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THE AGONY OF AN EMPKESS 515
woiiiaii, speaking of her deep sinfulness, and not making any
difference between her case and that of the commonest slavegirl
who might have lived an evil life. And all that she
could do was to resign her soul, and suffer it to be borne
along unresisting on that stream of prayer.
And yet she felt, even in her misery, some dim sense of
consolation, some faint gleam of hope such as she had never
felt before. She knew that death was near, and urged Pomponia
not to leave her. Pomponia sat by the bedside, holding
the weak hand, and doing every act of tenderness, and
speaking words of consolation, until the sinful troubled life
had ebbed away.
Such a mind as Nero's had become was incapable of sorrow.
He announced, indeed, that he was overwhelmed with grief,
and he indulged in a certain amount of hysterical and theatric
lamentation, which interfered in no way with his follies or
his appetites. A funeral was decreed to Poppsea at the
public expense, and Nero at the Rostra pronounced a eulogy
not on her virtues, for there were none on which he could
speak, but on her beauty and high fortune, and because she
had been the mother of a divine infant. By her own wish
learnt doubtless from the Jews she was buried, and not
burnt as was the Eoman custom. Nero had so many spices
burnt at her funeral that the learned doubted whether Arabia
could furnish more in a single summer. But not one genuine
tear was shed upon her grave.