[609] Seneca was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of Caius Piso. Tacitus furnishes some interesting details of the circumstances under which the philosopher calmly submitted to his fate, which was announced to him when at supper with his friends, at his villa, near Rome.-- Tacitus, b. xiv. xv. [610] This comet, as well as one which appeared the year in which Claudius died, is described by Seneca, Natural. Quaest. VII. c. xvii. and xix. and by Pliny, II. c. xxv. [611] See Tacitus, Annal. xv. 49-55. [612] The sixteenth book of Tacitus, which would probably have given an account of the Vinician conspiracy, is lost. It is shortly noticed by Plutarch. [613] See before, c. xix. [614] This destructive fire occurred in the end of July, or the beginning of August, A.U.C. 816, A.D. 64. It was imputed to the Christians, and drew on them the persecutions mentioned in c. xvi., and the note. [615] The revolt in Britain broke out A.U.C. 813. Xiphilinus (lxii. p. 701) attributes it to the severity of the confiscations with which the repayment of large sums of money advanced to the Britons by the emperor Claudius, and also by Seneca, was exacted. Tacitus adds another cause, the insupportable tyranny and avarice of the centurions and soldiers. Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, had named the emperor his heir. His widow Boadicea and her daughters were shamefully used, his kinsmen reduced to slavery, and his whole territory ravaged; upon which the Britons flew to arms. See c. xviii., and the note. [616] Neonymphon; alluding to Nero's unnatural nuptials with Sporus or Pythagoras. See cc. xxviii. xxix. It should be neonymphos. [617] "Sustulit" has a double meaning, signifying both, to bear away, and put out of the way. [618] The epithet applied to Apollo, as the god of music, was Paean; as the god of war, Ekataebaletaes. [619] Pliny remarks, that the Golden House of Nero was swallowing up all Rome. Veii, an ancient Etruscan city, about twelve miles from Rome, was originally little inferior to it, being, as Dionysius informs us, (lib. ii. p. 16), equal in extent to Athens. See a very accurate survey of the ruins of Veii, in Gell's admirable TOPOGRAPHY OF ROME AND ITS VICINITY, p. 436, of Bohn's Edition.