hat more could he desire? There was
world-ruling Rome in flames, and he, standing on the arches of the
aqueduct with a golden lute, conspicuous, purple, admired, magnificent,
poetic. Down below, somewhere in the darkness, the people are muttering
and storming. But let them mutter! Ages will pass, thousands of years
will go by, but mankind will remember and glorify the poet, who in that
night sang the fall and the burning of Troy. What was Homer compared
with him? What Apollo himself with his hollowed-out lute?

Here he raised his hands and, striking the strings, pronounced the words
of Priam.

"O nest of my fathers, O dear cradle!" His voice in the open air,
with the roar of the conflagration, and the distant murmur of crowding
thousands, seemed marvellously weak, uncertain, and low, and the
sound of the accompaniment like the buzzing of insects. But senators,
dignitaries, and Augustians, assembled on the aqueduct, bowed their
heads and listened in silent rapture. He sang long, and his motive was
ever sadder. At moments, when he stopped to catch breath, the chorus of
singers repeated the last verse; then Nero cast the tragic "syrma" [A
robe with train, worn especially by tragic actors] from his shoulder
with a gesture learned from Aliturus, struck the lute, and sang on.
When at last he had finished the lines composed, he improvised, seeking
grandiose comparisons in the spectacle unfolded before him. His face
began to change. He was not moved, it is true, by the destruction of his
country's capital; but he was delighted and moved with the pathos of his
own words to such a degree that his eyes filled with tears on a sudden.
At last he dropped the lute to his feet with a clatter, and, wrapping
himself in the "syrma," stood as if petrified, like one of those statues
of Niobe which ornamented the courtyard of the Palatine.

Soon a storm of applause broke the silence. But in the distance this was
answered by the howling of multitudes. No one doubted then that Caesar
had given command to burn the city, so as to afford himself a spectacle
and sing a song at it. Nero, when he heard that cry from hundreds of
thousands, turned to the Augustians with the sad, resigned smile of a
man who is suffering from injustice.

"See," said he, "how the Quirites value poetry and me."

"Scoundrels!" answered Vatinius. "Command the pretorians, lord, to fall
on them."

Nero turned to Tigellinus,--

"Can I count on the loyalty of the soldie