husband, Marcus Salvius Otho, governor of Lusitania, followed Vindex’s example. At first, however, fortune seemed to favour Nero. It is very probable that Vindex had other aims in view than the deposition of Nero and the substitution of a fresh emperor in his place, and that the liberation of northern Gaul from Roman rule was part of his plan.[1] If this was so, it is easy to understand both the enthusiasm with which the chiefs of northern Gaul rallied to the standard of a leader belonging to their own race, and the opposition which Vindex encountered from the Roman colony of Lugdunum and the legions on the Rhine. For it is certain that the latter at any rate were not animated by loyalty to Nero. Though they defeated Vindex and his Celtic levies at Vesontio (Besançon), their next step was to break the statues of Nero and offer the imperial purple to their own commander Virginius Rufus. He declined their offer, but appealed to them to declare for the senate and people of Rome. Meanwhile in Spain Galba had been saluted imperator by his legions, had accepted the title, and was already on his march towards Italy. On the road the news met him that Vindex had been crushed by the army of the Rhine, and for the moment he resolved to abandon his attempt. Meanwhile, Nero had reluctantly left Greece, but returned to Italy only to renew his revels. When on the 19th of March the news reached him at Naples of the rising in Gaul, he allowed a week to elapse before he could tear himself away from his pleasures, and then contented himself with proscribing Vindex, and setting a price on his head. The revolts in Spain and Germany terrified him too late into something like energy. The senate almost openly intrigued against him, and the populace were silent or hostile. The fidelity of the praetorian sentinels even was more than doubtful. When finally the palace guards forsook their posts, Nero despairingly stole out of Rome to seek shelter in a freedman’s villa some four miles off. There he heard of the senate’s proclamation of Galba as emperor, and of the sentence of death passed on himself. On the approach of the horsemen sent to drag him to execution, he collected sufficient courage to save himself by suicide. Nero died on the 9th of June 68, in the thirty-first year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign, and his remains were deposited by the faithful hands of Acte in the family tomb of the Domitii on the Pincian Hill. With his death ended the line of the Caesars, and Roman imperialism entered upon a new phase. His statues were broken, his name everywhere erased, and his golden house demolished; yet, in spite of all, no Roman emperor has left a deeper mark upon subsequent tradition. The Roman populace for a long time reverenced his memory as that of an open-handed patron, and in Greece the recollections of his magnificence, and his enthusiasm for art, were still fresh when the traveller Pausanias visited the country a century later. The belief that he had not really died, but would return again to confound his foes, was long prevalent, not only in the remoter provinces, but even in Rome itself; and more than one pretender was able to collect a following by assuming the name of the last of the race of Augustus. More lasting still was the implacable hatred of those who had suffered from his cruelties. Roman literature, faithfully reflecting the sentiments of the aristocratic salons of the capital, while it almost canonized those who had been his victims, fully avenged their wrongs by painting Nero as a monster of wickedness. In Christian tradition he even appears as the mystic Antichrist, who was destined to come once again to trouble the saints. Even in the middle ages, Nero was still the very incarnation of splendid iniquity, while the belief lingered obstinately that he had only disappeared for a time, and as late as the 11th century his restless spirit was supposed to haunt the slopes of the Pincian Hill.
The chief ancient authorities for Nero’s life and reign are Tacitus (Annals, xiii.-xvi., ed. Furneaux), Suetonius, Dio Cassius (Epit. ixi., lxii., lxiii.), and Zonaras (Ann. xi.). The most important modern work is that of B. W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero (London, 1903; see an important notice in Class. Rev. vol. xviii. p. 57), which contains complete bibliography of ancient and modern writers; see also H. Schiller’s Nero, and Geschichte d. Kaiserzeit; Lehmann, Claudius und Nero; histories of Rome in general. (H. F. P.)
NERVA, MARCUS COCCEIUS, Roman emperor from the
18th of September 96 to the 25th of January 98, was born at
Narnia in Umbria on the 8th of November, probably in the year
35. He belonged to a senatorial family, which had attained
considerable distinction under the emperors, his father and
grandfather having been well-known jurists. A single inscription
(C.I.L. vi. 31,297) gives the name of his mother as Sergia
Plautilla, daughter of Laenas. In his early manhood he had been
on friendly terms with Nero, by whom he was decorated in 65
(Tacitus, Annals, xv. 72) with the triumphal insignia after the
suppression of the Pisonian conspiracy (further valuable information
as to his career is given in an inscription from Sassoferrato,
(C.I.L. xi. 5743).
He was praetor (66) and twice consul, in 71 with the emperor Vespasian for colleague, and again in 90 with Domitian. Towards the close of the latter’s reign (93) he is said to have excited suspicion and to have been banished to Tarentum on a charge of conspiracy (Dio Cass. lxvii. 15; Philostr. Apoll. Tyan. vii. 8). On the murder of Domitian in September 96 Nerva was declared emperor by the people and the soldiers. He is described as a quiet, kindly, dignified man, honest of purpose, but unfitted by his advanced age and temperament, as well as by feeble health, to bear the weight of empire. Nevertheless, his selection, in spite of occasional exhibitions of weakness, justified the choice. His accession brought a welcome relief from the terrible strain of the last few years. The new emperor recalled those who had been exiled by Domitian; what remained of their confiscated property was restored to them, and a stop was put to the vexatious prosecutions which Domitian had encouraged. But the popular feeling demanded more than this. The countless informers of all classes who had thriven under the previous régime now found themselves swept away, to borrow Pliny’s metaphor (Pliny, Paneg. 35), by a hurricane of revengeful fury, which threatened to become as dangerous in its indiscriminate ravages as the system it attacked. It was finally checked by Nerva, who was stung into action by the sarcastic remark of the consul Titus Catius Caesius Fronto that, “bad as it was to have an emperor who allowed no one to do anything, it was worse to have one who allowed every one to do everything” (Dio Cass. lxviii. 1).
Nerva seems to have followed the custom of announcing the general lines of his future policy. Domitian had been arbitrary and high-handed, and had heaped favours on the soldiery while humiliating the senate; Nerva showed himself anxious to respect the traditional privileges of the senate, and such maxims of constitutional government as still survived. He pledged himself to put no senator to death. His chosen councillors in all affairs of state were senators, and the hearing of claims against the fiscus was taken from the imperial procuratores and entrusted to the more impartial jurisdiction of a praetor and a court of judices (Dio Cass. lxviii. 2; Digest, i. 2, 2; Pliny, Paneg. 36).
No one probably expected from Nerva a vigorous administration either at home or abroad, although during his reign a successful campaign was carried on in Pannonia against the Germans (Suebi), for which he assumed the name Germanicus. He appears, however, to have set himself honestly to carry out reforms. The economical condition of Italy evidently excited his alarm and sympathy. The last mention of a lex agraria in Roman history is connected with his name, though how far the measure was strictly speaking a law is uncertain. Under the provisions of this lex, large tracts of land were bought up and allotted to poor citizens. The cost was defrayed partly from the imperial treasury, but partly also from Nerva’s private resources, and the execution of the scheme was entrusted to commissioners (Dig. xlvii. 21, 3; Dio Cass. lxviii. 2; Pliny, Ep. vii. 31; Corp. Inscr. Lat. vi. 1548). He also founded or restored colonies at Verulae, Scyllacium and Sitifis in Mauretania. The agrarian
- ↑ Suet. Nero, 40; Dio Cass. Epit. lxiii. 22; Plut. Galba, 4; cf. also Schiller’s Nero, pp. 261 seq.; Mommsen in Hermes, xiii. 90.
