and that as long as you deserved the esteem of mankind. I began to hate you when you were guilty of parricide: when you murdered your mother, and destroyed your wife: when you became a charioteer, and an incendiary.'"[1] It is evident from this strange juxtaposition of folly with crime that Nero's degradation of his high office weighed in public opinion fully as much as any of the darker deeds which have rendered his name infamous for ever.
The reader's attention is now called to passages in the 'Annals' which may fairly be denominated Episodical, and in which their author displays his masterly skill as a painter in words. He avails himself of every opportunity for such digressions. Weary, apparently, of the crimes, the follies, the caprices, and prodigality of the Cæsars and the capital, he gladly leaves Rome and Italy for a while behind him, and welcomes a change of scene, even as the traveller in a thirsty land welcomes the green spots and the water-springs which relieve the tediousness of his way.
"Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in those beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic transactions of the Germans or the Parthians, his principal object is to relieve the attention of the reader from a uniform scene of vice and misery."[2] So wrote one who had deeply studied the works of the historian, and who followed the example he commends in many of his own most interesting chapters.
The reign of Tiberius, for example, although it lasted for twenty-three years, is far from rich in events, and,
