merit the description—it has become almost proverbial—that had he never been emperor no one would have doubted his capacity for empire.
He came to the throne under almost every possible disadvantage. He was old, he was ugly, bald-headed, and a gouty invalid. He kept his purse-strings tight: he spoke his mind indiscreetly: he was a slave to his freedmen and favourites: good in intention, he was infirm of purpose: a popular and humane provincial governor, he caused much blood to be spilt in Rome, not because he was cruel, but through weakness, indecision, or mere perplexity.
He came to a city peopled by his foes. The prætorians could not stomach a Cæsar chosen by the legions: they could not conceal from themselves that the fatal secret was revealed, and indeed was pervading the provinces—that a "prince might be created elsewhere than at Rome." Highly had Nero favored—nay, even flattered—his body-guards. They were the props of his throne: their tribunes, and even their centurions, were admitted to his orgies: they stood beside him in the courts of justice: they accompanied him on his journeys: he enriched them, when his own coffers were empty, with the spoils of noble houses: he relaxed their discipline: he catered for their pleasures: they led the applause when he drove his chariot in the circus, or sang and spouted in the theatre. And now a Cæsar was in their darling's place who knew not the prætorians—who had filled the capital with the ordinary legionaries, whom they had always affected to despise as the "Line." The treasury was known to be empty: the Cæsar was said to be avaricious. "He loved no plays;" he was not musical;
