‘You interrupt me,’ said Nero. ‘Do you happen to remember what became of those two boys?’
Britannicus remembered only too well. Through the arts of Livia, Agrippa Posthumus, accused of a ferocious temperament, had been first banished to the Island Pandataria, then violently murdered. Tiberius Gemellus had not been murdered, because the news of such a death would have sounded ill; but he had had the sword placed against his heart, and had been taught to kill himself, so that his death might wear the semblance of suicide.
Nero left time for such recollections to pass through his brother’s mind, and then he slowly added, ‘And now that Nero has come to the throne, there happens to be a young prince named Britannicus.’
Britannicus shuddered. ‘Do you menace me with murder?’ he asked.
Nero only laughed. ‘What need have I to menace?’ he asked. ‘Do you not know that I have but to lift a finger, if it so pleases me, and you die? But don’t be alarmed. It does not please me—at present.’
Britannicus turned very pale. He knew that Nero’s words conveyed no idle boast. He was but a down-trodden boy— the orphan son of a murdered mother; of a father foully dealt with, infamously calumniated. What cared the Roman world whether he perished or not, or how he perished? He choked down the sob which rose, and left his brother’s presence in silence; but, as he traversed the long corridor to the room of Octavia, he could not help asking himself, with dread forebodings, what would be his fate? Would he be starved, like the younger Drusus? or poisoned, like the elder? or bidden to end his own life, like poor young Tiberius Gemellus? or assassinated by violence, like Agrippa Posthumus? How was he better than they? And if he perished, who would care to avenge him? But, oh God! if there were such a God as He in whom the Christians believed, what a world was this into which he had been plunged! What sin had he or his ancestors committed, that these hell-dogs of wrong and murder banned his steps from birth? The old Romans had been strong and noble and simple. Even in the days of Augustus they could thrill to the lesson of Virgil:
‘Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hæ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.’
Whence the present dearth of all nobleness? What creeping paralysis of immoral apathy had stricken this corrupt and servile aristocracy, this nerveless and obsequious Senate? From what black pit of Acheron had surged up the slime of universal corruption which polluted every class around him with ignoble debaucheries? He saw on every side of him a remorseless egotism, an unutterable sadness, the fatalism of infidelity and despair. A poisoning of the blood with physical and moral madness seemed to have become the heritage of the ruling Cæsars. Where could he look for relief? Men had ceased to believe in the gods. The Stoics had nothing better to offer than hard theories and the possibility of suicide—and what a thing must life be if it had no more precious privilege than the means of its own agonising and violent suppression!