IV.--The Infamies of Nero
At the outset the young emperor was guided by Seneca and Burrus; his first speech--put into his mouth by Seneca, for he was no orator--was full of promise. But he was encouraged in a passion for Acte, a freed-woman, by way of counterpoise to the influence of his mother, Agrippina. The latter, enraged at the dismissal of Pallas, threatened her son with the legitimate claims of Britannicus, son of Claudius; Nero had the boy poisoned. In terror now of his mother, he would have murdered her, but was checked by Burrus. Nero's private excesses and debaucheries developed, while the horrible system of delation flourished, and prosecutions for treason abounded.
About this time the emperor's passion for Poppæa Sabina, the wife of Otho, became the source of later disaster. Beautiful, brilliant, utterly immoral, but complete mistress of her passions, she had married Nero's boon companion. Otho was dispatched to Lusitania, and Poppæa remained at Rome. Poppæa was bent on the imperial crown for herself, and urged Nero against his mother. A mock reconciliation took place, but it was only the preliminary to a treacherous plot for murdering the former empress. The plot failed; her barge was sunk, but she escaped to shore. Nero, however, with the shameful assent of Burrus and Seneca, dispatched assassins to carry out the work, and Agrippina was slaughtered.
For a moment remorse seized Nero, but it was soon soothed; Burrus headed the cringing congratulations of Roman society, to which Thrasea Pætus was alone in refusing to be a party. The emperor forthwith began to plunge into the wild extravagances on which his mother's life had been some check. He took cover for his passion for chariot-driving and singing by inducing men of noble birth to exhibit themselves in the arena; high-born ladies acted in disreputable plays; the emperor himself posed as a mime, and pretended to be a patron of poetry and philosophy. The wildest licence prevailed, and there were those who ventured even to defend it.
About this time the Roman governor in Britain, Suetonius, crossed the Menai Strait and conquered the island of Anglesea. But outrages committed against Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, stirred that tribe to fierce revolt. Being joined by the Trinobantes, they fell upon the Romans at Camulodunum and massacred them. Suetonius, returning hastily from the west, found the Roman population in panic. The troops, however, inspired by the general's resolution, won a decisive victory, in which it is said that no fewer than 80,000 Britons, men and women, were slaughtered.
Not long after, Burrus died--in common belief, if not in actual fact, of poison; and Seneca found himself driven into retirement, while Tigellinus became Nero's favourite and confidant. Nero then capped his matricide by suborning the same scoundrel who had murdered Agrippina to bring foul and false charges against his innocent wife, Octavia; who was thus done to death when not yet twenty, that her husband might be free to marry Poppæa. As a matter of course, the crime was duly celebrated by a public thanksgiving.
The dispatch of an incompetent general into Asia resulted in a most inglorious Parthian campaign. Nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to Poppæa, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant's death. It was well that Corbulo, marching from Syria, restored the Roman prestige in the Far East.
These events were followed by the famous fire which devastated Rome; whether or no it was actually Nero's own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of Troy. He planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire--and putting to the most exquisite tortures--a class hated for their abominations, called Christians, from their first leader, Christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judæa, in the reign of Tiberius.
A very widespread conspiracy was now formed against Nero, in favour of one Gaius Calpurnius Piso; Fænius Rufus, an officer of the Prætorians, who had been subordinated to Tigellinus, being one of the leaders. The plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators.