The gods are struck with amazement and indignation. Claudius is repelled from the threshold of Olympus, and led by Mercury to the shades below. As he passes along the Via Sacra he witnesses the pageant of his own obsequies, and then first apprehends the fact of his decease. He hears the funeral dirge in which his actions are celebrated in most grandiloquent sing-song, descending at last to the abruptest bathos. But the satirist can strike a higher note; the advent of the ghost to the infernal regions is described with a sublime irony. “Claudius is come!” shout the spirits of the dead, and at once a vast multitude assemble around him, exclaiming, with the chant of the priests of Apis, “We have found him, we have found him; rejoice and be glad!”[17] Among them was Silius the consul and Junius the prætor and Traulus and Trogus and Cotta, Vectius, and Fabius, Roman knights, whom Narcissus had done to death. Then came the freedmen Polybius and Myron, Harpocras, Amphæus, and Pheronactes, whom Claudius had despatched to hell before him, that he might have his ministers below. Next advanced Catonius and Rufus, the prefects, and his friends Lusius and Pedo, and Lupus and Celer, consulars, and finally a number of his own kindred, his wife and cousins and son-in-law. “Friends everywhere!” simpered the fool; “pray how came you all here?” “How came we here?” thundered Pompeius Pedo: “who sent us here but thou, O murderer of all thy friends?” And thereupon the newcomer is hurried away before the judgment seat of Æacus. An old boon companion offers to plead for him; Æacus, most just of men, forbids, and condemns the criminal, one side only heard. “As he hath done,” he exclaims, “so shall he be done by.” The shades are astounded at the novelty of the judgment; to Claudius it seems rather unjust than novel. Then the nature of his punishment is considered. Some would relieve Tantalus or Ixion from their torments and make the imperial culprit take their place; but no, that would still leave him the hope of being himself in the course of ages relieved. His pains must be never ending, still beginning; eternal trifler and bungler that he was, he shall play for ever and ever with a bottomless dice-box.
Such was the scorn which might be flung upon the head of a national divinity, even though he were the adoptive father of the ruler of the state; nor perhaps was the new and upstart deity much more cavalierly treated than might sometimes be the lot of the established denizens of Olympus. It is true that Nero at a later period thought fit to degrade his parent from these excessive honours, and even demolished the unfinished works of his temple on the Cælian Hill; but there is no reason to suppose that Seneca reserved his spite until this catastrophe, or that the prince evinced any marks of displeasure at the unrestrained laughter with which doubtless his satire was greeted.
While the memory of the deceased emperor was thus ruthlessly torn in pieces, the writer had been careful to exalt in terms the most extravagant the anticipated glories of his successor; and the vain, thoughtless heir perceived not that the mockery of his sire was the deepest of insults to himself. Of the figure, accomplishments, and character of Nero we shall speak more particularly hereafter; enough that he was young, that he was not ungraceful in appearance, that he had some talents, and, above all, the talent of exhibiting them.
With such qualifications the new occupant of a throne could never want for flatterers. To sing them, the sage of the rugged countenance mounts gaily on the wings of poetry, and sports in lines of mellifluous mellowness, such as might grace the erotic lyre of the most callow votary of the Muses. At last, he says, in mercy to his wretchedness, the life-thread of the stolid Claudius had been severed by the fatal shears. But Lachesis, at that moment, had taken in her hands another skein of dazzling whiteness, and as it glided nimbly through her fingers, the common wool of life was changed into a precious tissue—a golden age untwined from the spindle. The sisters ply their work in gladness, and glory in their blessed task; and far, far away stretches the glittering thread, beyond the years of Nestor and Tithonus. Phœbus stands by their side, and sings to them as they spin—Phœbus the god of song and the god of prophecy. “Stay not, oh stay not, gentle sisters; he shall transcend the limits of human life; he shall be like me in face, like me in beauty; neither in song nor in eloquence behind me. He shall restore a blissful age to wearied men, and break again the long silence of the Laws. Yes, as when Lucifer drives the stars before him, and morning dissipates the clouds, the bright sun gazes on the world, and starts his chariot on its daily race,—so Cæsar breaks upon the earth; such is the Nero whom Rome now beholds—beams his bright countenance with tempered rays, and glistens his fair neck beneath its floating curls.”[f]
FOOTNOTES
[8] [It may be stated, once for all, that the view of Tiberius here presented has not gone unchallenged. Tarver[n] in particular champions the emperor against his ancient and modern detractors. It is urged that Tiberius was really a sternly moral man, with a high standard of duty, whose want of tact and sociability alone made him unpopular. His letters and addresses to the senate are said to show great dignity and wisdom; and it is claimed that from his youth up his habits were regular and his life simple and frugal. All this may be true of the early years of Tiberius, but the balance of opinion strongly supports the belief that in his later years the emperor showed a different spirit. Perhaps disease or senility may have produced the change.]
[9] [Full details of the German campaign have been given in Chapter XXX. A brief résumé is given here for added clearness.]
[10] [Tacitus[d] however, speaks of the legatus Mœsiæ A.D. 14, so it would seem that Mœsia became a Roman province in the reign of Augustus.]
[11] [This is the number as stated by Tacitus; Suetonius says twenty thousand.]
[12] Augustus was so taken with the charms of this island, that he gave lands in exchange for it to the people of Naples to whom it belonged. Dion,[j] LII, 43.