If we are to believe many writers, Nero never ceased after this murder of his mother to be troubled with a guilty conscience. Yet he wrote at the time a letter to the Senate from Naples declaring that his mother had conspired against his life and that in the confusion caused by her detection she had miserably perished by her own hand. The disaster of the ship he declared to have been purely accidental. It is painful to record the altogether probable fact that the real author of this shameful document was Seneca, who thus put the emperor’s message into words for him. It affirmed that the death of the imperious woman should be regarded as a public benefit. But such declarations from such a source gave little satisfaction. So widely was Nero believed to be guilty of Agrippina’s murder that at Rome the sack, the instrument of death for parricides, was secretly hung about his statues and the names of the triad of conspicuous matricides, Nero, Orestes, and Alcmæon, were found posted by night upon the walls. Yet the nobles were servile enough to welcome him back with honor, and the populace was diverted and gratified by the new and extravagant shows that he provided for all. The multitude even cheered him as he threw aside all his dignity as an emperor and went himself upon the stage as an actor or drove recklessly in the Circus Maximus as a charioteer. He delighted in everything sensational and spectacular; in noise and show and speed--what pleasure he would have taken in locomotives and automobiles had they existed in his day. It could not be said that the laws were not respected or that the citizens, as a body, were not at peace. But there were wild extravagances and follies to startle and distress the people. And that was not all. There were so much dissipation and licentiousness in high places that all the best people in the empire were scandalized and it was evident that the moral strength of the nation was undermined. Nero was sowing to the wind and he was sure to reap the whirlwind. Satirical voices began to make themselves heard. Then Burrus, the strong soldier and wise counselor, died; and Nero divided his command between Fenius Rufus, a timid and subservient man, and Tigellinus, one of his own infamous associates.