The ancient city of Romulus had risen from her ashes like the fabled phœnix, with renewed youth and beauty. So greatly was her appearance altered, that Lucius Claudius knew not where to seek his ancestral home, as, regardless of the directions of his attendants and the proffered guidance of Sabinus, he wandered on bewildered and amazed amongst sumptuous edifices and streets of palaces. All indeed seemed new to his eyes and heart. It was no longer the city founded by the Latian twin, and rebuilt by Camillus, that he beheld, but the palace of Nero Cæsar, the master of the world. She looked indeed more like the metropolis of a mighty empire, though her real greatness had vanished with her ancient simplicity and virtue. Even in the midst of her grandeur and magnificence she was tottering to her fall, for her deep corruptions were gradually unbarring her gates to the Goths of future ages. All that was beautiful or venerable in her customs was gone “as a tale that is told,” and the martial form of the military tribune, the worthy representative of her illustrious sons, seemed as out of keeping with the pomp that surrounded him on every side, as the appearance would have been of one of his own warlike ancestors. The dominion of Rome indeed was departing, for a highway for the promulgation of the gospel had been opened by her armies to all lands—for which end alone she had been given rule over the nations of the earth. Neither the heathen nor the Hebrew perceived this. To Lucius Claudius the name of Rome was synonymous of victory and power; to him she was sempiternal and invincible, while to Adonijah she appeared only a magnificent prison, within whose walls he was destined to waste away his life, the living grave indeed of hope. Still, the curiosity inherent in human nature made him suddenly ask the meaning of a sad procession they encountered near the Forum. Sabinus replied, “Some Roman citizen is led to execution, attended by the lictors with their fasces. See, the axe before him denotes that it is no slave about to suffer, but a person entitled to the privileges of the free. A Christian, I should think, by his dress and bearing. If I mistake not, Nymphidius and Tigellinus, the præfects of the prætorian camp, are present, both low-born upstarts and favourites of Nero; the first, the son of Nymphidia by Caius Cæsar,[7] as he would have it thought, and many think his person bears a strong resemblance to that frantic emperor: in cruelty he certainly can claim a kindred disposition. The victim is unknown to me, but his venerable face expresses goodness, now become a crime in Rome.”