the show-places of Gaul, is sought for in vain to-day; a single night sufficed for the disappearance of a vast city; it perished in less time than I take to tell the tale.”  Nero gave upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards the reconstruction of Lyons, a gift that gained him the city’s gratitude, which was manifested, it is said, when his fall became imminent.  It was, however, J. Vindex, a Gaul of Vienne, governor of the Lyonnese province, who was the instigator of the insurrection which was fatal to Nero, and which put Galba in his place.

When Nero was dead there was no other Caesar, no naturally indicated successor to the empire.  The influence of the name of Caesar had spent itself in the crimes, madnesses, and incapacity of his descendants.  Then began a general search for emperors; and the ambition to be created spread abroad amongst the men of note in the Roman world.  During the eighteen months that followed the death of Nero, three pretenders—­Galba, Otho, and Vitellius—­ran this formidable risk.  Galba was a worthy old Roman senator, who frankly said, “If the vast body of the empire could be kept standing in equilibrium without a head, I were worthy of the chief place in the state.”  Otho and Vitellius were two epicures, both indolent and debauched, the former after an elegant, and the latter after a beastly fashion.  Galba was raised to the purple by the Lyonnese and Narbonnese provinces, Vitellius by the legions cantoned in the Belgic province:  to such an extent did Gaul already influence the destinies of Rome.  All three met disgrace and death within the space of eighteen months; and the search for an emperor took a turn towards the East, where the command was held by Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus, of Rieti in the duchy of Spoleto), a general sprung from a humble Italian family, who had won great military distinction, and who, having been proclaimed first at Alexandria, in Judea, and at Antioch, did not arrive until many months afterwards at Rome, where he commenced the twenty-six years’ reign of the Flavian family.

Neither Vespasian nor his sons, Titus and Domitian, visited Gaul, as their predecessors had.  Domitian alone put in a short appearance.  The eastern provinces of the empire and the wars on the frontier of the Danube, towards which the invasions of the Germans were at that time beginning to be directed, absorbed the attention of the new emperors.  Gaul was far, however, from remaining docile and peaceful at this epoch.  At the vacancy that occurred after Nero and amid the claims of various pretenders, the authority of the Roman name and the pressure of the imperial power diminished rapidly; and the memory and desire of independence were reawakened.  In Belgica the German peoplets, who had been allowed to settle on the left bank of the Rhine, were very imperfectly subdued, and kept up close communication with the independent peoplets of the right bank.  The eight Roman legions