Over all, with its
sides dotted with picturesque villas and happy villages, towered the
giant cone of the volcano which for centuries had appeared to be
extinct, and which was clothed up to the very crater with luxurious
vegetation. Such was the delicious home which Tiberius disgraced for
ever by the seclusion of his old age. Here he abandoned himself to every
refinement of wickedness, and from hence, being by common consent the
most miserable of men, he wrote to the Senate that memorable letter in
which he confesses his daily and unutterable misery under the stings of
a guilty conscience, which neither solitude nor power enabled him
to escape.
Never did a fairer scene undergo a worse degradation; and here, in one
or other of the twelve villas which Tiberius had built, and among the
azure grottoes which he caused to be constructed, the youthful Caius[23]
grew up to manhood. It would have been a terrible school even for a
noble nature; for a nature corrupt and bloodthirsty like that of Caius
it was complete and total ruin. But, though he was so obsequious to the
Emperor as to originate the jest that never had there been a worse
master and never a more cringing slave,--though he suppressed every sign
of indignation at the horrid deaths of his mother and his
brothers,--though he assiduously reflected the looks, and carefully
echoed the very words, of his patron,--yet not even by the deep
dissimulation which such a position required did he succeed in
concealing from the penetrating eye of Tiberius the true ferocity of his
character.
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