But the hour of retribution was at hand. The provinces were discontented, and the city filled with cabals and conspiracies. Though one of them, instigated by Piso, was unsuccessful, and its authors punished, a revolt in Gaul, headed by Galba—an old veteran of seventy-two, and assisted by Vindex and Virginius, was fatal to Nero. The Senate and the prætorian guards favored the revolution. The emperor was no longer safe in his capital. Terrified by dreams, and stung by desertion, the wretched tyrant fled to the Servilian Gardens, and from thence to the villa of one of his freedmen, near which he committed suicide, at the age of thirty-six, and in the fourteenth year of his inglorious reign, during which there are scarcely other events to chronicle than his own personal infamies. “In him perished the last scion of the stock of the Julii, refreshed in vain by grafts from the Octavii, the Claudii, and the Domitii.” Though the first of the emperors had married four wives, the second three, the third two, [pg 594] the fourth three, the fifth six, and the sixth three, yet Nero was the last of the Cæsars. None of the five successors of Julius were truly his natural heirs. They trace their lineage to his sister Julia, but the three last had in their veins the blood of Antony as well as Octavia, and thus the descendants of the triumvir reigned at Rome as well as those of his rival Octavius. We have only to remark that it is strange that the Julian line should have been extinguished in the sixth generation, with so many marriages.
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE CLIMAX OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
On the extinction of the Julian line, a new class of emperors succeeded, by whom the prosperity of the empire was greatly advanced. We have now to fall back on Niebuhr, Gibbon, and the Roman historians, and also make more use of Smith's digest of these authors. But so much ground still remains to go over, that we can only allude to salient points, and our notice of succeeding emperors must be brief.
Galba.
The empire was now to be the prize of successful soldiers, and Galba, at the age of seventy-three, was saluted imperator by the legions before the death of Nero, A.D. 68, and acknowledged by the Senate soon after. There is nothing memorable in his short reign of a few months, and he was succeeded by Otho, who only reigned three months, and he was succeeded by Vitellius, who was removed by violent death, like Galba and Otho. These three emperors left no mark, and were gluttons and sensualists, who excited nothing but contempt; soldiers of fortune—only respectable in inferior rank.
Vespasian proclaimed emperor.
On the first of July, A.D. 69, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, of humble family, arose, as general, to the highest honors of the State, and was first proclaimed emperor at Alexandria, at the close of the Jewish war, which he conducted to a successful issue. A brief contest with Vitellius secured his recognition by the Senate, and the first of the Flavian line began to reign—a man of great talents and virtues. On the fall of Jerusalem, his son Titus returned to Rome, and celebrated a joint triumph with his father, and the gates of the temple of Janus were shut,—the [pg 596] first time since Augustus,—and universal peace was proclaimed.