Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
Nero
[Lucius Domitius Ænobarbus, called Nero after his mother’s marriage to the Emperor Claudius, by whom he was adopted; born Dec. 15, A.D. 37; proclaimed emperor, 54; his first years of rule were marked by kindness and justice; his last, by a series of atrocities, which led to a conspiracy, on the discovery of which and the defection of the prætorian guards, Nero killed himself, A.D. 68.]I wish I had never learned to read and write! (Quam vellem ne scire litteras!)
When called upon, early in his reign, to subscribe the sentence, according to custom, of a criminal condemned to die.—SUETONIUS: Life. Racine, in his “Britannicus,” puts the early clemency of the emperor into the mouth of Burrhus, pleading for the life of Britannicus:—
“Votre cœur s’accusait de trop de cruauté,Et plaignant les malheurs attachés à l’empireJe voudrais, disiez-vous, ne savoir pas écrire.”