[60] Second was the Silver Age when good Saturn was banished from above and Jove reigned.
“To this came next in course the Brazen Age;
A warlike offering prompt to bloody rage;
Not impious yet!
Hard steel succeeded then;
And stubborn as the metal were the men.”
Ovid’s Metam—Book I Dryden’s Translation.
[61] Evidently something omitted.
[62] Astraea was goddess of purity and innocence and daughter of Justice. After she was driven from earth, she was placed among the stars where she became the constellation Virgo.
[63] Nero Claudius Caesar, the sixth of the Roman emperors, born 37 A.D. was the son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus. He was originally named Lucius Domitius. After the death of Ahenobarbus and a second husband, Crispus Passienus, Agrippina married Claudius who gave his daughter Octavia to Nero in marriage and subsequently adopted him with the formal sanction of the senate.
[64] Cornelius Sulla who had been banished to Massilia in 58 was put to death on the grounds that his residence in Gaul was likely to arouse disaffection in that province, and a similar charge proved fatal to Rubellius Plautus who had for two years been living in retirement in Asia.
[65] Formal title of the emperor.
[66] Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, originally Gaius Octavius. After his adoption by his great uncle, C. Julius Caesar, he was called Augustus by the senate. He defeated Brutus and Cassius, his adopted father’s murderers, at Philippi B.C. 42.
[67] In Nero’s first speech, he placed the authority of the senate on the same footing with the consent of the soldiers.
[68] Brutus murdered Caesar, his patron.