San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1883-01-11
Death Of Nero.

1uoIo 10 no uoou W oWou VI tu0 kniD-
or bile spectacle Of his end, perhaps the
meanest and most pusillanimous which
has ever been recorded. The poor
wretch who, withouta pang, had caused
80 many brave Romans and 90 many in
nocent Christians to be murdered, could
not summon up resolution 10 die. He
devised every oporatic incident OF
which he could think. When even his
most degraded slaves urged him to have
sufficient manliness to save himself
from the fearful infamies which other
wise awaited him, he ordered his grave
to be dug, and fragments Of marble to
be collected for its adornment, and wa
ter and wood for his funeral pyre, per-
petually whining, aWhat an artist TO
perish {" Meanwhile q courier arrived
for Phaon. Nero snatched his dis
patches out Of his hand and read that
the Senate had decided that he should
be punished in the ancestral fashion e
public enemy. Asking what the an
cestral fashion was, he was informed
that he would be stripped naked and
scourged to death with rods, with his
head thrust into o, fork. Horrifed at
this, he seized two daggers, and after
theatrically trying their edges, sheathed
them again with the excuse that the
fatal moment had not yet arrived! Then
he bid Sporus begin to sing his funeral
song, and begged some one to show him
how to die. Even his own intense
shame at his own cowardice was an in
sufficient stimulus, and he whiled away
the time in vapid epigrams and pomp.
GUS quotations. The sound OF horses
hoofs then broke on his ears, and vent
ing one more Greek quotation, he held
the dagger to his throat. It was driven
home by Epaphroditus, one OF his lit
erary slaves. At this moment the GEN.
turion who came to- arrest him rushed
in. Nero was not yet dead, and under
pretense of helping him the centurion
began to staunch the wound with his
cloak. ,"Too Late he said; lis this
your fidelity ?" So he died; and the
bystanders were mortified with the way
in which his eyes seemed to be starting
out of his head in rigid stare. He had
begged that his body might be burned
without posthumous insults, and this
was conceded by Icelus, the freedman
Of Galba. !.
So he died-the last Of the C@sarsl
And as Robespierre was lamented by
his landlady, so even Nero was tenderly
buried by two nurses who had known
him in the exquisite beauty Of his en-
gaging childhood, and by Acte, who
had inspired his youth with genuine
love.
But the history does not end with his
grave. He was to live on in the expec-
tation alike of Jews and Christians.
The fifth head OF the Wild Beast OF the
Revelation was in some sort to reappear
as the eighth; the head with its diadem
and names Of blasphemy had been
wounded to death, but in the Apoca-
lyptic sense the deadly wound was to be
healed.
The Roman world could not believe
that the heir of the deified Julian race
could be cut off thus suddenly and OBJ
scurely like foam upon the water. Tho
Christians felt sure that 1t required
something more than an ordinary death
stroke to destroy the Anti Christ, and
to end the vitality Of the wild beast
from the abyss, who had been the first
to set himself in deadly antagonism
against the Redeemer, and to wage war
upon the saints of God.-CanOn Far
rGr.