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30 DARKNESS AND DAWN
and was examining the waxen masks of his ancestral Claudii,
which were to be worn in the procession, the boy and girl
were permitted to visit the chamber of the dead. They bent
over the corpse of their father, and fondled his cold hands,
and let their tears fall on his pale face, and felt something of
the bitterness of death in that sudden and shattering bereavement,
which changed for ever the complexion of their lives.
Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst enraptured
plaudits in the finely turned and epigrammatic
phrases of Seneca, which breathed the quintessence of wise
government and Stoic magnanimity. He would rule, he said,
on the principles
which guided Augustus; and the senators
seemed as if
they would never end their plaudits when to the
offer of the title ' Father of his Country ' lie
modestly replied,
'
Not till I shall have deserved it.'
Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the funeral
procession, finally dismissed her murdered husband from her
thoughts, and gave directions that her son, on his return to
the Palace, should be received with a fitting welcome. She
summoned all the slaves and freedmen of that mass of dependants
which made of the Palace not a household, but a
city. They were marshalled in throngs by their offices and
nationalities in the vast hall. They were arrayed in their
richest apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands under
the feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The multitudes
of the lowest and least distinguished slaves were to stand in
the farther parts of the hall
;
next to them the more educated
and valuable slaves, and next to them the freedmen. In the
inner ring were placed all the most beautiful and accomplished
of the pages, their long and perfumed curls falling over their
gay apparel, while some who had the sweetest voices were to
break out into a chorus of triumphal songs. Then Nero was
to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards a sumptuous
banquet was to be served to a hundred guests. There was
but a short time for these preparations ;
but the wealth of the
Caesars was unbounded, and their resources inexhaustible, and
since the slaves were to be counted by hundreds, and each had
his own minute task assigned to him, everything was done as
if
by magic.
The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of shouting
proclaimed that, through the densely crowded streets, in which