click to read pdf file - The Preterist Archive

540 DARKNESS AND DAWN
had been devoted to the service of the Empire. To him had
been due those splendid victories which kept the Parthians
in check, and induced Tiridates to put the colophon on
Nero's glory by coming to receive at his hands before the
Eoman people the diadem of Armenia. Well might the
Arsacid tell Nero that in Corbulo he had a good slave. The
great victorious general had spent his life in foreign
He service.
had never come near the Court; had received no civil
honours ;
had never returned to enjoy a triumph or an ovation.
from those
He had been content to keep himself away
scenes of gilded slavery and miserable splendour, and perhaps
anticipated the sole reward which tyrants can give to
true greatness. Now, however, that Nero was in Greece, he
wrote to Corbulo a letter of almost filial reverence, and invited
him to come and receive proofs of his gratitude. To
refuse would have been tantamount to rebellion, and Corbulo
had always been stainlessly loyal to his worthless master.
But good men invariably have their slanderers, and one of
his officers, Arrius Varus, had been whispering suspicions
about him into the Emperor's ear. He was not granted so
much as an audience. No sooner had he landed at Cenchrese
than Nero sent him the command to die. Corbulo wasted
no words on execration or complaint. For a moment, perhaps,
it flashed across him that he would have been wiser to
listen to the voice of Rome and of the East, which had invited
him to be their liberator. But it was too late to repent
of the fault of putting trust in a monster. He drew his
'
sword and stabbed himself with the single word Deserved !' 1
We cannot wonder that Nero did not visit Sparta, because
every tradition of Sparta would have cried shame on his histrionic
effeminacy, He did not visit Athens, because Athens
did not deign to invite him, and because he shrank from
eliciting a keenness of wit which had not spared the bloodstained
Sylla. But his chief reason for avoiding ' the Eye of
Greece ' was because he dreaded the Temple of the Furies,
who had avenged the less guilty and more expiable matricide
of Orestes. Nor did he dare to visit Eleusis, because the
voice of the herald forbade the profane to be initiated into
its mysteries. He did not even venture to present himself
to the hierophants of the little mysteries of Agra on the
1
Note 51.