e arts and wickedness he owed his own
elevation. The murder was effected in her villa, on the Lucrine Lake,
under circumstances of utter brutality. Nero came to examine her mangled
body, and coolly praised the beauty of her form. Nor were her ashes even
placed in the mausoleum of Augustus. This wicked Jezebel, who had poisoned
her husband, and was accused of every crime revolting to our nature, paid
the penalty of her varied infamies, and her name has descended to all
subsequent ages as the worst woman of antiquity.

(M1082) With the murder of Agrippina, the madness and atrocities of Nero
gained new force. He now appears as a monster, and was only tolerated for
the amusements with which he appeased the Roman people. He disgraced the
imperial dignity by descending upon the stage, which was always infamous;
he instituted demoralizing games; he was utterly insensible to national
sentiments and feelings; he exceeded all his predecessors in extravagance
and follies; he was suspected of poisoning Burrhus, by whom he was
advanced to power; he executed men of the highest rank, whose crime was
their riches; he destroyed the members of the imperial family; he murdered
Doryphorus and Pallas, because they were averse to his marriage with
Poppaea; he drove his chariot in the Circus Maximus, pleased with the
acclamations of two hundred thousand spectators; he gave banquets in which
the utmost excesses of bacchanalian debauchery were openly displayed; he
is said to have kindled the conflagration of his own capital; he levied
oppressive taxes to build his golden palace, and support his varied
extravagance; he even destroyed his tutor and minister, Seneca, that he
might be free from his expostulations, and take possession of the vast
fortune which this philosopher had accumulated in his service; and he
finally kicked his wife so savagely that she died from the violence he
inflicted. If it were possible to add to his enormities, his persecution
of the Christians swelled the measure of his infamies--the first to which
they had been subjected in Rome, and in which Paul himself was a victim.
But his government was supported by the cruelty and voluptuousness of the
age, and which has never been painted in more vivid colors than by St.
Paul himself. The corrupt morality of the age tolerated all these crimes,
and excesses, and follies--an age which saw no great writers except Seneca,
Lucan, Perseus, and Martial, two of whom were murdered by the