[40]. Suet., Nero, 10.
[41]. Suet., op. cit., 19, with which cf. Petrarch, Vol. III, p. 273.
[42]. Ibid., 22 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
[43]. Ibid., 12 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
[44]. Ibid., 22 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
[45]. It may, perhaps, prove interesting to the reader to see by what epithets Nero is referred to in the Octavia. From a cursory reading of the tragedy we glean the following: “vir crudelis” (Nutrix, 49); “capax scelerum” (Nutrix, 158); “immitis” (Nutrix, 182); “impius” (Chorus, 374); “dirus” (Chorus, 674); “coniunx scelestus” (Octavia, 230); “saevus” (Octavia, 667); “princeps nefandus” (Octavia, 232); “cruentus” (Chorus, 681); “ferus” (Chorus, 703); “dux saevus” (Octavia, 240); “impius” (Octavia, 242); “hostis deum hominumque” (Octavia, 245); “monstrum” (Chorus, 383); “natus crudelis” (Agrippina, 615); “nefandus” (Agrippina, 655); “saevus” (Chorus, 984); “tyrannus” (Octavia, 34, 115, 919); “ferus” (Agrippina, 621b, Octavia, 986).
[46]. Suet., Nero, 12.
[47]. Seneca, De clementia, i, 11, 1-3:
While speaking of your clemency, no one will dare, in the same breath, to mention the name of the deified Augustus. . . . He displayed moderation and kindness, I grant you; but it was only after the sea of Actium had been dyed with Roman blood, after his own and his enemy’s fleets had been destroyed off the coast of Sicily, after the slaughter and proscriptions at Perugia. As for me, I do not call exhausted cruelty mercy. This, O Caesar, this which you exhibit is true mercy—which conveys no idea of repentance for previous barbarity, which is immaculate, unstained by the blood of fellow-citizens. . . . You, O Caesar, have kept the State free from bloodshed, and your greatest boast is that throughout the length and breadth of your empire you have shed not a single drop of man’s blood, which is all the more remarkable and amazing because no one has been intrusted with a sword at an earlier age than you.
In the Octavia, however, during a discussion between Seneca and Nero, in which the philosopher endeavors to destroy his pupil’s belief in an emperor’s right to rule by the sword, the author says of a ruler that to