eration in the State. In his solitary island he committed petty murders without remorse or ceremony. 7. He had ordered a person whom he suspected as an accomplice in the destruction of his son Drusus, to attend his presence in the isle of Capreæ; and it happened that he invited, at the same time, a friend from Rhodes on a visit of pleasure. The friend arrived first, and no sooner set his foot on the shore than he was seized by the guards, and, as a delinquent, hurried away and put to the rack. Tiberius heard of the mistake, but was not otherwise moved than to say, with calm composure, "Since you have begun with him, you may finish your work, and put the man out of his pain." 8. Upon another occasion, when a funeral was passing by, a person of some pleasantry said to the corpse, "Go, and inform Augustus that the legacies which he left to the common people have not as yet been paid." Tiberius ordered the unfortunate wit to be brought before him; and, after paying him what was computed to be his share, sent him to immediate execution, saying, at the same time, "Go, and tell Augustus that you have received your legacy." Not a day passed without some new proof of that sullen malignity, which he pampered in solitude, and converted, at length, into a rooted hatred of mankind. The most common occurrences irritated his passions, and disclosed the rancor of his heart 9. In a few days after he arrived at Capreæ, as he was walking in a sequestered part of the island, a fisherman, eager to mark his respect for the emperor, made his way over rugged steeps and pointed rocks, to present a barbel' of uncommon size. Alarmed by this intrusion on his privacy, Tiberius ordered the man's face to be well rubbed with his own barbel. The astonished fisherman, as soon as he recovered from his fright, congratulated himself that he had not brought with him a large crab which he had taken on the coast. Tiberius called for the crab, and with the claws and edge of the shell cut and mangled the poor fellow's features, till he made his countenance a woeful spectacle. 10. These, it must be acknowledged, are minute particulars, and may be thought unworthy of the historian's pen; but when they serve to produce strokes of character, and lay open the inward temper of the man, even such materials may be allowed to merit our attention. The merciless disposition of Tiberius, and the unrelenting cruelty with which he took away the lives of the most illustrious citizens, have been seen in a variety of tragic issues, and, perhaps, will be placed in a conspicuous light by those smaller incidents which the diligence of other writers has collected, and which, for that reason, deserve to be here recorded. 11. Death was considered by Tiberius as the end of hunran sorrow, and, consequently, as the slightest punishment that he could inflict. Whenever the unhappy prisoner wished to die, and lay down at once his load of affliction, that relief was sure to be denied; he was condemned to groan in misery. It happened that a man, of the name of Carvilius, finding himself accused of some real or pretended crime, put a period to his days. Being informed of the fact, Tiberius exclaimed, "That man has escaped from me." Upon another occasion he thought fit to make all his prisoners pass in review before him. One of them, harassed out with pain, petitioned for a speedy execution. "No," said Tiberius; "I have not yet made up my quarrel with you.” . . . . 12. Historians relate another transaction, which, by a difference of opinion among themselves, they have rendered somewhat doubtful; but since they have transmitted it as a problem to exercise the judgment of posterity, it may with propriety be inserted in this place, and left to try its fortune with the reader. A man, whose name is not mentioned, but, as it seems, an architect by profession, was employed by Tiberius to repair an arch that was tottering to its fall. He succeeded in his work, to the surprise of all who beheld it; and, after receiving a reward for his skill and ingenuity, was, by the jealous malignity of the emperor, sent into banishment. 13. Addicted to the mechanic arts and fond of useful inventions, this man found the method of manufacturing glass to a degree of perfection unknown before. Having prepared his materials, and made a vase of the most beautiful composition, he went to present it to Tiberius in the isle of Capreæ, little doubting that, for so fine a piece of workmanship, he should obtain his pardon. Tiberius had a circle of his courtiers around him. The transparent vessel excited the admiration of all. The artist received it from the hands of the emperor, and, to show the wonders of his skill, dashed it on the ground. 14. The company were alarmed, but in a short time stood astonished to see that, instead of flying into fragments, it was only bent and flattened in the part that struck against the ground. Their surprise was still more increased when they saw the ingenious mechanic take out his hammer and restore the glass to its original form, as if it had the flexibility of a malleable metal. Tiberius desired to know whether he had communicated the secret of his art to any other person; and being assured that no one knew it, he ordered him to be hurried away to instant execution, giving for his reason that a manufacture which could transmute ordinary ingredients into so fine a form would lessen the value of brass and gold and silver, and ought, for that reason, to be abolished forever. 