Suetonius Life of Nero
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Tranquillus
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Title: Nero Claudius Caesar (Nero) The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume
6. Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus. Release Date: December 13, 2004 [EBook
#6391] Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
The Translation of Alexander Thomson, M.D. revised and corrected by T.Forester,
Esq., A.M.
NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR.
[Footnotes are in square brackets, and follow the Life
of Nero.]
I. Two celebrated families, the Calvini and Aenobarbi, sprung from the
race of the Domitii. The Aenobarbi derive both their extraction and their
cognomen from one Lucius Domitius, of whom we have this tradition: –As
he was returning out of the country to Rome, he was met by two young men
of a most august appearance, who desired him to announce to the senate and
people a victory, of which no certain intelligence had yet reached the city.
To prove that they were more than mortals, they stroked his cheeks, and
thus changed his hair, which was black, to a bright colour, resembling that
of brass; which mark of distinction descended to his posterity, for they
had generally red beards. This family had the honour of seven consulships
[548], one triumph [549], and two censorships [550]; and being admitted
into the patrician order, they continued the use of the same cognomen, with
no other praenomina [551] than those of Cneius and Lucius. These, however,
they assumed with singular irregularity; three persons in succession sometimes
adhering to one of them, and then they were changed alternately. For the
first, second, and third of the Aenobarbi had the praenomen of Lucius, and
again the three following, successively, that of Cneius, while those who
came after were called, by turns, one, Lucius, and the other, Cneius. It
appears to me proper to give a short account of several of the family, to
show that Nero so far degenerated from the noble qualities of his ancestors,
that he retained only their vices; as if those alone had been transmitted
to him by his descent.
II. To begin, therefore, at a remote period, his great-grandfather’s
grandfather, Cneius Domitius, when he was tribune of the people, being offended
with the high priests for electing another than himself in the room of his
father, obtained the (338) transfer of the right of election from the colleges
of the priests to the people. In his consulship [552], having conquered
the Allobroges and the Arverni [553], he made a progress through the province,
mounted upon an elephant, with a body of soldiers attending him, in a sort
of triumphal pomp. Of this person the orator Licinius Crassus said, “It
was no wonder he had a brazen beard, who had a face of iron, and a heart
of lead.” His son, during his praetorship [554], proposed that Cneius
Caesar, upon the expiration of his consulship, should be called to account
before the senate for his administration of that office, which was supposed
to be contrary both to the omens and the laws. Afterwards, when he was consul
himself [555], he tried to deprive Cneius of the command of the army, and
having been, by intrigue and cabal, appointed his successor, he was made
prisoner at Corsinium, in the beginning of the civil war. Being set at liberty,
he went to Marseilles, which was then besieged; where having, by his presence,
animated the people to hold out, he suddenly deserted them, and at last
was slain in the battle of Pharsalia. He was a man of little constancy,
and of a sullen temper. In despair of his fortunes, he had recourse to poison,
but was so terrified at the thoughts of death, that, immediately repenting,
he took a vomit to throw it up again, and gave freedom to his physician
for having, with great prudence and wisdom, given him only a gentle dose
of the poison. When Cneius Pompey was consulting with his friends in what
manner he should conduct himself towards those who were neuter and took
no part in the contest, he was the only one who proposed that they should
be treated as enemies.
III. He left a son, who was, without doubt, the best of the family. By
the Pedian law, he was condemned, although innocent, amongst others who
were concerned in the death of Caesar [556]. Upon this, he went over to
Brutus and Cassius, his near relations; and, after their death, not only
kept together the fleet, the command of which had been given him some time
before, but even increased it. At last, when the party had everywhere been
defeated, he voluntarily surrendered it to (339) Mark Antony; considering
it as a piece of service for which the latter owed him no small obligations.
Of all those who were condemned by the law above-mentioned, he was the only
man who was restored to his country, and filled the highest offices. When
the civil war again broke out, he was appointed lieutenant under the same
Antony, and offered the chief command by those who were ashamed of Cleopatra;
but not daring, on account of a sudden indisposition with which he was seized,
either to accept or refuse it, he went over to Augustus [557], and died
a few days after, not without an aspersion cast upon his memory. For Antony
gave out, that he was induced to change sides by his impatience to be with
his mistress, Servilia Nais. [558]
IV. This Cneius had a son, named Domitius, who was afterwards well known
as the nominal purchaser of the family property left by Augustus’s will
[559]; and no less famous in his youth for his dexterity in chariot-driving,
than he was afterwards for the triumphal ornaments which he obtained in
the German war. But he was a man of great arrogance, prodigality, and cruelty.
When he was aedile, he obliged Lucius Plancus, the censor, to give him the
way; and in his praetorship, and consulship, he made Roman knights and married
women act on the stage. He gave hunts of wild beasts, both in the Circus
and in all the wards of the city; as also a show of gladiators; but with
such barbarity, that Augustus, after privately reprimanding him, to no purpose,
was obliged to restrain him by a public edict.
