"Strike my womb," she cried to him faintly, as he drew his sword, "for it bore Nero." The blow of Anicetus was the signal for her immediate destruction: she was dispatched with many wounds, and was buried that night at Misenum on a common couch and with a mean funeral.

Such an end, many years previously, this sister, and wife, and mother of emperors had anticipated and despised; for when the Chaldaeans had assured her that her son would become Emperor, and would murder her, she is said to have exclaimed, "Occidat dum imperet," "Let him slay me if he but reign." It only remained to account for the crime, and offer for it such lying defences as were most likely to gain credit.

Flying to Naples from a scene which had now become awful to him,--for places do not change as men's faces change, and, besides this, his disturbed conscience made him fancy that he heard from the hill of Misenum the blowing of a ghostly trumpet and wailings about his mother's tomb in the hours of night,--he sent from thence a letter to the Senate, saying that his mother had been punished for an attempt upon his life, and adding a list of her crimes, real and imaginary, the narrative of her _accidental_ shipwreck, and his opinion that her death was a public blessing.

The author of this shameful document was Seneca, and in composing it he reached the nadir of his moral degradation.

Even the lax morality of a most degenerate age condemned him for calmly sitting down to decorate with the graces of rhetoric and antithesis an atrocity too deep for the powers of indignation.