conduct of Titus. The right of the vestals was well known in Rome, though it was rarely used, for they were not often seen in the streets. But it was understood that, in order to be valid, the meeting of vestal and criminal must be accidental. Lælia would have been seriously displeased had she known that she was in reality the victim of a little plot on the part of her boy-friend, and Titus was in some trepidation till he had hurried the vestal past the prisoner, and to the choice book-stall which was spread with the purple bindings of Atrectus. There she not only purchased for him the copy of Virgil, but, as he had quoted Seneca, she also gave him a radiant little volume of some of his treatises from the shop of his bookseller, Dorus, hard by. When she gave him this second gift the delighted youth felt a little compunction at his manœuvre. No one knew what he had done; but, when he narrated the incident to Pudens, the tribune suspected the real state of the case, for the boy's eye twinkled suspiciously as he told his little story with the most innocent candour. CHAPTER XXXIV AN EVIL EPOCH 'Inde metus maculat pœnarum præmia vitæ, LUCRET. De Rer. Nat. v. 1151. THE career and character of Nero grew darker every year, for every year more fully revealed to him the awful absoluteness of his autocracy. No one dreamed of disputing his will. Every desire, however frivolous, however shameful, however immense, was instantly gratified. His Court was prolific of the vilest characters. There was scarcely a man near his person who did not daily extol his power, his wit, his accomplishments, his beauty, his divinity. Do you not yet know that you are Cæsar?' they whispered to him if he hesitated for a moment to commit some deadly crime, or plunge into some unheard-of prodigality. All things went on much as usual in the corrupt, trembling world of Rome. To-day some wealthy nobleman would commit suicide, amid the laudations of his friends, out of utter weariness of life. To-morrow all Rome would be talking of the trial of some provincial governor who had gorged himself with the rapine of a wealthy province. Or everybody would be whispering a series of witty pasquinades, attributed to Antistius Sosianus or Fabricius Veiento, full of lacerating innuendoes, aimed now at the Emperor and now at some prominent senator. Pætus Thrasea and the peril he incurred by his opposition to the Court furnished a frequent subject of conversation, both to his Stoic admirers and to the rabble of venal senators, who cordially hated him. To put Thrasea to death would be to slay virtue itself,' said the graver citizens. |