Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

The older and robuster villany of Tigellinus was not terrified by these alarms; but he too saw that the situation was serious, and did not know what to advise.

Nero, shaking with alarm, sent messengers in fiery haste for Burrus and Seneca, both of whom had come from Rome to Baiæ at his request to attend upon him during the Quinquatrus. They were roused from their beds at the dead of night, and hurried to Nero’s villa. He told them that, after his mother had left him, her vessel had been wrecked, and that she had swam to land with no worse hurt than a slight wound; but he added, ‘She suspects that I have attempted her life: and how am I to escape her vengeance?’

Burrus and Seneca stood silent and thunderstricken. They were innocent of the vile attempt. Dim rumours of some grave crime which was in contemplation had indeed reached them; and in Nero’s court everything seemed credible. The murder had been the design of the execrable Anicetus and the yet more execrable Tigellinus, and had only been revealed to kindred spirits such as Poppæa. But they at once saw through the story which Nero told them, in which he had indeed betrayed himself.

It was a moment of anguish and of degradation for them both. The blunt, honest soldier was thinking of his happier youth, in which virtue was not compelled to breathe so contaminated an atmosphere. He was secretly cursing the day on which ambition had led him to espouse the cause of Nero, and so to be dragged into loathed complicity with so many crimes.

And through the heart of Seneca there shot a pang of yet keener agony. He a philosopher; he a Stoic; he a writer of so many high-soaring moral truths; he so superior to the vile and vulgar standard of his age—to what had he now sunk! Was this corrupt fratricide—this would-be murderer of his mother—the timid boy who, little more than five years before, had been entrusted to his tutelage? And was he now called upon to advise the most feasible way in which a matricide could be accomplished? Was he, of all men, to be the Pylades to this viler Orestes? Was it to the edge of such a precipice that he had been led by the devious ways of a selfish ambition?

A nobler path was open to him had he desired it. Why should he not have urged Nero to visit his mother, to expostulate with her if need be, to be reconciled with her in reality? Might he not have told him that, if Agrippina were really conspiring, it would be better for him to run that risk than to stain his hands in a mother’s blood? Titus was not a professed philosopher like Seneca, yet Titus rose spontaneously to that height of virtue in later years. He knew that his brother Domitian was working in secret as his deadly enemy, yet he only took him gently aside, and entreated him to behave more worthily of a brother. And when he saw that his entreaty had failed, he did indeed weep as he sat at the games, but he would not shed his brother’s blood.

Alas! the conscience of Seneca did not suggest to him this means by which he could extricate himself. That Agrippina was, at such a crisis, preparing to rebel against her son he did not believe; but might she not—so whispered to him once more the demon of concession—might she not become dangerous hereafter? In other words, must he not help the Emperor to accomplish his fell purpose? The silence became intolerable.

At last Seneca turned his troubled eyes on Burrus, as though to inquire whether it would be safe to command the execution of Agrippina by the Prætorians.

Burrus understood his look and bluntly replied that such a thing was not to be thought of. The Prætorians would never lift a hand against the daughter of Germanicus. The same thought had been in his mind as in that of Seneca, though he had blushed to give it utterance. But now that he saw the drift of his colleague’s purpose, he gulped down his scruples, and said with sullen brevity, ‘Let Anicetus complete what he has begun.’

Anicetus had been on board the deceitful vessel, and, on the failure of the device, had made his way with all speed in a rowing boat to the Emperor’s villa. He entered at the moment when Burrus spoke. Nero turned on him a look of rage, and, walking up to him, stammered into his ear the threat that his life should pay the penalty of his clumsy failure.