities—his childish vanity, ungovernable selfishness, and savage temper —was as yet unsuspected by all but those immediately about him. His first acts confirmed the favourable impressions thus produced. With graceful modesty he declined the venerable title of “pater patriae.” The memory of Claudius, and that of his own father Domitius were duly honoured. The senate listened with delight to his promises to rule according to the maxims of Augustus, and to avoid the errors and abuses which had multiplied under the rule at once lax and arbitrary of his predecessor, while his unfailing clemency, liberality, and affability were the talk of Rome. Much no doubt of the credit of all this is due to Seneca, and his faithful ally Burrus. Seneca had seen from the first that the real danger with Nero lay in the savage vehemence of his passions, and he made it his chief aim to stave off by every means in his power the dreaded outbreak of “the wild beast” element in his pupil’s nature. He indulged him to the full in all his tastes, smoothed away opposition, and, while relieving him as far as possible of the more irksome duties of government, gave him every facility for easily winning the applause he craved for by acts of generosity which cost him little. Nor is it certain that any other policy would have succeeded better with a nature like Nero’s, which had never known training or restraint, and now revelled with childish delight in the consciousness of absolute power. Provided only that the wild beast did not taste blood, it mattered little if respectable society was scandalized at the sight of an emperor whose chief delight was in pursuits hitherto left to Greek slaves and freedmen. At any rate the policy succeeded for the time. During the first five years of his reign, the golden “quinquennium Neronis,” little occurred to damp the hopes excited by his behaviour on succeeding to the throne. His clemency of temper was unabated. His promises of constitutional moderation were amply fulfilled, and the senate found itself free to discuss and even to decide important administrative questions. Abuses were remedied, the provincials protected from oppression, and the burdens of taxation lightened. On the frontiers, thanks chiefly to Corbulo’s energy and skill, no disaster occurred serious enough to shake the general confidence in the government, and even the murder of Britannicus seems to have been easily pardoned at the time as a necessary measure of self-defence. But Seneca’s fears of what the consequences would be, should Nero’s sleeping passions once be roused, were fully verified by the result, and he seems to have seen all along from what quarter danger was to be apprehended. Agrippina’s imperious temper and insatiable love of power made it certain that she would not willingly abandon her ascendency over her son, and it was scarcely less certain that her efforts to retain it would bring her into collision with his ungovernable self-will. At the same time the success of Seneca’s own management of Nero largely depended on his being able gradually to emancipate the emperor from his mother’s control. During the first few months of Nero’s reign the chances of such an emancipation seemed remote, for he not only treated his mother with elaborate respect, but consulted her on all affairs of state. In 55, however, Seneca found a powerful ally in Nero’s passion for the beautiful freedwoman Acte, a passion which he deliberately encouraged for his own purposes. Agrippina’s injured pride provoked her to angry remonstrances, which served only to irritate her wayward son, and the caresses by which she endeavoured to repair her mistake equally failed in their object. Furious at her discomfiture, she rashly tried intimidation, and threatened to espouse the cause of the injured Britannicus. But her threats only served to show that her son, if once his will was crossed, or his fears aroused, could be as unscrupulous and headstrong as his mother. Britannicus was poisoned as he sat at table. Agrippina, however, still persisted. She attempted to win over Nero’s neglected wife Octavia, and to form a party of her own within the court. Nero replied by dismissing her guards, and placing herself in a sort of honourable confinement. This second defeat seems to have decided Agrippina to acquiesce in her deposition from the leading position she had filled since 