Chapter LXXI
ROME had gone mad for a long time, so that the world-conquering cityseemed ready at last to tear itself to pieces for want of leadership.Even before the last hour of the Apostles had struck, Piso's conspiracyappeared; and then such merciless reaping of Rome's highest heads, thateven to those who saw divinity in Nero, he seemed at last a divinity ofdeath. Mourning fell on the city, terror took its lodgment in houses andin hearts, but porticos were crowned with ivy and flowers, for it wasnot permitted to show sorrow for the dead. People waking in the morningasked themselves whose turn would come next. The retinue of ghostsfollowing Caesar increased every day.
Piso paid for the conspiracy with his head; after him followed Seneca,and Lucan, Fenius Rufus, and Plautius Lateranus, and Flavius Scevinus,and Afranius Quinetianus, and the dissolute companion of Caesar'smadnesses, Tullius Senecio, and Proculus, and Araricus, and Tugurinus,and Gratus, and Silanus, and Proximus,--once devoted with his wholesoul to Nero,--and Sulpicius Asper. Some were destroyed by their owninsignificance, some by fear, some by wealth, others by bravery. Caesar,astonished at the very number of the conspirators, covered the wallswith soldiery and held the city as if by siege, sending out dailycenturions with sentences of death to suspected houses. The condemnedhumiliated themselves in letters filled with flattery, thanking Caesarfor his sentences, and leaving him a part of their property, so as tosave the rest for their children. It seemed, at last, that Nero wasexceeding every measure on purpose to convince himself of the degree inwhich men had grown abject, and how long they would endure bloodyrule. After the conspirators, their relatives were executed; then theirfriends, and even simple acquaintances. Dwellers in lordly mansionsbuilt after the fire, when they went out on the street, felt sure ofseeing a whole row of funerals. Pompeius, Cornelius, Martialis, FlaviusNepos, and Statius Domitius died because accused of lack of lovefor Caesar; Novius Priscus, as a friend of Seneca. Rufius Crispus wasdeprived of the right of fire and water because on a time he had beenthe husband of Poppaea. The great Thrasea was ruined by his virtue; manypaid with their lives for noble origin; even Poppaea fell a victim to themomentary rage of Nero.
The Senate crouched before the dreadful ruler; it raised a temple inhis honor, made an offering in favor of his voice, crowned his statues,appointed priests to him as to a divinity. Senators, trembling in theirsouls, went to the Palatine to magnify the song of the "Periodonices,"and go wild with him amid orgies of naked bodies, wine, and flowers.
But meanwhile from below, in the field soaked in blood and tears, rosethe sowing of Peter, stronger and stronger every moment.
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero Page 71
