The Emperor of Rome was intensely jealous of the fame of the great Roman to whom he had given an immense share of power, little indeed inferior to that formerly granted by the senate to Pompey the Great. He did not distrust the commander of whose probity he had received so many proofs; but the splendid career of Domitius Corbulo excited odious comparisons between the sovereign and his lieutenant. His dislike was well known to his confidants, and by them was communicated to Arrius Varus, a brave but unprincipled young man, who, thinking it afforded him an opportunity of pushing his own fortunes at Corbulo’s expense, secretly accused his commander of treason, in a letter addressed to the emperor himself.

Nero did not believe the accusation, and he was undecided respecting the use to which he should put it; for he required the services of his lieutenant in the East, and had not quite made up his mind to kill the man whom Tiridates had styled “a most valuable slave.” He resolved to be guided by circumstances, and contented himself with writing to Domitius Corbulo a pressing invitation to visit his court at Corinth.^[6] With the profound dissimulation in which Nero was an adept, he informed him of the accusation made by Varus, assuring him at the same time that he did not believe in its truth. The apparent frankness and generosity of his sovereign made the impression he had intended on the honourable mind of his general, who came to Corinth without the slightest suspicion of any sinister design entertained by Nero. He was accompanied by a few friends alone, and without a guard. Among those individuals who were honoured by his confidence was a military tribune or colonel, named Lucius Claudius, whose distant relationship to the emperor gave him some importance in the eyes of the Roman people; a cadet of a house associated by its greatness or guilt with every page of the republican and imperial history,—which had given to Rome more consuls, dictators, and censors than any other line,—which boasted Appius Cæcus, and Nero, the conqueror of Asdrubal,—and of which also had sprung Appius Claudius the decemvir, Clodius the demagogue, Tiberius the emperor, Drusus and Germanicus, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Lucius Claudius had apparently entered life under peculiarly fortunate circumstances; though the military tribune did not resemble in character his ambitious ancestral race. The men we have just cited of the proud Claudian line were before their times, while he was behind those in which he lived. His noble temper, frank, generous, fearless, and true, had been formed by his revered commander, by whom Lucius had been trained to arms; his life had been passed in the camp, far from the corruption of Nero’s court and capital. His father was no more, his brother Julius, one of Nero’s dissipated companions, was with the emperor at Corinth, and his sister Lucia Claudia was the youngest of the vestal priestesses, but he had not seen her since the hour in which she was dedicated to Vesta.

Lucius came to Corinth, like his commander, without distrust or apprehension, for Nero was beloved in the provinces; his guilt, his licentiousness, were little known on the distant Roman frontier; and when Corbulo requested an audience of his sovereign, he had employed the interval in seeking for his brother. Upon learning that Julius Claudius was in the theatre, witnessing the imperial performance, he had retired to take the repose his weary frame required.

Nero, when he received intelligence of his lieutenant’s arrival, was dressed for the stage, in the habit proper to the comic part he was about to perform. The unsuitableness of his garb to that of a Roman emperor, about to give audience to the greatest commander of the time, and the impossibility of denying himself to a man like Domitius Corbulo, decided the fate of his general. Nero took the easiest way of settling a difficult point of etiquette, by sending a centurion with the imperial mandate, commanding his officer to end his days.

Corbulo without a guard or means of defence, received the ungrateful message with the stoical fortitude of an ancient Roman. “I have deserved this,” was his brief remark to his friends as he fell upon his sword. Nero went on the stage to play his part out, and in its comic excitement forgot the tragedy of which he had made his brave lieutenant the hero. The plaudits of his audience were at length over, and Nero, withdrawing to his dormitory, gave the watchword, and received the report from the centurion on duty of Corbulo’s death. The last speech of his lieutenant awakened a throng of conflicting passions in his bosom; he called for wine and drank deeply to drown remorse, but instead of the oblivion he sought, he became franticly delirious and rushed forth into the midnight air, none of his attendants daring to detain or follow their miserable prince, who, passing through the streets with mad precipitation, never halted till he found himself near the scene of his labours, the Isthmian trench. The beauty of the moonlight, the deep stillness of the night, undisturbed even by a wandering breeze, allayed the fever in the emperor’s throbbing veins. Thousands were sleeping around him, sleeping in their chains. He contemplated the toil-worn wretches with feelings of envy. He gazed intently upon them as they lay fettered in pairs upon the earth, and as his mind became more calm he examined their features with curiosity and interest. In sleep the mask, habitual cunning or reserve wears by day, is thrown off, and the true character may be distinctly traced. On the brows of the Roman criminals their crimes were legibly written. Pride, sensuality, rapacity, cunning, and cruelty, marked them as the outcasts of the corrupt and wicked city, the spiritual Babylon. The Jewish captives, who were all young and chosen men, bore the expression of sullen gloom, unsatisfied revenge, defiance, indignation, and despair; and even in slumber murmured, complained, or acted again the strife they had maintained so vainly against the Roman arms. One alone of all these thousands smiled, and he was the noblest and fairest of them all. From his parted lips a holy strain of melody broke forth, then died away in imperfect murmurs; but the listening tyrant recognised in the sleeper the slave whose scornful look had awakened his angry passions on the day when he opened the trench. Adonijah’s dreams are of his own land. He is going up to Jerusalem, to keep the feast of the Passover. His slaughtered brethren are with him, and Tamar, that fair and virgin sister, that Nazarite dedicated from childhood to the Lord, is dancing before them with the timbrel in her hand, singing, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” Suddenly, with the capriciousness of fancy, the scene changes. Again he hears the war-cry of his own people, again hangs upon the flying legions of Cestius Gailus, captures the idol standard, and calls upon the name of the Messiah, the promised deliverer of Israel. He comes, the mighty, the long-expected. The Romans are driven forth from the sacred soil, the valley of Hamoth Gog is full of slaughter, and Adonijah hails the king of Judah, the anointed one of the Lord, with holy joy. But swifter than lightning vanishes the glorious vision from his sight, he awakes, and finds himself a slave in a foreign land.

He looked around him doubtfully. The land before him is like the garden of Eden, and the breezes that fan his glowing cheek are fresh and balmy as those that wander over his beloved Judea. The mountains, whose summits are gilded in the radiant moonlight, remind him of those that encompass the holy city. His perception is still visionary and indistinct, the blue waves on either side the Isthmus, the