rallied.  The first impression had indeed been disastrous, but had brought about no irreparable consequences—­the only consequences that count in politics.  One could therefore hope that the public would gradually forget this murder as they had forgotten that of Britannicus.  One only needed to help them forget.  Nero resolved to give Italy and Rome the administrative revolution that had found in Agrippina so determined an opponent, the easy, splendid, generous government that seemed to suit the popular taste.

He began by organising among the jeunesse doree of Rome the “festivals of youth.”  In these true demonstrations against the old aristocratic education, now in the house of one and then in the garden of another, the young patricians met under the Emperor’s directions.  They sang, recited, and danced, displaying all the tendencies that tradition held unworthy of a Roman nobleman.  Later, Nero built in the Vatican fields a private stadium, where he amused himself with driving, and invited his friends to join him.  He surrounded himself with poets, musicians, singers; enormously increased the budget of popular festivals; planned and started immense constructions; introduced into all parts of the administration a new spirit of carelessness and ease.  Not only the sumptuary laws, but all laws commanding the fulfilment of human duties toward the species, such as the great laws of Augustus on marriage and adultery, were no longer applied; the surveillance of the Senate over the governors, that of the governors over the cities, slackened.  In Rome, in all Italy, in the provinces, the treasuries of the Republic, the possessions and the funds of the cities, were robbed.  In the midst of this unbridled plundering, which appeared to make every man rich quickly, and without work, a delirium of luxury and pleasure reigned:  in Rome especially, people lived in a continuous orgy; the nobility answered in crowds the invitations of Nero; the Senate, the great houses, where the conquerors of the world had been born, swarmed with young athletes and drivers, who had no other ambition but that of adding the prize of a race to the war trophies of their ancestors; the imperial palace was invaded by a noisy horde of zitherists, actors, jockeys, athletes, among whom Burrhus and, still more, Seneca, were beginning to feel most ill at ease.

Agrippina’s death, even though it had yet deferred Nero’s marrying Poppaea, had made possible the change in the government that a part of the people wished.  We owe to this new principle the immense ruins of ancient Rome; but this fact does not authorise us to consider it a Roman principle:  it was, instead, a principle of Oriental civilisation which had forced itself upon the Roman traditions after a long and painful effort.  The revolution, however, had been long preparing and corresponded to the popular aspirations.  It would, therefore, have redounded to the advantage of the Emperor, who had dared to break loose from a superannuated tradition, had not Agrippina’s spectre still haunted Rome.  To their honour be it said, the people of Rome and Italy had not yet become so corrupted by Oriental civilisation as to forget parricide in a few festivals.