From the lenity of this proprætor the happiest consequences evidently ensued. The southern Britons acquiesced in the dominion of Rome, while the northern were awed into deference to her superior influence. Her manners, her arts, her commerce, penetrated far into regions yet unconquered by the sword. Her establishments at Londinium, Verulamium, and Camulodunum rose again from their ashes. Never was the peaceful enterprise of her citizens more vigorous and elastic than at this period. The luxuries of Italy and the provinces, rapidly increasing, required the extension to the utmost of all her resources. Manufactures and commerce were pushed forward with unexampled activity. The products of Britain, rude as they were, consisting of raw materials chiefly, were demanded with an insatiable appetite by the cities of Gaul and Germany, and exchanged for arts and letters, which at least decked her servitude with silken fetters. The best of the Roman commanders,--and there were some, we may believe, among them both thoughtful and humane,--while they acknowledged they had no right to conquer, yet believed that their conquests were a blessing. The best of the native chiefs--and some too of them may have wished for the real happiness of their countrymen,--acknowledged, perhaps, that while freedom is the noblest instrument of virtue, it only degrades the vicious to the lowest depths of barbarism.[e] BURRUS AND SENECA [Sidenote: [59-62 A.D.]] In Rome meanwhile the public evils grew daily more oppressive, and the means of redress were decreasing. It was now that Burrus died (62 A.D.), whether by poison or disease is uncertain; that it was disease was inferred from the fact that, his throat gradually swelling internally and the passage being closed up, he ceased to breathe. Many asserted that, by the order of Nero, under colour of applying a remedy, his palate was anointed with a poisonous drug, and that Burrus, having discovered the treachery, when the prince came to visit him, turned his face and eyes another way, and to his repeated inquiries about his health, made no other answer than this: “I am well.” At Rome the sense of his loss was deep and lasting, as well from the memory of his virtue as from the spiritless simplicity of one of his successors, and the flaming enormities and adulteries of the other. For Nero had created two captains of the prætorian guards--namely, Fenius Rufus for his popularity, in consequence of his administration of the public stores without deriving any profit from it; and Sophonius Tigellinus, purely from partiality to the inveterate lewdness and infamy of the man; and their influence was according to their known manner of life. Tigellinus held greater sway over the mind of Nero, and was admitted to share in his most secret debaucheries; Rufus flourished in the good opinion of the people and soldiery, which he found a denial to him with the emperor. [Illustration: NERO (From a bust in the Louvre Museum)]