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I/ENVOI 571
Marcus Aurelius, that ' bright consummate flower ' of pagan
morality. Those thoughts seem to absorb and to reflect the
auroral glow of Christanity, and could never have been attained
by a Pagan if Christianity had not been in the air. Epictetus
was so poor that his sole possession was a small lamp
and even that was stolen from him ! His virtue and political
insignificance, his plain living and high thinking, did not
save him from banishment. He retired to Nicopolis (where
the Apostle Paul had spent his last winter), and there
'taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him.'
And when he ended his peaceful life of obscurity
and self-
'
denial in extreme old age, he deserved the epitaph, I,
Epictetus, was a slave, and lame, and a pauper, and dear to
the Immortals.'
And did vengeance suffer such wretches as Nymphidius
Sabinus and TJGELLINUS to escape ? After crimes so many
and so heinous, did they come to a good end ? The traitor
Nymphidius, after a futile and impudent attempt to secure
the Empire for himself, was murdered by his own Praetorians.
He dragged down with him to destruction the fierce Cingonius
Varro, who had written an oration which Nymphidius
was to pronounce to the soldiers. Tigellinus, indeed, was
strangely protected by Nero's old and miserly successor when
the clamour of the people demanded his life as an expiation
for his crimes. He escaped by giving enormous bribes to
Titus Vinius, Galba's legate, and priceless gems to his daughter
Crispina. But to him also as to all, punishment was but
'
another name for guilt, taken a little lower down the stream,'
and vengeance in due time fell
upon him, and suffered him
not to live. After a vain attempt to bribe his executioners,
he committed suicide at Sinuessa amid a coarse and brutal
orgy, which reads like a parody upon the death of Petronius
Arbiter. It was a death exceptionally squalid, vile, and
agonising
fit end for a traitor, a coward, a villain of the
deepest dye.
As for the succeeding Emperors, the spasm of their brief
elevation was marked by universal horrors wars, and
rumours of wars, and massacres, and civil conflicts ;
nation
rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, plagues and