Such language, uttered with violent gestures and furious imprecations, might well excite the alarm of the timid Nero.

And that alarm was increased by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus.

During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as "governor of the feast," and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests.

To the others he issued trivial mandates which would not make them blush; but Britannicus in violation of every principle of Roman decorum, was ordered to stand up in the middle and sing a song.

The boy, inexperienced as yet even in sober banquets, and wholly unaccustomed to drunken convivialities, might well have faltered; but he at once rose, and with a steady voice began a strain--probably the magnificent wail of Andromache over the fall of Troy, which has been preserved to us from a lost play of Ennius--in which he indicated his own disgraceful ejection from his hereditary rights.