The dispatch of an incompetent general into Asia resulted in a most inglorious Parthian campaign.  Nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to Poppaea, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant’s death.  It was well that Corbulo, marching from Syria, restored the Roman prestige in the Far East.

These events were followed by the famous fire which devastated Rome; whether or no it was actually Nero’s own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of Troy.  He planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire—­and putting to the most exquisite tortures—­a class hated for their abominations, called Christians, from their first leader, Christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the reign of Tiberius.

A very widespread conspiracy was now formed against Nero, in favour of one Gaius Calpurnius Piso; Faenius Rufus, an officer of the Praetorians, who had been subordinated to Tigellinus, being one of the leaders.  The plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators.

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SALLUST

The Conspiracy of Catiline

The Roman historian Caius Crispus Sallust, who was born at Amiternum in 86 B.C., and died in 34 B.C., lived throughout the active career of Julius Caesar, and died while Anthony and Octavian were still rivals for the supreme power.  It might be supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent virtue, but this was merely a literary pose.  He was probably driven into private life, in the first place, on account of the scandals with which he was associated.  He became a partisan of Caesar in the struggle with Pompey, and to this he owed the pro-consulship of Numidia, on the proceeds of which he retired into leisured ease.  Sallust aspired with very limited success to assume the mantle of Thucydides, and the role of a philosophic historian.  He displays considerable political acumen on occasion, but his assumption of stern impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of elevated morality.  His “Conspiracy of Catiline”—­the first of his historical essays—­was probably written, in part at least, with the object of dissociating Caesar from it; the lurid colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably exaggerated.  But whether true or false, the picture presented is a vivid one.  This epitome is adapted specially from the Latin text.

I.—­The Plotting

I esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer’s abilities to the utmost Personal ambition had at first drawn me into public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and corruption, was so uncongenial that I resolved to retire and devote myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which I felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences which bias the political partisan.  For the first of these studies I have selected the conspiracy of Catiline.