Nero

That people which granted him his triumph — it deserves the reviling more than Nero.
What was this Nero whom they worshipped?... He was coarse of nature, callow.
...A dwarf — it was they who set him up on high and knelt before him, till he snorted with pride.
They magnified him and stretched him tall, till he sprawled out, filling the horizons with outrage.
They granted him, out of their own strength, that by which he became a tyrant over them — or worse.
...The man of power strikes only when he does not fear the striking of those who gave him his power.

Nero began by governing to his people's good, opening his reign with bounty in plenty,
Consulting caution in his dealings with them — until he had tested the people, and never returned to caution again.
...He was gentle until he found pliancy in them; then he turned harsh, then cruel, then rained down worse.
No forbearance was theirs: once he sensed forbearance had lulled them, he stripped himself of it.

Then a madness clothed him, which made fair to him a scheme most presumptuous against the throne, most demeaning.
He resolved upon the journey in his procession, braving its passage by sea and by land,
Turning his face toward Athens — for toward the people of art he ever inclined.

...Seeking to have her witness him in an assembly whose splendor rose in the darkness like a full moon,

Letting her evening company hear his lute, displaying his acting inside and out.
So he accomplished his desire, then turned back, in the contentment of one who has done an unheard-of deed.
...He came home in high fortune, while every man harbored grief within, yet showed it only in secret.
And the people of Rome received him as men receive a conqueror fresh from a dazzling conquest.
...They raised up gates in homage to him, and ringed his train about with a massed army,
And they set up illuminations under the wing of darkness that turned Rome to heavens and blazing stars —
Illuminations the like of which creation had never beheld before that age.
They bewitched him and stirred his fancy; and he folded up the night with a design hidden in his heart:

He would surely work in her a wonder,
Gathering into it all the arts whose
Bringing forth the most plaintive strain mortals
That the great illumination might stand, beside which
Nero won the utmost of all he craved —

To awe the after-ages so long as the stars glitter,
Perfection would be called science and skill,
Ever heard, out of a flame that stuns the eyes blind,
All illuminations after it would be counted small —
Burning Rome, to strike out an original fancy.

The fire blazed up in her by night, while
A flame rising up from every quarter,
It crept on, swelling, ablaze,
It gathered in all the quarters of Rome,
The buildings come toppling down, and the walls,
And human creatures, bewildered, stunned,
A plunging into the blaze — all but a few,
And the beasts of prey broke loose, never slackening —

Her nation lay sleeping, drowsy and drunken.
Moving now softly, now at a gallop, now striding across.
Meeting another in the embrace of the glare.
In an inferno that smelts bodies utterly.
Hurling itself onward, while the statues crash down in embers.
They braved the horror, and evil was that plunging.
They made the corpses a bridge across the burning.
It met nothing but with biting and rending and breaking.

They charged to kill, then broke and fled,
Flesh in plenty, roasting round about them,
Swaying along, her blood pouring out,
The mother runs, singing in her terror,
And the graybeard crashes down as the stallion crashes in
The capital of the world was destroyed, and yet
...I am not grieved for that people — and is

Panics coursing along every path.
Yet they refused, after the long toil of fasting, to break their fast.
With the stagger of a bleeding man, as though of wine.
While her children weep around her in dread.
A drowning, while the blaze spares him no ruin.
The survivors found in that nothing strange.
Any heart to be found that burns for scoundrels?

He is not fit for a pleasant life,
It was Rome that made its own Nero,
She brought him to the throne unearned, and he turned tyrant.
...Who would blame Nero? I lay the blame on
A nation which, had it risen against him for one hour,
Every people are the makers of their own Nero,

Whoever finds it too hard to live free.
And he was the worst of the people, whatever evil there was.
Every kingship that comes unearned goes for nothing.
A nation which, had it glowered at him, would have sent him reeling back.
He would have desisted from her at once, and been driven off.
Be he called Caesar, or be he called Chosroes.