The career and character of Nero grew darker every year, for every year more fully revealed to him the awful absoluteness of his autocracy. No one dreamed of disputing his will. Every desire, however frivolous, however shameful, however immense, was instantly gratified. His Court was prolific of the vilest characters. There was scarcely a man near his person who did not daily extol his power, his wit, his accomplishments, his beauty, his divinity. ‘Do you not yet know that you are Cæsar?’ they whispered to him if he hesitated for a moment to commit some deadly crime, or plunge into some unheard-of prodigality. All things went on much as usual in the corrupt, trembling world of Rome. To-day some wealthy nobleman would commit suicide, amid the laudations of his friends, out of utter weariness of life. To-morrow all Rome would be talking of the trial of some provincial governor who had gorged himself with the rapine of a wealthy province. Or everybody would be whispering a series of witty pasquinades, attributed to Antistius Sosianus or Fabricius Veiento, full of lacerating innuendoes, aimed now at the Emperor and now at some prominent senator. Pætus Thrasea and the peril he incurred by his opposition to the Court furnished a frequent subject of conversation, both to his Stoic admirers and to the rabble of venal senators, who cordially hated him. ‘To put Thrasea to death would be to slay virtue itself,’ said the graver citizens. ‘He is a pompous sham, who wants taking down,’ said the gilded youth. It was a fearful comment on the wretchedness of the times that most of the prominent thinkers and statesmen looked on self-destruction as the sole path to freedom, and the best boon of heaven. They thought it a proof of philosophic heroism when a man died calmly by his own hand, though the act involves no more courage than the vilest of mankind can evince. Seneca tells with rapture the story of the death of Julius Canus. The Emperor Gaius had said to him, after a quarrel, ‘That you may not deceive yourself, I have ordered you to be led to execution.’ ‘I thank you, excellent prince,’ said Canus. Ten days passed, and Canus spent them without the smallest sign of trepidation, awaiting the tyrant’s mandate. When the centurion arrived at his house with the order that he was to die, he was playing at draughts. He first counted the pieces, and then said with a smile to his friend, ‘Mind you don’t claim the victory when I am dead. You, centurion, will be the witness that I have one piece more than he has.’ Observing the grief of his friends, he said, ‘Why are you sad? You are perplexed about the question whether souls are immortal or not. In a moment or two I shall know. If I can come back I will tell you.’[70]