13. Rome, however, soon experienced to her cost the powerful ascendancy which L. Ælius Sejanus, the præfect of the prætorian guard, had acquired over the mind of Tiberius, whose unlimited confidence he possessed the more, as he enjoyed it without a rival. The eight years of his authority were rendered terrible not only by the cantonment of his troops in barracks near the city (castra prætoriana), but (having first persuaded Tiberius to quit Rome for ever, that he might more securely play the tyrant in the isle of Capreæ) by his endeavouring to open a way for himself to the throne by villanies and crimes without number, and by his cruel persecution of the family of Germanicus. The despotism he had introduced became still more dreadful by his own fall, in which not only his whole party, but every one that could be considered as connected with it, became involved. The picture of the atrocious despotism of Tiberius is rendered doubly disgusting by the horrid and unnatural lust which he joined to it in his old age.
Tiberius's misfortune was, that he came too late to the throne. His early virtues made no compensation for his later cruelties. It is properly the former which Vel. Paterculus praises, whose flattery of Tiberius, in whose reign he flourished, is more easily justified than his praise of Sejanus.
Caligula, March 16, 37—Jan. 24, 41.
14. At the age of twenty-five Caius Cæsar Caligula, the only remaining son of Germanicus, ascended the throne; but the hopes which had been formed of this young prince were soon wofully disappointed. His previous sickness and debaucheries had so distorted his understanding, that his short reign was one tissue of disorder and crime. Yet he did still more harm to the state by his besotted profusion than by his tiger-like cruelty. At length, after a career of nearly four years, he was assassinated by Cassius Chærea and Cornelius Sabinus, two officers of his guard.
Claudius, Jan. 24, 21—Oct. 13, 54.
the weak tool of his wives and freedmen.
Messalina;
Agrippina procures the throne for her son, with the assistance of Burrhus, and
50.
poisons Claudius, 54.
15. His uncle Tiberius Claudius Cæsar, who, at the age of fifty, succeeded him, was the first emperor raised to the throne by the guards; a favour which he rewarded by granting them a donative. Too weak to rule of himself, almost imbecile from former neglect, profligate, and cruel from fear, he became the tool of the licentiousness of his wives and freedmen. Coupled with the names of Messalina and Agrippina, we now hear, for the first time in Roman history, of a Pallas and a Narcissus. The dominion of Messalina was still more hurtful to the state by her rapacious cupidity, to which everything gave way, than by her dissolute life; and the blow which at last punished her unexampled wantonness, left a still more dangerous woman to supply her place. This was Agrippina, her neice, widow of L. Domitius, who joined to the vices of her predecessor a boundless ambition, unknown to the former. Her chief aim was to procure the succession for Domitius Nero, her son by a former marriage—who had been adopted by Claudius, and married to his daughter Octavia—by setting aside Britannicus, the son of Claudius; and this she hoped to effect, by poisoning Claudius, having already gained Burrhus, by making him sole præfect of the prætorian guard. Notwithstanding the contentions with the Germans and Parthians (see above, p. 303) were only on the frontiers, the boundaries of the Roman empire were in many countries extended.
Commencement of the Roman conquests in Britain (whither Claudius himself went) under A. Plautius, from the year A. C. 43. Under the same general, Mauritania, A. C. 42, Lycia, 43, Judæa, 44 (see above, p. 312), and Thrace, 47, were reduced to Roman provinces. He also abolished the præfectures which had hitherto existed in Italy.
Nero, Oct. 13, 54—June 11, 68.
His education and character.
16. Nero Claudius Cæsar, supported by Agrippina and the prætorian guard, succeeded Claudius at the age of seventeen. Brought up in the midst of the blackest crimes, and, by a perverted education, formed rather for a professor of music and the fine arts than for an emperor, he ascended the throne like a youth eager for enjoyment; and throughout his whole reign his cruelty appears subordinate to his fondness for debaucheries and revelry. The unsettled state of the succession first called into action his savage disposition; and after the murder of Britannicus the sword fell Destroys Britannicus and all the Julian family: his vanity also makes him cruel. in regular order upon all those who were even remotely connected with the Julian family. His vanity as a performer and composer excited in an equal degree his cruelty; and as, among all tyrants, every execution gives occasion for others, we need not wonder at his putting to death every one that excelled him. His connection, however, in the early part of his reign, with Agrippina, Burrhus, and Seneca, during which he introduced some useful regulations into the treasury, kept him within the bounds of decency. But Poppæa Sabina having driven him on to murders his wife and mother; the murder of his mother and his wife Octavia, and Tigellinus being made his confident, he felt no longer restrained by the fear of public opinion. The executions of individuals, nearly all of which history has recorded, was not, perhaps, upon the whole, the greatest evil; plunders the provinces to support his profligacy. the plunder of the provinces, not only to support his own loose and effeminate pleasures, but also to maintain the people in a continual state of intoxication, had nearly caused the dissolution of the empire. The last years of Nero were marked by a striking and undoubted insanity, which displayed itself in his theatrical performances, and even in the history of his fall. A. C. 68. It appears that both around and upon a throne like that of Rome, heroes were formed for vice as well as virtue!
Discovery of the conspiracy of Piso, 65, and the revolt of Julius Vindex in Celtic Gaul, 68, followed by that of Galba in Spain, who is there proclaimed emperor, and joined by Otho, in Lusitania. Nevertheless, after the defeat of Julius Vindex in Upper Germany, by the lieutenant Virginius Rufus, these insurrections seemed quelled, when the prætorian guard, instigated thereto by Nymphidius, broke out into rebellion in Rome itself. Flight and death of Nero, June 11, 68. Foreign wars during his reign: in Britain (occasioned by the revolt of Boadicea), great part of which was subdued and reduced to a Roman province, by Suetonius Paulinus; in Armenia, under the command of the valiant Corbulo, against the Parthians (see above, p. 303); and in Palestine against the Jews, 66. Great fire in Rome, 64, which gives rise to the first persecution against the Christians.