Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/365

Rh N E E N E R 351 the Greeks were fit to hear him, and their ready com plaisance was rewarded when he left by the bestowal of immunity from the land tax on the whole province, and the gift of the Roman franchise to his appreciative judges, while as a more splendid and lasting memorial of his visit, he planned and actually commenced the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. If we may believe report, Nero found time in the intervals of his artistic triumphs for more vicious excesses. The stories of his mock marriage with Sporus, his execution of wealthy Greeks for the sake of their money, and his wholesale plundering of the temples were evidently part of the accepted tradition about him in the time of Suetonius, and are at least credible. Far more certainly true is his ungrateful treatment of Domitius Corbulo, who, when he landed at Cenchrece, fresh from his successes in Armenia, was met by an order for his instant execution, and at once put an end to his own life. But while Nero was revelling in Greece the dissatisfac tion with his rule, and the fear and abhorrence excited by his crimes, were rapidly taking the shape of a resolute determination to get rid of him. That movements in this direction were on foot in Rome may be safely inferred from the urgency with which the imperial freedman Helius insisted upon Nero s return to Italy; but far more serious than any amount of intrigue in Rome was the disaffection which now showed itself in the rich and warlike provinces of the west. In northern Gaul, early in 68, the standard of revolt was raised by Julius Vindex, governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, and himself the head of an ancient and noble Celtic family. South of the Pyrenees, P. Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, and Poppsea s former husband, Marcus Salvius Otho, governor of Lusitania, followed Vindex s example. At first, however, fortune seemed to favour Nero. It is very probable that Vindex bad other aims in view than the deposition of Nero and the substitution of a fresh emperor in his place, and that the liberation of northern Gaul from Roman rule was part of his plan. 1 If this was so, it is easy to understand both the enthusiasm with which the chiefs of northern Gaul rallied to the standard of a leader belonging to their own race, and the opposition which Vindex encountered from the Roman colony of Lugdunum, and from the Roman legions on the Rhine. For it is certain that the latter at any rate were not animated by loyalty to Nero. They encountered Vindex and his Celtic levies at Vesontium (Besangon), and in the battle which followed Vindex was defeated and slain. But the next step of the victorious legionaries was to break the statues of Nero and offer the imperial purple to their own commander Verginius Rufus ; and the latter, though he declined their offer, appealed to them to declare for the senate and people of Rome. Meanwhile in Spain Galba had been saluted imperator by his legions, had accepted the title, and was already on his march towards Italy. On the road the news met him that Vindex had been crushed by the army of the Rhine, and for the moment he resolved to abandon his attempt in despair, and even thought of suicide. Had Nero acted with energy he might still have checked the revolt. But he did nothing. He had reluctantly left Greece early in 68, but returned to Italy only to renew his revels. When on March 1 9 the news reached him at Naples of the rising in Gaul, he allowed a week to elapse before he could tear himself away from his pleasures. When he did at last re-enter Rome, he contented himself with the empty form of proscribing Vindex, and setting a price on his head. In April the announcement that Spain also had revolted, 1 Suet., Nero, 40 ; Dio Cass., Epit., Ixiii. 22; Plut., Galba, 4; cf. also Schiller s Nero, pp. 261 sq. ; Mommsen in Hermes, xiii. 90. and that the legions in Germany had declared for a republic, terrified him into something like energy. But it was too late. The news from the provinces fanned into flame the smouldering disaffection in Rome. During the next few weeks the senate almost openly intrigued against him, and the populace, once so lavish of their applause, were silent or hostile. Every day brought fresh instances of desertion, and the fidelity of the praetorian sentinels was more than doubtful. When finally even the palace guards forsook their posts, Nero despairingly stole out of Rome to seek shelter in a freedman s villa some four miles off. In this hiding-place he heard of the senate s proclamation of Galba as emperor, and of the sentence of death passed on himself. On the approach of the horsemen sent to drag him to execution, he collected sufficient courage to save himself by suicide from this final ignominy, and the soldiers arrived only to find the emperor in the agonies of death. Nero died on June 9, 68, in the thirty-first year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign, and his remains were deposited by the faithful hands of Acte in the family tomb of the Domitii on the Pincian Hill. With his death ended the line of the Caesars, and Roman imperialism entered upon a new phase. His statues were broken, his name everywhere erased, and his golden house demolished ; yet, in spite of all, no Roman emperor has left a deeper mark upon subsequent tradition. His brief career, with its splendid opening and its tragic close, its fantastic revels and frightful disasters, acquired a firm hold over the imagination of succeeding generations. The Roman populace continued for a long time to reverence his memory as that of an open-handed patron, and in Greece the recollections of his magnificence, and his enthusiasm for art, were still fresh when the traveller Pausanias visited the country a century later. The belief that he had not really died, but would return again to confound his foes, was long prevalent, not only in the remoter provinces, but even in Rome itself ; and more than one pretender was able to collect a following by assum ing the name of the last of the race of Augustus. More lasting still in its effects was the implacable hatred cherished towards his memory by those who had suffered from his cruelties. Roman literature, faithfully reflecting the sentiments of the aristocratic salons of the capital, while it almost canonized those who had been his victims, fully avenged their wrongs by painting Nero as a monster of wickedness. In Christian tradition he appears in an even more terrible character, as the mystic Antichrist, who was destined to come once again to trouble the saints. Even in the Middle Ages, Nero is still the very incarnation of splendid iniquity, while the belief lingered obstinately that he had only disappeared fcr a time, and as late as the llth century his restless spirit was supposed to haunt the slopes of the Pincian Hill. The chief ancient authorities forXero s life and reign are Tacitus (Annals, xiii.-xvi.), Suetonius, Dio Cassius (Epit., Ixi., Ixii., Ixiii.), and Zonaras (Ann., xi. ). The most important modern works are Merivale s History of the Romans under the Empire ; H. Schiller s Nero, and his Geschichte d. Kaiserzcit ; Lehmanu, Claudius und Nero. (H. F. P.) NERTCHINSK, a district town of eastern Siberia, situated in the government of Transbaikalia, 178 miles to the east of Tchita, on the left bank of the Nertcha, 3 miles from its junction with the Shilka. It is badly built of wood, and its lower part frequently suffers from inunda tions. The 4000 inhabitants support themselves mainly by agriculture, tobacco-growing, and cattle breeding; a few merchants also carry on an active trade in furs and cattle, in brick-tea from China, and manufactured wares from Russia, Nertchinsk being the trading centre for all that part of Dahouria which is situated on the eastern slope of the Stanovoy ridge.