aying the
soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his
attacks on wealthy persons, his executions and banishments of senators
and other wealthy men, and his flimsy pretexts for all manner of
confiscation. The Senate he hated and the Senate hated him.
Nevertheless, so far as the empire itself was concerned, no systematic
or widespread oppression can have been perceptible. His officers and
the officers of the Senate were apparently all the time governing and
administering the law and the taxation throughout the empire in as
sound and steady a way as if an Augustus sat upon the throne.

If we wish to picture Nero to ourselves, here is his description: "He
was of a fairly good height; his skin was blotched, and his odour
unpleasant; his hair was inclined to be yellow; his face was more
handsome than attractive; his eyes were grayish-blue and
short-sighted; his neck was fat; he was protuberant below the waist;
his legs were very slender; his health was good."

Such was the man to whom St. Paul elected to have his case referred,
when at Caesarea he exercised his privilege as a Roman citizen and
appealed to the titular protector of the commons. "Thou hast appealed
unto Caesar, and unto Caesar shalt thou go." There is indeed no great
probability that the apostle was ever brought directly before this
precious emperor. We may perhaps draw from bur inner consciousness
elaborate and interesting pictures of the two men confronting each
other, but we must not forget that they will be pure imagination. The
appeal of a citizen did not imply such right to an interview, for the
Caesar in such minor cases commonly delegated his powers to other
judicial authorities at Rome. Paul's object was gained if his case was
safely removed from the local influences of Judaea and the weaker
policy of its governor, the "agent of Caesar," to the capital with its
broader-minded men and its superiority to small bribes and local
interference.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--BUST OF NERO.]

CHAPTER VI

ADMINISTRATION AND TAXATION OF THE EMPIRE

We are now brought to the consideration of the methods by which this
huge empire was organised and governed.

And first let us observe that the Romans--strict disciplinarians and
great lawyers as they were--never sought to impose upon the subject
provinces any uniformity. They never sought, any more than Great
Britain has sought, to erect one code of law, one form of
administration