But his death, like that of Roscius, ‘eclipsed the gaiety of nations,’ and gave one warning more—had it been needed—to Aliturus, that the friendship of tyrants means death.
But the worst of these Grecian enormities—many of which cannot be narrated—involved the acme of treachery and ingratitude. No man had shed a purer lustre over the age of Nero than the brave and honest Corbulo. His life had been devoted to the service of the Empire. To him had been due those splendid victories which kept the Parthians in check, and induced Tiridates to put the colophon on Nero’s glory by coming to receive at his hands before the Roman people the diadem of Armenia. Well might the Arsacid tell Nero that in Corbulo he had a good slave. The great victorious general had spent his life in foreign service. He had never come near the Court; had received no civil honours; had never returned to enjoy a triumph or an ovation. He had been content to keep himself away from those scenes of gilded slavery and miserable splendour, and perhaps anticipated the sole reward which tyrants can give to true greatness. Now, however, that Nero was in Greece, he wrote to Corbulo a letter of almost filial reverence, and invited him to come and receive proofs of his gratitude. To refuse would have been tantamount to rebellion, and Corbulo had always been stainlessly loyal to his worthless master. But good men invariably have their slanderers, and one of his officers, Arrius Varus, had been whispering suspicions about him into the Emperor’s ear. He was not granted so much as an audience. No sooner had he landed at Cenchreæ than Nero sent him the command to die. Corbulo wasted no words on execration or complaint. For a moment, perhaps, it flashed across him that he would have been wiser to listen to the voice of Rome and of the East, which had invited him to be their liberator. But it was too late to repent of the fault of putting trust in a monster. He drew his sword and stabbed himself with the single word ‘Deserved!’[118]
We cannot wonder that Nero did not visit Sparta, because every tradition of Sparta would have cried shame on his histrionic effeminacy. He did not visit Athens, because Athens did not deign to invite him, and because he shrank from eliciting a keenness of wit which had not spared the bloodstained Sylla. But his chief reason for avoiding ‘the Eye of Greece’ was because he dreaded the Temple of the Furies, who had avenged the less guilty and more expiable matricide of Orestes. Nor did he dare to visit Eleusis, because the voice of the herald forbade the profane to be initiated into its mysteries. He did not even venture to present himself to the hierophants of the little mysteries of Agra on the banks of the Ilissus. Visits opened to the humblest, and mysteries revealed to the simplest of the pure, were barred to him.
And before his journey was over, amid his sham triumphs, he began to be disturbed by disquieting rumours.
Judæa was in a state of violent revolt, and the presence of an able general was urgently needed. Nero therefore appointed Vespasian to the command. The old general was expiating in seclusion and obscurity the crime of having snored while Nero sang. One day an Imperial messenger was announced at his humble home. His blood ran cold, for he made sure that the soldier brought him an order to die. Instead of that he brought a nomination to the government of Judæa and the command of the army. To these high offices Nero appointed him because a man of valour and military ability was wanted. Nero overlooked what he called his want of taste because, though eminent as a soldier, he was a man of such humble name and origin that he could not possibly be regarded as dangerous. But the revolt of the Jews, though it was a serious matter, was far less alarming than the other news which now reached Nero.
Helius wrote to say that affairs in the city urgently required his presence. ‘You summon me back,’ he wrote in reply; ‘your wish ought rather to be that I should return worthy of Nero.’ But the menace of disaster was too grave to admit of its being neglected for a verbal pomposity, and Helius hurried to Corinth in person to rouse the Emperor from his insensate frivolity. The weather was so stormy that his enemies fondly hoped for his shipwreck if he sailed. Delay, however, was impossible. His day of doom was close at hand.
CHAPTER LXIII
MUTTERING THUNDER
Αἰεὶ τὸ μὲν ζῇ, τὸ δὲ μεθίσταται κακόν,
τὸ δ’ ἐκπέφηνεν αὖθιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς νέον.
Euripides.