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THE ROMAN EMPERORS IN MARBLE. I4I
earnestly for a few marble flags to place around the spot
While this was in progress, came a message that horse-
men were approaching, in search of Nero. Soon they
were heard galloping on upon the way that led to the
villa gate. Leaning on the arm of Epaphroditus, he then
carried the dagger to his throat. He had even at that
moment the power to look upon his fate as if he were on
the stage, playing the last scene of a tragedy, and pre-
sence of mind enough to recite a verse of Homer :
Struck is the ear by the sound of the hoofs of the hurrying horses.
With this, he plunged the dagger into his throat.
Nero was still alive, when the horsemen burst into
the villa. A centurion who saw him outstretched all
bloody upon the ground, hastened to press his mantle
over the wound, to staunch the flow of blood. " Too
late," said the dying man, and he added, moved :
" this
is fidelity." They were his last words.
His prayer for his dead body, was heard, and they
even granted him a not unworthy burial. His two
nurses and his first love Acte, who were allowed, in the
very midst of the rejoicings for Galba, to show their
grief, deposited his urn in the family vault of the Domi-
tians, on the slope of the Garden Hill.
Galba’s reign did not last seven months ; and when
Otho over his body had made himself a way to the
throne, such a change had already taken place in the
mood of the Romans, that the crowd, when it desired to
wish the new prince welcome, called him Nero, Even
Otho himself seems to have adopted Nero’s name, in his
letters to the Eastern provinces, where the latter had
always been beloved. Nero’s statues were again erected
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