The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL'S SOJOTTBN IN ROME. 587
2. If Fan! had little to hope from the Jewish community at Borne, he
had still less reason to place any confidence in the justice, or mercy, or even
the ordinary discernment, of the Caesar to whom he had appealed. The first
three Caesars had been statesmen and men of genius. For Gains might have
been urged the mitigating plea of congenital madness. Claudius was
redeemed from contempt by a certain amount of learning and good-nature,
But Nero was in some respects worse than any who had preceded him.
Incurably vicious, incurably frivolous, with no result of all his education
beyond a smattering of ridiculous or unworthy accomplishments, his selfishness
had been so inflamed by unlimited autocracy that there was not a single
crime of which he was incapable, or a single degradation to which he could
not sink. The world never entrusted its imperial absolutism to a more des-
picable specimen of humanity. He was a tenth-rate actor entrusted with
irresponsible power. In every noble mind he inspired a horror only alleviated
by contempt. The first five years of his reign that " golden quinquennium "
which was regarded as an ideal of happy government were a mere illusion. 1
Their external success and happiness had been due to the wise counsels exclu-
sively of Burrus and Seneca, which Nero who was but seventeen when his
stepfather Claudius had been poisoned by his mother Agnppina was too
ignorant, too careless, and too bent on personal pleasure to dispute. Yet in
all that concerned the personal conduct of himself and of Agrippina, even
those five years had been thickly sown with atrocities and infamies, of which
the worst are too atrocious and too infamous to be told. His very first year
was marked not only by open ingratitude to his friends, but also by the
assassination of Junius Silanus, and the poisoning of the young sou of
Claudius Britannicus, a boy of fourteen, from whom he had usurped the
throne. The second year was marked by the cowardly folly of his disguised
nightly marauding among his peaceful subjects, after the fashion of the
Mohawks in the reign of Queen Anne. From these he had descended
through every abyss of vice and crime, to the murder of his mother, his public
displays in the theatre, 2 the flight from place to place in the restless terrors of
a haunted conscience, and finally to the most abandoned wickedness when he
found that even such crimes as his had failed to sicken the adulation or to
shake the allegiance of his people. He was further encouraged by this
discovery to throw off all shadow of control. Shortly after Paul's arrival
Burrus had died, not without suspicion of being poisoned by his imperial
master.
position.
Nero seized this opportunity to disgrace Seneca from his high
To fill up the vacancy created by the death of Burrus, he returned
to the old plan of appointing two Praetorian Praefects. These were Fenius
Hufns, a man of no personal weight, but popular from bis benevolent disposi-
1 Nero succeeded Claudius on October 13, A.D. 54.
2 At the Juvenalia, which he instituted on the occasion of first shaving his beard,
in the
Gallic had to submit to the degradation of publicly announcing his appearance
theatre, and Burrus and Seneca had to act as prompters and tutors, with praises on
their lips and anguish in their hearts " (Dion. Ixi. 20, 19 ; Tac. Ann. xiv. 15).