A comet meantime blazed in
the sky, which in popular opinion always portends revolution to kingdoms. So
people began to ask, as if Nero was already dethroned, who was to be
elected. In every one's mouth was the name of Rubellius Blandus, who
inherited through his mother the high nobility
LICENCE
DEFENDED; A PRODIGY |
of the
Julian family. He was himself attached to
the ideas of our ancestors; his manners were austere, his home was one of
purity and seclusion, and the more he lived in retirement from fear, the
more fame did he acquire. Popular talk was confirmed by an interpretation
put with similar credulity on a flash of lightning. While Nero was reclining
at dinner in his house named
Sublaqueum on the
Simbruine lake, the table with the banquet was struck
and shattered, and as this happened close to
Tibur,
from which town Plautus derived his origin on his father's side, people
believed him to be the man marked out by divine providence; and he was
encouraged by that numerous class, whose eager and often mistaken ambition
it is to attach themselves prematurely to some new and hazardous cause. This
alarmed Nero, and he wrote a letter to Plautus, bidding "him consider the
tranquillity of
Rome and withdraw himself from
mischievous gossip. He had ancestral possessions in
Asia, where he might enjoy his youth safely and
quietly." And so thither Plautus retired with his wife Antistia and a few
intimate friends.
About the same time an excessive love of luxurious
gratification involved Nero in disgrace and danger. He had plunged for a
swim into the source of the stream which Quintus Marcius conveyed to
Rome, and it was thought that, by thus immersing his
person in it, he had polluted the sacred waters and the sanctity of the
spot. A fit of illness which followed, convinced people of the divine
displeasure.
