Cornelli Taciti annalium

LIFE OF NERO
and they and the legions had large rewards to expect for support-
ing her ; a single sitting of the senate confirmed Nero in all the
imperial powers and privileges, and he accordingly entered on his
rule in October, 54 A. D., being now two months short of his seven-
teenth year.
§ 3. In the first five years of his reign, covered by Book xiii, the
faults of Nero's character were not fatal to good government. The
better influences around him were sufficiently strong to secure
outwardly a period of improved administration, and this ' quinquennium
Neronis' was subsequently eulogized by Trajan as the
best period of government since the foundation of the principate.
It was his avowed aim to avoid the abuses of the late reign, in
which public policy and the administration of justice had become
matters of palace intrigue (xiii 4). The senate was encouraged to
resume its executive functions, and passed numerous measures,
some even in subversion of what Agrippina championed as 'acta
Claudii' (chs. 5, 26, 28, 32) ; as chief criminal court, it dealt with
corrupt practices under the late reign (chs. 42, 43), as well as with
provincial misgovernment, of which twelve cases were tried between
the years 54 and 61 A.D., a large number for a period of that length.
Foreign policy was vigorously conducted : the crisis in the East
was met by the judicious appointment of Corbulo ; in Germany,
encroachments previously overlooked were checked by a new legatus
provincial governors were deprived of one of their methods
(ch. 54) ;
of evading the legal consequences of maladministration (ch. 31,5).
As regards theprinceps' own share in government, Pallas, Claudius'
favourite, was dismissed from the control of the emperor's privy
purse, and apart from direct bids for populari-y, such as the largesses
given at the beginning of his reign, the withdrawal of the guard
from the theatre (ch. 24), and the erection of a new amphitheatre
in Rome (ch. 31), we may trace a genuine desire for the benefit of
his subjects in his regulations against the extortions of the publicani
(ch. 51), in his chimerical scheme to abolish the vectigalia through-
out the empire and derive the state revenues solely from the tributa
from which citizens were exempt (ch. 50), and in his assignment of
lands to veterans to recruit the dwindling population of Italian
towns (xiv 27). But the responsibilities of government did not
have the effect of drawing out the better qualities of Nero's
XXXV