49. During nearly three years she disappears from the history, and with her retirement things again for the time went smoothly. In 58, however, fresh cause for anxiety appeared. For the second time Nero was enslaved by the charms of a mistress. But Poppaea Sabina, the new favourite, was a woman of a very different stamp from her predecessor. High-born, wealthy, and accomplished, she had no mind to be merely the emperor’s plaything. She was resolved to be his wife, and with consummate skill she set herself at once to remove the obstacles which stood in her way. Her first object was the final ruin of Agrippina. By taunts and caresses she drove her weak and passionate lover into a frenzy of fear and baulked desire. She taught him easily enough to hate and dislike his mother as an irksome check on his freedom of action, and as dangerous to his personal safety. To get rid of her, no matter how, became his one object, and the diabolical ingenuity of Anicetus, a freedman, and now prefect of the fleet at Misenum, devised a means of doing so without unnecessary scandal. Agrippina was invited to Baiae, and after an affectionate reception by her son, was conducted on board a vessel so constructed as, at a given signal, to fall to pieces and precipitate its passengers into the waters of the lake. But the manoeuvre failed. Agrippina saved herself by swimming to the shore, and at once wrote to her son, announcing her escape, and affecting entire ignorance of the plot against her. The news filled Nero with consternation, but once again Anicetus came to his rescue. A body of soldiers under his command surrounded Agrippina’s villa, and murdered her in her own chamber. The deed done, Nero was for the moment horrorstruck at the enormity of the crime, and terrified at its possible consequences to himself. But a six months’ residence in Campania, and the congratulations which poured in upon him from the neighbouring towns, where the report had been officially spread that Agrippina had fallen a victim to her own treacherous designs upon the emperor’s life, gradually restored his courage. In September 59 he re-entered Rome amid universal rejoicing, fully resolved upon enjoying his dearly bought freedom. A prolonged carnival followed, in which Nero revelled in the public gratification of the tastes which he had hitherto ventured to indulge only in comparative privacy. Chariot races, musical and dramatic exhibitions, games in the Greek fashion, rapidly succeeded each other. In all the emperor was a prominent figure, and the fashionable world of Rome, willingly or unwillingly, followed the imperial example. These revels, however, extravagant as they were, at least involved no bloodshed, and were humanizing and civilized compared with the orthodox Roman gladiatorial shows. A far more serious result of the death of Agrippina was the growing influence over Nero of Poppaea and her friends; and in 62 their influence was fatally strengthened by the removal of the trusty advisers who had hitherto stood by the emperor’s side. Burrus died early in that year, it was said from the effects of poison, and his death was immediately followed by the retirement of Seneca from a position which he felt to be no longer tenable. Their place was filled by Poppaea, and by the infamous Tigellinus, whose sympathy with Nero’s sensual tastes had gained him the command of the praetorian guards in succession to Burrus. The two now set themselves to attain a complete mastery over the emperor. The haunting fear of conspiracy, which had unnerved stronger Caesars before him, was skilfully used to direct Nero’s fierce suspicions against possible opponents. Cornelius Sulla, who had been banished to Massilia in 58, was put to death on the ground that his residence in Gaul was likely to arouse disaffection in that province, and a similar charge proved fatal to Rubellius Plautus, who had for two years been living in retirement in Asia. Nero’s taste for blood thus whetted, a more illustrious victim was next found in the person of the unhappy Octavia. At the instigation of Poppaea she was first divorced and then banished to the island of Pandateria, where a few days later she was barbarously murdered. Poppaea’s triumph was now complete. She was formally married to Nero; her head appeared on the coins side by side with his; and her statues were erected in the public places of Rome.

