emperor.

(M1083) But the hour of retribution was at hand. The provinces were
discontented, and the city filled with cabals and conspiracies. Though one
of them, instigated by Piso, was unsuccessful, and its authors punished, a
revolt in Gaul, headed by Galba--an old veteran of seventy-two, and
assisted by Vindex and Virginius, was fatal to Nero. The Senate and the
praetorian guards favored the revolution. The emperor was no longer safe in
his capital. Terrified by dreams, and stung by desertion, the wretched
tyrant fled to the Servilian Gardens, and from thence to the villa of one
of his freedmen, near which he committed suicide, at the age of
thirty-six, and in the fourteenth year of his inglorious reign, during
which there are scarcely other events to chronicle than his own personal
infamies. "In him perished the last scion of the stock of the Julii,
refreshed in vain by grafts from the Octavii, the Claudii, and the
Domitii." Though the first of the emperors had married four wives, the
second three, the third two, the fourth three, the fifth six, and the
sixth three, yet Nero was the last of the Caesars. None of the five
successors of Julius were truly his natural heirs. They trace their
lineage to his sister Julia, but the three last had in their veins the
blood of Antony as well as Octavia, and thus the descendants of the
triumvir reigned at Rome as well as those of his rival Octavius. We have
only to remark that it is strange that the Julian line should have been
extinguished in the sixth generation, with so many marriages.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE CLIMAX OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

On the extinction of the Julian line, a new class of emperors succeeded,
by whom the prosperity of the empire was greatly advanced. We have now to
fall back on Niebuhr, Gibbon, and the Roman historians, and also make more
use of Smith's digest of these authors. But so much ground still remains
to go over, that we can only allude to salient points, and our notice of
succeeding emperors must be brief.

(M1084) The empire was now to be the prize of successful soldiers, and
Galba, at the age of seventy-three, was saluted imperator by the legions
before the death of Nero, A.D. 68, and acknowledged by the Senate soon
after. There is nothing memorable in his short reign of a few months, and
he was succeeded by Otho, who only reigned three months, and he was
succeeded by Vitellius, who was removed by violent de