be well to remind ourselves of their perils and their tortures. There was many a senatorial house, like that of the Pisos, whose leading members were never allowed to reach middle age.(299) Much should be forgiven to a class which was daily and hourly exposed to such danger, so sudden in its onsets, so secret and stealthy, so all-pervading. It might come in an open circumstantial indictment, with all the forms of law and the weight of suborned testimony; it might appear in a quiet order for suicide; the stroke might descend at the farthest limits of the Empire,(300) in some retreat in Spain or Asia. The haunting fear of death had an unnerving effect. But not less degrading were the outrages to Roman, or ordinary human dignity to which the noble order had to submit for more than a generation. They had seen their wives defiled or compelled to expose themselves as harlots in a foul spectacle, to gratify the diseased prurience of the emperor.(301) They had been forced to fight in the arena or to exhibit themselves on the tragic stage.(302) Men who had borne the ancient honours of the consulship had been ordered to run for miles beside the chariot of Caligula, or to wait at his feet at dinner.(303) Fathers had had to witness without flinching the execution of their sons, and drink smilingly to the emperor on the evening of the fatal day.(304) The only safety at such a court lay in calmly accepting insults with affected gratitude. The example of Nero’s debauchery, and the seductive charm which he undoubtedly possessed, were probably as enfeebling and demoralising as the Terror. He formed a school, which laughed at all virtue and made self-indulgence a fine art. Men who had shared in these obscene revels were the leaders in the awful scenes of perfidy, lust, and cruelty which appropriately followed the death of their patron.(305) Some of them, Petronius, Otho, Vitellius, closed their career appropriately by a tragic death. But others lived on into the age of reformation, to defame the stout Sabine soldier who saved the Roman world.(306) In spite of the manly virtue and public spirit of Vespasian, the Roman world had to endure a fierce ordeal before it entered on the peace of the Antonine age. Even Vespasian’s reign was troubled by conspiracy.(307) His obscure origin moved the contempt of the great senatorial houses who still survived. His republican moderation gave the philosophic doctrinaires a chance of airing their impossible dream of restoring a municipal Republic to govern a world. His conscientious frugality, which was absolutely needed to retrieve the bankruptcy of the Neronian régime, was despised and execrated both by the nobles and the mob. Another lesson was needed both by the Senate and the philosophers. Society had yet to be purged as by fire, and the purging came with the accession of Domitian.