But, fine as it undoubtedly is, the closing scene of the play bears no comparison with the pathetic narrative of Suetonius. Riding out, muffled, from Rome amid thunder and lightning, attended but by four followers, the doomed emperor hears from the neighbouring camp the shouts of the soldiers cursing the name of Nero and calling down blessings on Galba. Passing some wayfarers on the road, he hears one of them whisper, "Hi Neronem persequuntur;" and another asks, "Ecquid in urbe novi de Nerone?" Further on his horse takes fright, terrified by the stench from a corpse that lay in the road-side: in the confusion the emperor's face is uncovered, and at that moment he is recognized and saluted by a Praetorian soldier who is riding towards the City. Reaching a by-path, they dismount and make their way hardly through reeds and thickets. When his attendant, Phaon, urged him to conceal himself in a sandpit, Nero "negavit se vivum sub terram iturum;" but soon, creeping on hands and knees into a cavern's mouth, he spread a tattered coverlet over himself and lay down to rest. And now the pangs of hunger and thirst racked him; but he refused the coarse bread that his attendants offered, only taking a draught of warm water. Then he bade his attendants dig his grave and get faggots and fire, that his body might be saved from indignities; and while these preparations were being made he kept moaning "qualis artifex pereo!" Presently comes a messenger bringing news that Nero had been adjudged an "enemy" by the senate and sentenced to be punished "more majorum." Enquiring the nature of the punishment, and learning that it consisted in fastening the criminal's neck to a fork and scourging him, naked, to death, the wretched emperor hastily snatched a pair of daggers and tried the edges; but his courage failed him and he put them by, saying that "not yet was the fatal moment at hand." At one time he begged some one of his attendants to show him an example of fortitude by dying first; at another he chid himself for his own irresolution, exclaiming: [Greek: "ou prepei Neroni, ou prepei--naephein dei en tois toioutois--age, egeire seauton."] But now were heard approaching the horsemen who had been commissioned to bring back the emperor alive. The time for wavering was over: hurriedly ejaculating the line of Homer, [Greek: "Hippon m'okypodon amphi ktypos ouata ballei,"] he drove the steel into his throat. To the centurion, who pretended that he had come to his aid and who vainly tried to stanch the wound, he replied "_Sero_, et _Haec est fides_!" and expired.