e
counts St. Peter as her first bishop. On the 29th of June,
A.D. 66, both suffered; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, being
beheaded with the sword; St. Peter crucified, with his head, by his own
desire, downwards. Many others suffered at the same time, some being
thrown to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths covered with
pitch, and slowly burnt to light the games in the Emperor's gardens. At
last the people were shocked, and cried out for these horrors to end.
And Nero, who cared for the people, turned his hatred and cruelty
against men of higher class whose fate they heeded less. So common was
it to have a message advising a man to put himself to death rather than
be sentenced, that every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's old
tutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and had joined in a plot for
overthrowing him, but it was found out, and Seneca had to die by his own
hand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his sake, was to open their
veins, get into a warm bath, and bleed to death.

Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and the
Isthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their
best statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans had
no original art--they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greek
artists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could be
endured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces began
to threaten him, they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every one
at Rome seemed to be.

The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, who was seventy-two
years old, but to whom Augustus had said when he was a little boy, "You
too shall share my taste of empire," began to move homewards to attack
the tyrant, and the army from Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearly
wild with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing his hair and
clothes; and the people began to turn against him in anger at a dearth
of corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba came
nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the Praetorian
Guard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would
not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainly
called for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself.
He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till he
heard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the "ancient
fas