The Year of the Four Emperors

SOON after daybreak on the 9th of June A.D. 68 the Roman Emperor Nero died by his own hand. He who had been for thirteen years the master of the Roman world ended his life in squalor and in misery, with only three freed slaves and a treacherous centurion present to watch his death. He who was the last descendant of Julius Caesar, the last Prince of the Julian line, enjoyed for a resting-place on the last evening of his life the gloomy underground cellar of a villa in the suburbs of his capital; for the furniture of his death-chamber a scanty mattress and a ragged quilt; for the final banquet a little lukewarm water and old crusts of bread. Thanks to others' falseness and his own faint-heartedness he had to die. His cruelty and lust had cost him many friends; his passion for art and music had cost him more. But the chief cause of his ruin was the indifference shown by him towards his troops, towards the art of war, towards the practice of the camps. The nobles, who had found a ruthless persecutor in him; the philosophers, who wrote him down a frenzied tyrant; the Christians, who supposed him to be the Antichrist, lord of a world abandoned by God—these all rejoiced at his miserable end and defamed his memory. But the lower classes in Rome mourned for him. Unknown hands yearly decked his tomb in the gardens of the Pincian Hill with spring and summer flowers. The countless inhabitants of Italy and the provinces of the Roman Empire had no reason to welcome his overthrow. Not a few of these in the past had enjoyed his care for them, and might in gratitude sorrow for his fall. Neither had the Imperialist any reason to denounce this the last Julian Emperor. Britain had been well-nigh lost, but the triumphant courage of Nero's legionaries had saved it to the Empire. The war upon the eastern frontier with Rome's old and bitter Parthian enemy had at last been ended, not without glory to the Roman arms, and now, after a century of hostility, there was a fair promise that the agreement reached would be an enduring peace with honour.

But all such blame and all such praise availed Nero little when his soldiers felt no love for him, and had no reason to admire him or fear him as their General. When the standard of rebellion was raised in distant Spain, his Guards at Rome, piqued and deceived, deserted their Prince. Nero, abandoned, treacherously betrayed, slew himself. The whole Empire, if it had good cause for joy at the death of the man, had speedily reason to regret the downfall of the Emperor.

For now, to use the words of the Roman historian Tacitus, the secret of the Empire was revealed. "A prince could be appointed elsewhere than in the city of Rome." Hitherto, under Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the Imperial power had in practice been but the heirloom of the Julian family. Now the last of the family was dead. Yet some Emperor there must be. The vast body of the Empire could not "stand without governour." But there was no heir to the throne. The Prince must now in actual fact be "elected," and thus the theory of election which, as a theory, had persisted from the beginning must be realised in practice. Men flattered themselves that such an election was a sign of liberty restored. It was in reality no gain to liberty that the might of armed force now took the place of such a right as inheritance might give...