d, Nero banished her to the island of
Pandataria.]

[Footnote 608: A.U.C. 813.]

[Footnote 609: Seneca was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of
Caius Piso. Tacitus furnishes some interesting details of the
circumstances under which the philosopher calmly submitted to his fate,
which was announced to him when at supper with his friends, at his villa,
near Rome.--Tacitus, b. xiv. xv.]

[Footnote 610: This comet, as well as one which appeared the year in
which Claudius died, is described by Seneca, Natural. Quaest. VII. c.
xvii. and xix. and by Pliny, II. c. xxv.]

[Footnote 611: See Tacitus, Annal. xv. 49-55.]

[Footnote 612: The sixteenth book of Tacitus, which would probably have
given an account of the Vinician conspiracy, is lost. It is shortly
noticed by Plutarch.]

[Footnote 613: See before, c. xix.]

[Footnote 614: This destructive fire occurred in the end of July, or the
beginning of August, A.U.C. 816, A.D. 64. It was imputed to the
Christians, and drew on them the persecutions mentioned in c. xvi., and
the note.]

[Footnote 615: The revolt in Britain broke out A.U.C. 813. Xiphilinus
(lxii. p. 701) attributes it to the severity of the confiscations with
which the repayment of large sums of money advanced to the Britons by the
emperor Claudius, and also by Seneca, was exacted. Tacitus adds another
cause, the insupportable tyranny and avarice of the centurions and
soldiers. Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, had named the emperor his heir.
His widow Boadicea and her daughters were shamefully used, his kinsmen
reduced to slavery, and his whole territory ravaged; upon which the
Britons flew to arms. See c. xviii., and the note.]

[Footnote 616: Neonymphon; alluding to Nero's unnatural nuptials with
Sporus or Pythagoras. See cc. xxviii. xxix. It should be neonymphos.]

[Footnote 617: "Sustulit" has a double meaning, signifying both, to bear
away, and put out of the way.]

[Footnote 618: The epithet applied to Apollo, as the god of music, was
Paean; as the god of war, Ekataebaletaes.]

[Footnote 619: Pliny remarks, that the Golden House of Nero was
swallowing up all Rome. Veii, an ancient Etruscan city, about twelve
miles from Rome, was originally little inferior to it, being, as Dionysius
informs us, (lib. ii. p. 16), equal in extent to Athens. See a very
accurate survey of the ruins of Veii, in Gell's admirable TOPOGRAPHY OF
ROME AND ITS VICINITY, p. 436, of Bohn's Edition.]