rerogatives; that if he did not place himself well
in the centre of Olympus, the equilibrium of the universe would be
destroyed. Victims were slain along his path, and altars raised for
him--for this wretch, whom an honest slave could not but despise and
loathe--as though he was too great for mere human honors. Nay, more, he
found adorers and imitators of his execrable example--an Otho, a
Vitellius, a Domitian, a Commodus, a Caracalla, a Heliogabalus--to
poison the air of the world. The lusts and hungers and furies of the
world lamented him, and cherished his memory, and longed for his return.

And yet, though all bad men--who were the majority--admired and even
loved him, he died the death of a dog. Tremendous as was the power of
imperialism, the Romans often treated their individual emperors as Nero
himself treated the Syrian goddess, whose image he first worshipped with
awful veneration and then subjected to the most grotesque indignities,
for retribution did not linger, and the vengeance fell at once on the
guilty Emperor and the guilty city.

"Careless _seems_ the Great Avenger: History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."[36]

The air was full of prodigies. There were terrible storms; the plague
wrought fearful ravages. Rumors spread from lip to lip. Men spoke of
monstrous births; of deaths by lightning under strange circumstances; of
a brazen statue of Nero melted by the flash; of places struck by the
brand of heaven in fourteen regions of the city; of sudden darkenings of
the sun. A hurricane devastated Campania; comets blazed in the heavens;
earthquakes shook the ground. On all sides were the traces of deep
uneasiness and superstitious terror. To all these portents, which were
accepted as true by Christians as well as by pagans, the Christians
would give a specially terrible significance. They strengthened their
conviction that the coming of the Lord drew nigh. They convinced the
better sort of pagans that the hour of their deliverance from a tyranny
so monstrous and so disgraceful was near at hand.

In spite of the shocking servility with which alike the senate and the
people had welcomed him back to the city with shouts of triumph, Nero
felt that the air