Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - The Roman Emperors in Marble - 5. Nero
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142 ROMAN DA YS.
on squares, and in public buildings. Twenty years, even,
after his death, an adventurer who gave himself out as
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, could find support from
the people of the East : only with difficulty could the
Parthians be induced to deliver him up.
This devotion to the memory of so guilty and vicious
an emperor, can hardly be explained, as some have
wished to explain it, by the gratitude of the masses for
the care with which he provided bread and amusements.
The distributions of corn were quite as plentiful, and
even more regular, under his predecessors and successors.
And as far as public amusements were concerned, the
masses found his JEsthetically refining devices, his con-
tests in song and cithern-playing, his Greek dramas and
gymnastic games, a paltry substitute for the bloody
strife of the gladiators, he had abolished. The people
had in memory, I think, the light-hearted and beautiful
boy with the promising talents, and did not forget the
first and happy years of his reign, for the last, so dark
atid disastrous. And it well knew it was an accomplice
in his faults and crimes ; as much of an accomplice as it
is possible to be, without casting the responsibility of
the individual upon that scapegoat of history which is
called " the age."
Tigellinus, minister of pleasures to the crowd as well as
the court, during the latter days of Nero, was and re-
mained an object of the people’s hate. It saw in him
Nero’s, evil spirit, and clamored for his death. Galba had
shielded the traitor ; Otho could not or would not do so.
When Tigellinus saw the fate that threatened him, he
made ready a riotous feast, and during the orgy cut his
throat with a barber’s knife.
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