At the beginning of the fifth act comes the news of the rising of Julius Vindex.  Like a true coward Nero makes light of the distant danger; but when the rumours fly thick and fast he gives way to womanish passionateness, idly upbraiding the gods instead of consulting for his own safety.  His despair and terror when he perceives the inevitable doom are powerfully rendered.  The fear of the after-world makes him long for annihilation; his imagination presents to him “the furies arm’d with linkes, with whippes, with snakes,” and he dreads to meet his mother and those “troopes of slaughtered friends” before the tribunal of the Judge

    “That will not leave unto authoritie,
    Nor favour the oppressions of the great.”

But, fine as it undoubtedly is, the closing scene of the play bears no comparison with the pathetic narrative of Suetonius.  Riding out, muffled, from Rome amid thunder and lightning, attended but by four followers, the doomed emperor hears from the neighbouring camp the shouts of the soldiers cursing the name of Nero and calling down blessings on Galba.  Passing some wayfarers on the road, he hears one of them whisper, “Hi Neronem persequuntur;” and another asks, “Ecquid in urbe novi de Nerone?” Further on his horse takes fright, terrified by the stench from a corpse that lay in the road-side:  in the confusion the emperor’s face is uncovered, and at that moment he is recognized and saluted by a Praetorian soldier who is riding towards the City.  Reaching a by-path, they dismount and make their way hardly through reeds and thickets.  When his attendant, Phaon, urged him to conceal himself in a sandpit, Nero “negavit se vivum sub terram iturum;” but soon, creeping on hands and knees into a cavern’s mouth, he spread a tattered coverlet over himself and lay down to rest.  And now the pangs of hunger and thirst racked him; but he refused the coarse bread that his attendants offered, only taking a draught of warm water.  Then he bade his attendants dig his grave and get faggots and fire, that his body might be saved from indignities; and while these preparations were being made he kept moaning “qualis artifex pereo!” Presently comes a messenger bringing news that Nero had been adjudged an “enemy” by the senate and sentenced to be punished “more majorum.”  Enquiring the nature of the punishment, and learning that it consisted in fastening the criminal’s neck to a fork and scourging him, naked, to death, the wretched emperor hastily snatched a pair of daggers and tried the edges; but his courage failed him and he put them by, saying that “not yet was the fatal moment at hand.”  At one time he begged some one of his attendants to show him an example of fortitude by dying first; at another he chid himself for his own irresolution, exclaiming:  [Greek:  “ou prepei Neroni, ou prepei—­naephein dei en tois toioutois—­age, egeire seauton.”] But now were heard approaching the horsemen who had been commissioned to bring back the emperor alive.  The time for wavering was over:  hurriedly ejaculating the line of Homer,