15. Such were the repeated acts of fell and savage cruelty which Tiberius hoped to hide in the solitude of Caprex. Rome, in the mean time, was a scene of slaughter, where superior talents, virtue, truth, and innocence perished by the stroke of lawless power. The charge of violated majesty [treason] was the signal of destruction, and a letter from Caprea was a warrant for execution. The Senate obeyed the mandate; no rule of law prevailed; justice was trampled under foot; reason and humanity were never heard; and all who did not dispatch themselves, were sure to perish by the judgment of a corrupt tribunal. [Notwithstanding his vicious excesses, Tiberius lived to the age of seventy-eight. He was succeeded by Caligula (A.D. 37), under whose reign the Romans continued to suffer the calamities of the previous administration. Nor was their condition greatly improved when Claudius ascended the throne; while under his successor, Nero, it became still worse, that emperor proving a monster of cruelty and wickedness.] Death of Nero.-De Quincey. [After a reign of about fourteen years, during which he had perpetrated the most revolting crimes and cruelties, Nero found himself compelled to flee from his palace to escape an ignominious death, the army in Spain having proclaimed Galba emperor in his stead. The precise mode of Nero's death is thus described by Thomas De Quincey in his historical essay entitled "The Cæsars."] 1. NERO now prepared for flight; and sending forward commissioners to prepare the fleet at Ostia ior his reception, he tampered with such officers of the army as were at hand, to prevail upon them to accompany his retreat. But all showed themselves indisposed to such schemes, and some flatly refused. Upon which he turned to other counsels; sometimes meditating a flight to the king of Parthia, or even to throw himself on the mercy of Galba; sometimes inclining rather to the plan of venturing into the forum in mourning apparel, begging pardon for his past offenses, and, as a last resource, entreating that he might receive the appointment of Egyptian prefect". His 2. This plan, however, he hesitated to adopt, from some apprehension that he should be torn in pieces in his road to the forum; and, at all events, he concluded to postpone it to the following day. Meantime events were now hurrying to their catastrophe, which forever anticipated that intention. hours were numbered, and the closing scene was at hand. In the middle of the night he was aroused from slumber with the intelligence that the military guard who did duty at the palace had all quitted their posts. Upon this the unhappy prince leaped from his couch, never again to taste the luxury of sleep, and dispatched messengers to his friends. 3. No answers were returned; and upon that he went personally, with a small retinue, to their hotels. But he found their doors everywhere closed, and all his importunities could not avail to extort an answer. Sadly and slowly he returned to his own bedchamber; but there again he found fresh instances of desertion, which had occurred during his short absence. The pages of his bedchamber had fled, carrying with them the coverlids of the imperial bed, which were probably inwrought with gold, and even a golden box in which Nero had, on the preceding day, deposited poison prepared against the last extremity. 4. Wounded to the heart by this general desertion, and perhaps by some special case of ingratitude, such as would probably enough be signalized in the flight of his personal favorites, he called for a gladiator of the household to come and dispatch him. But none appearing, "What," said he, "have I neither friend nor foe?" And so saying, he ran toward the Tiber with the purpose of drowning himself. But that paroxysm", like all the rest, proved transient, and he expressed a wish for some hiding-place, or momentary asylum, in which he might collect his unsettled spirits, and fortify his wandering resolution. 5. Such a retreat was offered him by his freedman, Phaon, in his own rural villa, about four miles distant from Rome. The offer was accepted; and the emperor, without further preparation than that of throwing over his person a short mantle of a dusky hue, and enveloping his head and face in a handkerchief, mounted his horse and left Rome with four attendants. It was still night, but probably verging toward the early dawn, and even at that hour the imperial party met some travellers on their way to Rome (coming up, no doubt, on law business), who said, as they passed, "These men are certainly in chase of Nero." 6. Two other incidents of an interesting nature are recorded of this short but memorable ride. At one point of the road the shouts of the soldiery assailed their ears from the neighboring encampment of Galba. They were probably then getting under arms for their final march to take possession of the palace. At another point an accident occurred of a more unfortunate kind, but so natural and so well circumstantiated, that it serves to verify the whole narrative: a dead body was lying on the road, at which the emperor's horse started so violently as nearly to dismount his rider, and, under the difficulty of the moment, compelled him to withdraw the hand |