This series of crimes, in spite of the unvarying applause which still greeted all Nero’s acts, had excited gloomy forebodings of coming evil, and the general uneasiness was increased by the events which followed. In 63 the partial destruction of Pompeii by an earthquake, and the news of the evacuation of Armenia by the Roman legions, seemed to confirm the belief that the blessing of the gods was no longer with the emperor. A far deeper and more lasting impression was produced by the great fire in Rome, an event which more than almost any other has thrown a lurid light round Nero’s reign. The fire broke out on the night of July 18, 64, among the wooden booths at the south-east end of the Circus Maximus. Thence in one direction it rapidly spread over the Palatine and Velia up to the low cliffs of the Esquiline, and in another it laid waste the Aventine, the Forum Boarium, and Velabrum till it reached the Tiber and the solid barrier of the Servian wall. After burning fiercely for six days, and when its fury seemed to have exhausted itself, it suddenly started afresh in the northern quarter of the city, and desolated the two regions of the Circus Flaminius and the Via Lata. By the time that it was finally quenched only four of the fourteen regiones remained untouched; three had been utterly destroyed, and seven reduced to ruins. The conflagration is said by all authorities later than Tacitus to have been deliberately caused by Nero himself. But Tacitus, though he mentions rumours to that effect, declares that its origin was uncertain, and his description of Nero’s energetic conduct at the time justifies us in acquitting the emperor of so reckless a piece of incendiarism. By Nero’s orders, the open spaces in the Campus Martius were utilized to give shelter to the homeless crowds, provisions were brought up from Ostia, and the price of corn lowered. In rebuilding the city every precaution was taken against the recurrence of such a calamity. Broad regular streets replaced the narrow winding alleys. The new houses were limited in height, built partly of hard stone, and protected by open spaces and colonnades. The water supply, lastly, was carefully regulated. But there is nevertheless no doubt that this great disaster told against Nero in the popular mind. It was regarded as a direct manifestation of the wrath of the gods, even by those who did not share the current suspicions of the emperor’s guilt. This impression no religious ceremonies, nor even the execution of a number of Christians, hastily pitched upon as convenient scapegoats, could altogether dispel. Nero, however, undeterred by forebodings and rumours, proceeded with the congenial work of repairing the damage inflicted by the flames. In addition to the rebuilding of the streets, he gratified his love of magnificence by the erection of a splendid palace for himself. The wonders of his “golden house” were remembered and talked of long after its partial demolition by Vespasian. It stretched from the Palatine across the low ground, afterwards occupied by the Colosseum, to the Esquiline. Its walls blazed with gold and precious stones; masterpieces of art from Greece adorned its walls; but most marvellous of all were the grounds in which it stood, with their meadows and lakes, their shady woods, and their distant views. To defray the enormous cost, Italy and the provinces, says Tacitus, were ransacked, and in Asia and Achaia especially the rapacity of the imperial commissioners recalled the days of Mummius and of Sulla. It was the first occasion on which the provincials had suffered from Nero’s rule, and the discontent it caused helped to weaken his hold over them at the very moment when the growing discontent in Rome was gathering to a head. For early in 65 Nero was panic-stricken amid his pleasures by the discovery of a formidable conspiracy against his life and rule. Such conspiracies, prompted partly by the ambition of powerful nobles and partly by their personal fears, had been of frequent occurrence in the history of the Caesars, and now Nero’s recent excesses, and his declining popularity, seemed to promise well for the success of the plot. Among the conspirators were many who held important posts, or belonged to the innermost circle of Nero’s friends, such as Faenius Rufus, Tigellinus’s colleague in the prefecture of the praetorian guards, Plautius Lateranus, one of the consuls elect, the poet Lucan, and, lastly, not a few of the tribunes and centurions of the praetorian guard itself. Their chosen leader, whom they destined to succeed Nero, was C. Calpurnius Piso, a handsome, wealthy, and popular noble, and a boon companion of Nero himself. The plan was that Nero should be murdered when he appeared as usual at the games in the circus, but the design was frustrated by the treachery of a freedman Milichus, who, tempted by the hope of a large reward, disclosed the whole plot to the emperor. In a frenzy of sudden terror Nero struck right and left among the ranks of the conspirators. Piso was put to death in his own house; and his fall was rapidly followed by the execution of Faenius Rufus, Lucan, and many of their less prominent accomplices. Even Seneca himself, though there seems to have been no evidence of his complicity, could not escape the frantic suspiciousness of the emperor, stimulated as it may have been in his case by the jealousy of Tigellinus and Poppaea. The order for his death reached him in his country house near Rome, and he met his fate with dignity and courage. For the moment Nero felt safe; but, though largesses and thanksgivings celebrated the suppression of the conspiracy, and the dazzling round of games and shows was renewed with even increased splendour, the effects of the shock were visible in the long and dreary list of victims who during the next few months were sacrificed to his restless fears and savage resentment. Conspicuous among them was Paetus Thrasea, whose irreconcilable non-conformity and unbending virtue had long made him distasteful to Nero, and who was now suspected, possibly with reason, of sympathy with the conspirators. The death of Poppaea in the autumn of 65 was probably not lamented by any one but her husband, but the general gloom was deepened by a pestilence, caused,...