Nero now passed from one mad freak to another. I am inclined to believe, that he was not morally accountable for all of this, as insanity seems to have been hereditary in his family: Caligula was his uncle. Many things that he did were merely contemptible; as for instance, his going like a stroller through the Greek towns, where he tried to win the prizes, either as a musician, singer, or poet, in the public contests, or else in the horse-races, putting himself on a level with the other competitors. This would have been the most innocent of his pranks, were it not that he also robbed Greece of its works of art. The _præfectus prætorio_, Tigellinus, who had been appointed in the room of Burrhus, was at that time the most infamous of all those men who had any energy: the world was rid of him by the rising of Galba and Vindex. In the thirteenth year of Nero’s reign, the first real attempt was made to overthrow his rule: a former conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso, in which Seneca also had perished, was a mere court plot in which no troops had any share. Nero had undertaken his journey through Greece to gratify his vanity: and whilst he everywhere caused himself to be crowned there as a conqueror, a rebellion broke out in Gaul under Julius Vindex, an Aquitanian of rank. The Gauls who had received the Roman franchise, bore all of them at that time the _prænomen_ of Julius, either after Julius Cæsar or Augustus; just as in Asia all had the name of Tiberius Claudius (thus, without a doubt Tib. Claudius Galenus). This has given rise to confusion in the system of Roman names: Julius Agricola, although a native of the Roman colony Forum Julii, may likewise have sprung from Gallic ancestors, which Tacitus, of course, says nothing about. Julius Vindex had the rank of a Roman senator; and by his wealth and his influence he set an insurrection on foot, which had quite a different character from a former rising in the reign of Tiberius: his object was simply as a Roman to shake off the yoke of Nero, not to sever Gaul itself from Rome. He met with very great sympathy, and had already spread his rule from Aquitaine as far as Besançon. The history of that time is in a very wretched state, as Tacitus is wanting, and nothing is left of Dio but the abridgment of Xiphilinus. Near Besançon, Vindex met T. Virginius Rufus, the commander of the German troops, a distinguished man, one of the few disinterested and true patriots which Rome still had. The latter was afraid that such a rising in Gaul, although it had the deliverance of Rome for its object, might cause the dismemberment of the empire; so they made a truce, and agreed to acknowledge the authority of the senate. The German troops wished to have Rufus for emperor; but he refused: Vindex, on the other hand, was slain in a tumult which had broken out between the two armies.