During the brief period when Lucia Claudia engrossed his affections, the patriotism that formed so striking a feature in the character of Adonijah slept; but when all hope perished, when to think of her became a crime, when her very remembrance recalled the cruel fanaticism that had degraded his moral dignity, and abased him beneath the vilest, the fate of Judea again swallowed up in its absorbing vortex his whole being. The revolt of Vindex—the voice whose deep unearthly tones were heard calling Nero by name from the sepulchre of his ancestors, as if to summon him to share their repose—filled the Romans with awe and expectation, and the Hebrew with lively hope. The emperor, forsaken by his flatterers, found his vast palace a gloomy and insupportable solitude. Tigellinus, Helius, and Nymphidius, the guilty instruments of his crimes, abandoned him at this critical juncture. Galba, called upon by the army, the people, and by Julius Vindex, the virtuous Gaul, opposed the caution of age to the call of patriotism and the voice of ambition. A breathless pause intervened before the overflowing torrent of popular feeling found a channel, till a battle, founded on a fatal mistake, was fought between Virginius, the emperor’s general, and Julius Vindex, in which the noble Gaul was defeated, who rashly threw himself upon his own sword, gave a turn to Nero’s affairs, whose spirits rose from deep dejection to a pitch of extravagance, as seizing his harp he celebrated the triumph of his arms with more skill than good feeling. His favourites, his flatterers, returned, and sumptuous shows and splendid games obliterated the memory of his past danger. Pomps and pageants, however prized by the vulgar in times of plenty, excite their utmost indignation in times of dearth. Rome was threatened with famine, and the ship expected to bring corn from Alexandria was laden with sand from the banks of the Nile to smooth the arena. The popular feeling blazed, and symptoms of a general revolt appeared in the gloomy countenances of the people. To save himself from the certain fall of Nero, and to ingratiate himself with a new emperor, induced Tigellinus, then with Nymphidius joint Præfect of the Prætorian camp, to seduce the soldiers he commanded to revolt from Nero. His colleague was actuated by a different motive, though outwardly avowing the same intentions. To him the name of the hoary Galba was but a phantom, a shadow to terrify and destroy the man who then occupied the throne of the Cæsars. He, the son of Caius Cæsar, would then assert his rights and assume the imperial purple. The machinations of this iniquitous pair succeeded with regard to Nero. The camp, the senate, the people, united in one act of justice, and he fled from the palace to fall by his own unwilling hand.