‘Their gorgeous gluttonies and sumptuous feasts On citron table and Atlantic stone.’ If the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life could have brought to Nero and Otho any happiness, they might have been happy. They could lift to their lips the cup of pleasure crowned to the brim. They soon found it to be an envenomed goblet, sparkling with the wine of demons. The rage of luxury, the insanity of egotism, the abandonment to every form of self-indulgence, served only to plunge them into deeper lassitude, and, last of all, into more irretrievable disgust. For, though men have bodies, they still are spirits, and when their bodies have command over their spirits, they only become a lower kind of beast. To Nero, while he was yet a boy, had been offered all that carnal minds think the highest boons. The ancient philosophers used to discuss the question, ‘Whether any one would still remain perfectly virtuous if he were endowed with the ring of Gyges, which had the power to make a man invisible.’ To Nero had been given alike the ring of Gyges and the lamp of Aladdin. While he was still young and beautiful, and not ungifted, all that was fell and foul in the seductions of the Palace and the Amphitheatre assailed his feeble nature. It was hardly strange that his whole being gave way and he became a prodigy of wickedness. At heart, perhaps, he was not essentially worse than thousands of youths have been, but his crimes, unchecked by any limitations of law or of resources, were enacted under the glare of publicity, on the world’s loftiest stage.