In the eyes of Tacitus, the most terrible result of the tyranny of the bad emperors was the fawning servility of a once proud order, and their craven treachery in the hour of danger. He has painted it with all the concentrated power of loathing and pity. It is this almost personal degradation which inspires the ruthless, yet haughtily restrained, force with which he blasts for ever the memory of the Julio-Claudian despotism. It was in this spirit that he penned the opening chapters of his chronicle of the physical and moral horrors of the year in which that tyranny closed. The voice of history has been silenced or perverted, partly by the ignorance of public affairs, partly by the eagerness of adulation, or the bitterness of hatred. It was an age darkened by external disasters, save on the eastern frontier, by seditions and civil war, and the bloody death of four princes. The forces of nature seemed to unite with the rage of men to deepen the universal tragedy. Italy was overwhelmed with calamities which had been unknown for many ages; Campania’s fairest cities were swallowed up; Rome itself had been wasted by fire; the ancient Capitol was given to the flames by the hands of citizens. Polluted altars, adultery in high places, the islands of the sea crowded with exiles, rank and wealth and virtue made the mark for a cruel jealousy, all this forms an awful picture.(268) But even more repulsive is the spectacle of treachery rewarded with the highest place, slaves and clients betraying their master for gain, and men without an enemy ruined by their friends. When the spotless Octavia, overwhelmed by the foulest calumnies, had been tortured to death, to satisfy the jealousy of an adulteress, offerings were voted to the temples.(269) And Tacitus grimly requests his readers to presume that, as often as a banishment or execution was ordered by Nero, so often were thanksgivings offered to the gods. The horrors of Nero’s remorse for the murder of Agrippina were soothed by the flatteries and congratulations of his staff, and the grateful sacrifices which were offered for his deliverance by the Campanian towns.(270) Still, the notes of a funereal trumpet and ghostly wailings from his mother’s grave were ever in his ears,(271) and he long doubted the reception which he might meet with on his return to the capital. He need not have had any anxiety. Senate and people vied with one another in self-abasement. He was welcomed by all ranks and ages with fawning enthusiasm as he passed along in triumphal progress to return thanks on the Capitol for the success of an unnatural crime.