tes, yet enough of the
evil tradition remained to make those abuses flourish with renewed
vigour under such a ruler as Nero. The state of things which ensued
can only be paralleled with that so vividly described by Macaulay in
his lurid picture of the oppression of Bengal under Warren Hastings.
The one object of every provincial governor was to exploit his
province in his own pecuniary interest and that of his friends at
Rome. Requisitions and taxes were heaped on the miserable inhabitants
utterly beyond their means, with the express object of forcing them
into the clutches of the Roman money-lenders, whose frightful terms
were, in turn, enforced by military licence.

E. 2.--The most virtuous and enlightened citizens were not ashamed
thus to wring exorbitant interest from their victims. Cicero tells
us[170] how no less austere a patriot than Brutus thus exacted from
the town of Salamis in Cyprus, 48 per cent. compound interest, and,
after starving five members of the municipality to death in default of
payment, was mortally offended because he, Cicero, as proconsul, would
not exercise further military pressure for his ends.

E. 3.--The part thus played in Cyprus by Brutus was played in Britain
by Seneca, another of the choice examples of the highest Roman virtue.
By a series of blood-sucking transactions[171] he drove the Britons
to absolute despair, his special victim being Prasutagus, now Chief of
the Iceni, presumably set up by the Romans on the suppression of the
revolt under Vericus. As a last chance of saving any of his wealth for
his children, Prasutagus, by will, made the Emperor his co-heir.
This, however, only hastened the ruin of his family. His property
was pounced upon by the harpies of Seneca and Nero, with the
Procurator[172] of the Province, Catus Decimus, at their head, his kin
sold into slavery, his daughters outraged, and his wife Boadicea, or,
more correctly, _Boudicca_, brutally scourged. This was in A.D. 61.

E. 4.--A convulsive outburst of popular rage and despair followed.
The wrongs of Boadicea kindled the Britons to madness, and she found
herself at once at the head of a rising comprising all the clans of
the east and the Midlands. Half-armed as they were, their desperate
onset carried all before it. The first attack was made upon the hated
Colony at Camelodune, where the great Temple of "the God" Claudius,
rising high above the town, bore an ever-visible testimony to Rome's
enslavement of B