4. Tacitus, Annals, 13.17, 14.20 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 13.17. The same night saw the murder of Britannicus and his pyre, the funeral apparatus â modest enough â having been provided in advance. Still, his ashes were buried in the Field of Mars, under such a tempest of rain that the crowd believed it to foreshadow the anger of the gods against a crime which, even among men, was condoned by the many who took into account the ancient instances of brotherly hatred and the fact that autocracy knows no partnership. The assertion is made by many contemporary authors that, for days before the murder, the worst of all outrages had been offered by Nero to the boyish years of Britannicus: in which case, it ceases to be possible to regard his death as either premature or cruel, though it was amid the sanctities of the table, without even a respite allowed in which to embrace his sister, and under the eyes of his enemy, that the hurried doom fell on this last scion of the Claudian house, upon whom lust had done its unclean work before the poison. The hastiness of the funeral was vindicated in an edict of the Caesar, who called to mind that "it was a national tradition to withdraw these untimely obsequies from the public gaze and not to detain it by panegyrics and processions. However, now that he had lost the aid of his brother, not only were his remaining hopes centred in the state, but the senate and people themselves must so much the more cherish their prince as the one survivor of a family born to the heights of power. 14.20. In the consulate of Nero â his fourth term â and of Cornelius Cossus, a quinquennial competition on the stage, in the style of a Greek contest, was introduced at Rome. Like almost all innovations it was variously canvassed. Some insisted that "even Pompey had been censured by his elders for establishing the theatre in a permanent home. Before, the games had usually been exhibited with the help of improvised tiers of benches and a stage thrown up for the occasion; or, to go further into the past, the people stood to watch: seats in the theatre, it was feared, might tempt them to pass whole days in indolence. By all means let the spectacles be retained in their old form, whenever the praetor presided, and so long as no citizen lay under any obligation to compete. But the national morality, which had gradually fallen into oblivion, was being overthrown from the foundations by this imported licentiousness; the aim of which was that every production of every land, capable of either undergoing or engendering corruption, should be on view in the capital, and that our youth, under the influence of foreign tastes, should degenerate into votaries of the gymnasia, of indolence, and of dishonourable amours, â and this at the instigation of the emperor and senate, who, not content with conferring immunity upon vice, were applying compulsion, in order that Roman nobles should pollute themselves on the stage under pretext of delivering an oration or a poem. What remained but to strip to the skin as well, put on the gloves, and practise that mode of conflict instead of the profession of arms? Would justice be promoted, would the equestrian decuries better fulfil their great judicial functions, if they had lent an expert ear to emasculated music and dulcet voices? Even night had been requisitioned for scandal, so that virtue should not be left with a breathing-space, but that amid a promiscuous crowd every vilest profligate might venture in the dark the act for which he had lusted in the light. |
|