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92 tion than his vices, and his vices to have been more resented than his crimes. The murder of his young brother (by adoption) Britannicus; of his miserable wife Octavia; of his mother Agrippina,—did not seriously incense a profligate nobility or a venal people, although the latter once rose in favour of the wife, but were frightened into apathy by brutal soldiers. In point of fact, the vices of the Cæsars were those of the upper classes of Rome generally, but, being exhibited on a larger stage, were the more observed, because, from his high and solitary station, the criminal was more conspicuous.

Once, indeed, in the year 65, it seemed as if the tyrant had at length exhausted the patience of his subjects, and that a spark still survived of the ancient spirit of Rome. The conspiracy of which Piso was the head, was formed; and had the members of it not wasted time in long delays, and had its nominal chief not been weak and vacillating, there was a fair prospect of success. The plot comprised some of the noblest and some of the most intelligent men of the time; among them the philosopher Seneca, and his nephew, the poet Lucan. The consummate art of the narration, in this case, adds to the perception of our loss in the absence of Tacitus's account of the far more complex and more widely ramified conspiracy of Sejanus.

In the combination of Piso and his associates against Nero we come for the first time on the appearance of philosophers in connection with public affairs; and as Stoics especially were destined to take some prominent share in the administration of the empire, or in the imperial Council of State, nay, in the person of Marcus Au-