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544 DARKNESS AND DAWN
wretched voice was his friend ;
whoever praised it insuffi'
ciently was his euemy.
It is part of the subtle irony of history that the zenith
of apparent prosperity is often the culminating moment of
misfortune, and the scene of most splendid exaltation is that
in which the fingers of a man's hand steal forth and write
on the palace-wall the flashing messages of doom. The
triumph of the sole periodonices whom the world had ever
seen was the last hour of his sham glory. The patience
of God and man was exhausted, and ' down rushed the
thunderbolt.'
Romans might be too deeply abased to avenge the degradation
of their name by the latest of those triumphs which
seemed to cover with ridiculous parody the three hundred
which had preceded
it. But there was yet a Gaul brave
enough to arouse the Empire from its fatal apathy.
His name was Julius Vindex, and he was the Propraetor
of Gaul. He was rich, and he was a senator, as his father
had been before him, for Claudius had granted this distinction
to the descendant of the ancient kings of Aquitania.
Nero envied his wealth, but Viudex, in order to make the
greedy parasites of the Court think that he would soon die
and leave them his possessions, drank cumin-water and made
himself artificially pale. In Gaul he received constant news
of Nero's villanies both paltry and heinous, and his soul
burned within him. He sounded the legionaries to discover
whether they were as much ashamed and weary as himself of
the tyranny of a comedian and a monster. He found them
ripe for rebellion. He had no personal objects. He knew
that a Gaul could hardly be Emperor, and he secretly offered
the Empire to Galba. On March 16, A.D. 68, he gave, a little
too prematurely, the signal of revolt. Nero had gone to Naples
to refresh himself and to rest his precious voice, and there he
received the news of the insurrection on March 19, the anniversary
of the murder of his mother.
The idiotic frivolity with which he acted upon such serious
intelligence astonished even his courtiers. He only laughed,
and pretended to rejoice at the opportunity which would thus
be afforded him of spoiling the wealthiest of the provinces.
He went into the gymnasium, and watched with affected
transport the contests of the athletes. At supper
still more