NEÆRA A TALE OF ANCIENT ROME _This Edition is intended for circulation only in India and the British Colonies._ Macmillan’s Colonial Library NEÆRA A TALE OF ANCIENT ROME BY JOHN W. GRAHAM London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1887 No. 33 [All rights reserved.] CONTENTS PART I CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. PART II CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. CHAPTER XXIV. CHAPTER XXV. PART III. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. Macmillan’s Colonial Library. Footnotes Transcriber’s Note PART I NEÆRA CHAPTER I. Anno Domini Twenty‐six, Tiberius Caesar, the ruler of the world, left Rome, with a small retinue, never to return. In the following year he arrived at the island of Capreae, and there took up his permanent abode. It was a spot which already possessed substantial proofs of imperial favour, in the shape of villas, baths, and aqueducts built by the orders of the Emperor Augustus. It well merited the partiality displayed, for there are few places to be found more favoured by nature, in point of situation, than this small, lofty, iron‐bound mountain‐island of Capreae. Opposite, at a distance of three miles, approaches the tip of a sharp promontory of the mainland, which divides two bays curving away on either hand. That on the north, from the earliest times, has had the reputation of being the loveliest in the world. That on the south, although not comparable, has yet considerable beauty. Capreae, therefore, stands aloof amid the blue waters, at the apex of these two semicircles, surveying both from its lofty mountain and sheer cliffs.