usical training.--Nero's success.--His trained
applauders.--Rules and regulations at the theater.--Races and
games.--Nero generally the victor.--His private conduct and
character.--His midnight brawls.--Rioting and excess.--His great
feasts.--The artificial lake.--Immense sums of money expended by
Nero.--His favorites.--His excursions to Ostia.--The burning of
Rome.--Nero accused of being the incendiary.--His probable
motives.--He comes to see the fire.--He celebrates the occasion by a
song.

There was nothing in the attendant circumstances that were connected
with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate
or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of
self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him
any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden
passion. It was not required by any political necessity as a means
for accomplishing some great and desirable public end. It was a
cool, deliberate, and well-considered crime, performed solely for
the purpose of removing from the path of the perpetrator of it an
obstacle to the commission of another crime. Nero murdered his
mother in cool blood, simply because she was in the way of his plans
for divorcing his innocent wife, and marrying adulterously another
woman.

For some time after the commission of this great crime, the mind of
Nero was haunted by dreadful fears, and he suffered continually, by
day and by night, all the pangs of remorse and horror. He did not
dare to return to Rome, not knowing to what height the popular
indignation, that would be naturally excited by so atrocious a deed,
might rise; or what might be the consequences to him if he were to
appear in the city. He accordingly remained for a time on the coast
at Neapolis, the town to which he had retired from Baiae. From this
place he sent various communications to the Roman Senate, explaining
and justifying what he called the execution of his mother. He
pretended that he had found her guilty of treasonable conspiracies
against him and against the state, and that her death had been
imperiously demanded, as the only means of securing the public
safety. The senators hated Nero and abhorred his crimes; but they
were overawed by the terrible power which he exercised over them
through the army, which they knew was entirely subservient to his
will, and by their dread of his ruthless and desperate character.
They passed resolves approv