Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1177

NERO. of Poppaea Sabina, the wife of liis companion Otho, a woman notorious for her dissolute conduct. Otho was got out of the way by being made governor of Lusitania, where he acquired some credit, and passed tlie ten remaining years of Nero's life. The affairs of Armenia, which had been seized by the Parthians, occupied the Romans from the beginning of Nero's reign, and Doraitius Corbulo was sent there to conduct the war. This vigorous commander re-established discipline among the troops. The chief struggle commenced a. d. 58, with Tiridates, who had been made king of Armenia by the Parthian king Vologeses, who was his brother. Corbulo was ambitious to make the Roman arms again triumphant in the countries in which L. Lucullus and Cn. Pompeius had once acquired militar}'^ fame. After some attempt at negotiation, Corbulo prosecuted the war with great activity. He took and destroyed Artaxata, the capital of Armenia ; and afterwards, marching to the town of Tigranocerta, which the Romans had formerly captured under Lucullus, he took this strong place also, or, according to other accounts, it surrendered like Artaxata (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 41, xiv. 24). The capture of Tigranocerta took place a. d. 60, and the Romans were now complete masters of Armenia. The affairs of the Rhenish frontier were tolerably quiet in the early part of Nero's reign. The Roman soldiers, under Paullinus Pom- peius on the lower Rhine, were employed in finish- ing the embankments Avhich Drusus had begun sixty-three years before for checking the waters of the river ; and L. Vetus formed the noble design of uniting the Arar (Saone) and Moselle by a canal, and thus connecting the Mediterranean and the German Ocean by an uninten-upted water com- munication, through the Rhone and the Rhine. But the mean jealousy of Aelius Gracilis, the legatus of Belgica, frustrated this design. Nero's passion for Poppaea was probably the immediate cause of his mother's death. Poppaea aspired to marry the emperor, but she had no hopes of succeeding in her design while Agrippina lived, and accordingly she used all her arts to urge Nero to remove out of the way a woman who kept him in tutelage and probably aimed at his ruin. That Agrippina might have attempted to destroy her son, or at least to give the imperial power to some new husband of her choice, is probable enough ; and it is a significant fact, that we find her own head and that of Nero on the same face of a medal, and that at the beginning of his reign she was hardly pre- vented from assuming the discharge of the imperial functions (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 5). After an unsuc- cessful attempt to cause her death in a vessel near Baiae, she was assassinated by Nero's order (a. d. 59;, with the approbation at least of Seneca and Burrhus, who saw that the time was come for the destruction either of the mother or the son (Tacit. Ann. xiv. 7). The death of Agrippina was communicated to the senate by a letter which Seneca drew up, and this servile body, with the exception of Thrasea Paetus, returned their congra- tulations to the emperor, who shortly after returned to Rome. But though he was well received, he felt the punishment of his guilty conscience, and said that he was haunted by hia mother's spectre (Suet. Ner. 34). A great eclipse of the sun hap- pened during the sacrifices which were made for the death of Agrippina, and there were other signs which superstition interpreted as tokens of the NERO. 1153 anger of the gods (Dion Cass. Ixi. 16, ed. Rei- manis, and the note). Nero drowned his re- flections in fresh riot, in which he was encouraged by a band of flatterers. One of his great passions was chariot-driving, and he was ambitious to gain credit as a musician, and actually appeared as a performer on the theatre. At the same time his extravagance was exhausting the finances, and pre- paring the way for his ruin, though unfortunately it was still deferred for some years. In A. D. 60, Nero was consul for the fourth time with C. Cornelius Lentulus for his colleague. There was a comet in this year, which then, as in more recent times, was considered to portend some great change. In this year Tigranes was settled as king of Armenia, and the Roman commander Corbulo, leaving some soldiers to protect him, retired to his province of Syria. The fear of Nero now induced him to urge Rubellius Plautus, who belonged to the family of the Caesars through his mother Julia, the daughter of Drusus, to leave Rome. Plautus was a man of good character, and Nero considered him a dangerous rival. He retired to Asia, where he was put to death two years after by Nero's order (Tacit. An7i. xiv. 22 ; Dion Cass. Ixii. 14). In A. D. 61, the great rising in Britain under Boadicea took place, which was put down by the ability and vigour of the Roman commander Sue- tonius Paullinus. The praetor Antistius was charged with writing scandalous verses against Nero, and he was tried under the law of majestas, and only saved by Thrasea from being condemned to death by the senate. Antistius was banished, and his property made public. Fabricius Veiento, who had written freely against the senate and the priests, was con- victed and banished from Italy. His writings were ordered to be burnt, the consequence of which was they were eagerly sought after and read : when they were no longer forbidden they were soon for- gotten, as Tacitus remarks (Ann. xiv. 49), and his remark has much practical wisdom in it. The death of Burrhus (a. d. 62) was a calamity to the state. Nero placed in command of the praetorian troops, Fennius Rufus and Sofonius Tigellinus : Rufus was an honest inactive man ; Tigellinus was a villain, whose name has been rendered infamous by the crimes to which he urged his master, and those which he committed himself. Seneca, who saw his credit going, wisely asked leave to retire ; and the philosopher, who could not approve of all Nero's excesses, though his own moral character is at least doubtful, left his old pupil to follow his own way and the counsels of the worst men in Rome. Nero was now more at liberty. In order that he might marry Poppaea, he divorced his wife Octavia, on the alleged ground of sterility, and in eighteen days he married Poppaea. Not satisfied with putting away his wife, he was instigated by Poppaea to charge her with adultery, for which there was not the slightest ground, and she was banished to the little island of Pandataria, where she was shortly after put to death. According to Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 64) Octavia was only in her twentieth year ; her unhappy life and her un- timely death were the subject of general com- miseration. The affairs of Armenia (a. d. 62) were still in a troubled state, and the accounts of the historians of the period are not very clear. The Parthians