irreparable consequences--the only consequences that
count in politics. One could therefore hope that the public
would gradually forget this murder as they had forgotten that of
Britannicus. One only needed to help them forget. Nero resolved to
give Italy and Rome the administrative revolution that had found in
Agrippina so determined an opponent, the easy, splendid, generous
government that seemed to suit the popular taste.

He began by organising among the _jeunesse doree_ of Rome the
"festivals of youth." In these true demonstrations against the old
aristocratic education, now in the house of one and then in the garden
of another, the young patricians met under the Emperor's directions.
They sang, recited, and danced, displaying all the tendencies that
tradition held unworthy of a Roman nobleman. Later, Nero built in
the Vatican fields a private stadium, where he amused himself with
driving, and invited his friends to join him. He surrounded himself
with poets, musicians, singers; enormously increased the budget
of popular festivals; planned and started immense constructions;
introduced into all parts of the administration a new spirit of
carelessness and ease. Not only the sumptuary laws, but all laws
commanding the fulfilment of human duties toward the species, such as
the great laws of Augustus on marriage and adultery, were no longer
applied; the surveillance of the Senate over the governors, that of
the governors over the cities, slackened. In Rome, in all Italy, in
the provinces, the treasuries of the Republic, the possessions and
the funds of the cities, were robbed. In the midst of this unbridled
plundering, which appeared to make every man rich quickly, and without
work, a delirium of luxury and pleasure reigned: in Rome especially,
people lived in a continuous orgy; the nobility answered in crowds
the invitations of Nero; the Senate, the great houses, where the
conquerors of the world had been born, swarmed with young athletes and
drivers, who had no other ambition but that of adding the prize of a
race to the war trophies of their ancestors; the imperial palace was
invaded by a noisy horde of zitherists, actors, jockeys, athletes,
among whom Burrhus and, still more, Seneca, were beginning to feel
most ill at ease.

Agrippina's death, even though it had yet deferred Nero's marrying
Poppaea, had made possible the change in the government that a part of
the people wished. We owe to this new principle the i