‘LACHESIS ROTAT!’
CHAPTER XXXIV
AN EVIL EPOCH
‘Inde metus maculat pœnarum præmia vitæ,
Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque ...
Nec facile est placidam ac pacatam degere vitam
Qui violat facteis communia federa vitæ.’
Lucret. De Rer. Nat. v. 1151.
The career and character of Nero grew darker every year, for every year more fully revealed to him the awful absoluteness of his autocracy. No one dreamed of disputing his will. Every desire, however frivolous, however shameful, however immense, was instantly gratified. His Court was prolific of the vilest characters. There was scarcely a man near his person who did not daily extol his power, his wit, his accomplishments, his beauty, his divinity. ‘Do you not yet know that you are Cæsar?’ they whispered to him if he hesitated for a moment to commit some deadly crime, or plunge into some unheard-of prodigality.
All things went on much as usual in the corrupt, trembling world of Rome. To-day some wealthy nobleman would commit suicide, amid the laudations of his friends, out of utter weariness of life. To-morrow all Rome would be talking of the trial of some provincial governor who had gorged himself with the rapine of a wealthy province. Or everybody would be whispering a series of witty pasquinades, attributed to Antistius Sosianus or Fabricius Veiento, full of lacerating innuendoes, aimed now at the Emperor and now at some prominent senator. Pætus Thrasea and the peril he incurred by his opposition to the Court furnished a frequent subject of conversation, both to his Stoic admirers and to the rabble of venal senators, who cordially hated him. ‘To put Thrasea to death would be to slay virtue itself,’ said the graver citizens. ‘He is a pompous sham, who wants taking down,’ said the gilded youth.