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IN THE CLUTCH OF NEMESIS 567
the Parthiaus ;
that he would return to take vengeance on
his enemies. The fancy gilded the brief fortune and precipitated
the miserable punishment of at least two impostors.
Of these Perkin Warbecks and Lambert Simnels of antiquity,
one was put to death in the reign of Otho, the other in the
reign of Domitian and for ; nearly three centuries the legend
lingered on in the Christian Church that Nero was the wild
beast, wounded to death, but whose deadly wound had been
healed the Antichrist who should return again.
And the people fancied that his restless, miserable ghost
haunted for centuries the Collis Hortulorum, the Monte Piiicio,
where stood the monument of the Dornitii ;
until in
pity for their terrors it was exorcised in 1099 by Pope
Pascal II., the superb successor of the humble Linus. The
Church of Santa Maria del Popolo stands to this day as a
witness of the changed fortunes of that Church which Nero
well-nigh extinguished and exterminated when he made
light more ghastly than the darkness by kindling those living
torches in the gardens of the Mons Vaticanus. Over
that desecrated spot, as I have said, now falls the shadow of
the vast Christian basilica, and the obelisk of Heliopolis,
which towered over Nero as he drove his chariot through
lines of burning men, testifies by its triumphant inscriptions
to the victory of the faith of Christ.