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THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA 393
CHAPTER XLVI
THE DEATH OF OCTAVIA
'
gioia ineffabile allegrezza ! !
vita intera d' amore e di pace !
'
senza brama sicura ricchezza !
DANTE, Paradiso, xxvii. 7-9.
IN one sense all the people of Rome were the friends of
Octavia ;
in another she was nearly friendless. For the mul-
selfishness and cowed
titudes of every rank were degraded by
by terror. So long as they were personally untouched by the
orgies and crimes of the Emperor, and so long as he was supported
by the swords of the Praetorians, they neither wished
nor dared to interfere. Rome lay helpless under the bonds of
the tyranny which her own vices had riveted. Nero might
indeed be murdered, but in what respect would the Empire
be better off ? There was no Caesar left. If Nero died, there
seemed to be no prospect for Rome except the horrors of civil
war with all its attendant pillage, massacre, and crime. It
seemed better to endure Nero's infamies than to see the
Empire torn to pieces. After all, were not many of the
senators, of the generals, of the aristocracy, capable of becoming
as licentious and as cruel as he was, and would not their
elevation make their vices loom as monstrous as his ?
They rejoiced, therefore, that the popular tumult had been
so speedily repressed, and they steeped their consciences in
immoral acquiescence. The bad plunged themselves yet more
shamelessly into vice, and manoeuvred to make their vices
known as a passport to imperial favour. As for the better
Romans, they tried to bury themselves in such obscurity as
would shelter them from notice or ; they sought solace in the
refined egotism of the Epicureans or inured themselves to
;
the chances of death and ruin by assuming the haughty selfdependence
of the later Stoics. Paetus Thrasea and his friends
took refuge in the belief that it would be an absurdity to