The Emperor arrived in time for dinner. I was summoned to his table. He partook heartily of eight courses almost in silence, but seemed gloomy and depressed. After dinner his spirits rose and he asked whether I considered that Silius and the Empress had really plotted against him. I told him the whole truth, and he expressed great annoyance at Narcissus’ perfidy. He sent a message to say that the Empress was to return at once—to be judged, he added cunningly, for he did not wish Narcissus to know that he knew the truth. But Narcissus divined his peril. He knew that as soon as the Empress returned his doom would be sealed, and he told the tribune on duty that the Emperor had ordered Messalina to be killed.
That evening I was bidden to supper; and before we had finished the Emperor asked why Messalina had not come.
“Messalina,” said Narcissus, “is no more. She perished by her own hand.”
The Emperor made no comment, but told the slave to fill his goblet. He finished supper in silence.
The next morning the Emperor came into the library. He asked for his own Carthaginian history, and sat by the window, looking at it without reading. Then he beckoned to me, and finding the passage on the death of Hannibal, he pointed to it and tried to say something.
“She”—he began, but two large tears rolled down his cheeks, and he choked. Since then he has never mentioned Messalina; he works, eats, and talks like a man whose spirit is elsewhere, or a person who is walking in his sleep.
Farewell, I can write no more, for I am shattered by this tragedy and the dreadful end of one of the few really good women I have ever seen.
NERO INTERVIEWED ROME, A.D. 64
Letter from a Greek Traveller to his friend in Athens
It is fifteen years since I was last at Rome, and although I was prepared to find a change in everything, I had not expected this complete transformation. The Rome I knew, the Rome of the straggly narrow streets and rotting wooden houses, has disappeared, and in its place there is a kind of Corinth on a huge scale, marred of course by the usual want of taste of the Romans, but imposing nevertheless and extraordinarily gay and brilliant. The fault of the whole thing is that it is too big: the houses are too high, the streets too broad, everything is planned on too large a scale. From the artist’s point of view the effect is deplorable; from the point of view of the casual observer it is amusing in the highest degree. The broad streets—a blaze of coloured marble and fresh paint—are now crowded with brilliant shops where you see all that is new from Greece and the East, together with curiosities from the North and the barbarian countries. Everybody seems to be spending money. The shops are crowded from morning till night. The display of gold trinkets, glass vases, carpets, rugs, silks, gold and silver tissues, embroideries, all glittering in the sunlight, dazzles the eye and imposes by the mass and glare of colour and gaudiness.