V. By the elder Antonia he had Nero’s father, a man of execrable character
in every part of his life. During his attendance upon Caius Caesar in the
East, he killed a freedman of his own, for refusing to drink as much as
he ordered him. Being dismissed for this from Caesar’s society, he did not
mend his habits; for, in a village upon the Appian road, he suddenly whipped
his horses, and drove his chariot, on purpose, (340) over a poor boy, crushing
him to pieces. At Rome, he struck out the eye of a Roman knight in the Forum,
only for some free language in a dispute between them. He was likewise so
fraudulent, that he not only cheated some silversmiths [560] of the price
of goods he had bought of them, but, during his praetorship, defrauded the
owners of chariots in the Circensian games of the prizes due to them for
their victory. His sister, jeering him for the complaints made by the leaders
of the several parties, he agreed to sanction a law, “That, for the
future, the prizes should be immediately paid.” A little before the
death of Tiberius, he was prosecuted for treason, adulteries, and incest
with his sister Lepida, but escaped in the timely change of affairs, and
died of a dropsy, at Pyrgi [561]; leaving behind him his son, Nero, whom
he had by Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus.
VI. Nero was born at Antium, nine months after the death of Tiberius
[562], upon the eighteenth of the calends of January [15th December], just
as the sun rose, so that its beams touched him before they could well reach
the earth. While many fearful conjectures, in respect to his future fortune,
were formed by different persons, from the circumstances of his nativity,
a saying of his father, Domitius, was regarded as an ill presage, who told
his friends who were congratulating him upon the occasion, “That nothing
but what was detestable, and pernicious to the public, could ever be produced
of him and Agrippina.” Another manifest prognostic of his future infelicity
occurred upon his lustration day [563]. For Caius Caesar being requested
by his sister to give the child what name he thought proper–looking at
his uncle, Claudius, who (341) afterwards, when emperor, adopted Nero, he
gave his: and this not seriously, but only in jest; Agrippina treating it
with contempt, because Claudius at that time was a mere laughing-stock at
the palace. He lost his father when he was three years old, being left heir
to a third part of his estate; of which he never got possession, the whole
being seized by his co-heir, Caius. His mother being soon after banished,
he lived with his aunt Lepida, in a very necessitous condition, under the
care of two tutors, a dancing-master and a barber. After Claudius came to
the empire, he not only recovered his father’s estate, but was enriched
with the additional inheritance of that of his step-father, Crispus Passienus.
Upon his mother’s recall from banishment, he was advanced to such favour,
through Nero’s powerful interest with the emperor, that it was reported,
assassins were employed by Messalina, Claudius’s wife, to strangle him,
as Britannicus’s rival, whilst he was taking his noon-day repose. In addition
to the story, it was said that they were frightened by a serpent, which
crept from under his cushion, and ran away. The tale was occasioned by finding
on his couch, near the pillow, the skin of a snake, which, by his mother’s
order, he wore for some time upon his right arm, inclosed in a bracelet
of gold. This amulet, at last, he laid aside, from aversion to her memory;
but he sought for it again, in vain, in the time of his extremity.
VII. When he was yet a mere boy, before he arrived at the age of puberty,
during the celebration of the Circensian games [564], he performed his part
in the Trojan play with a degree of firmness which gained him great applause.
In the eleventh year of his age, he was adopted by Claudius, and placed
under the tuition of Annaeus Seneca [565], who had been made a senator.
It is said, that Seneca dreamt the night after, that he was giving a lesson
to Caius Caesar [566]. Nero soon verified his dream, betraying the cruelty
of his disposition in every way he could. For he attempted to persuade his
father that his brother, Britannicus, was nothing but a changeling, because
the latter had (342) saluted him, notwithstanding his adoption, by the name
of Aenobarbus, as usual. When his aunt, Lepida, was brought to trial, he
appeared in court as a witness against her, to gratify his mother, who persecuted
the accused. On his introduction into the Forum, at the age of manhood,
he gave a largess to the people and a donative to the soldiers: for the
pretorian cohorts, he appointed a solemn procession under arms, and marched
at the head of them with a shield in his hand; after which he went to return
thanks to his father in the senate. Before Claudius, likewise, at the time
he was consul, he made a speech for the Bolognese, in Latin, and for the
Rhodians and people of Ilium, in Greek. He had the jurisdiction of praefect
of the city, for the first time, during the Latin festival; during which
the most celebrated advocates brought before him, not short and trifling
causes, as is usual in that case, but trials of importance, notwithstanding
they had instructions from Claudius himself to the contrary. Soon afterwards,
he married Octavia, and exhibited the Circensian games, and hunting of wild
beasts, in honour of Claudius.
VIII. He was seventeen years of age at the death of that prince [567],
and as soon as that event was made public, he went out to the cohort on
guard between the hours of six and seven; for the omens were so disastrous,
that no earlier time of the day was judged proper. On the steps before the
palace gate, he was unanimously saluted by the soldiers as their emperor,
and then carried in a litter to the camp; thence, after making a short speech
to the troops, into the senate-house, where he continued until the evening;
of all the immense honours which were heaped upon him, refusing none but
the title of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY, on account of his youth,
IX. He began his reign with an ostentation of dutiful regard to the memory
of Claudius, whom he buried with the utmost pomp and magnificence, pronouncing
the funeral oration himself, and then had him enrolled amongst the gods.
He paid likewise the highest honours to the memory of his father Domitius.
He left the management of affairs, both public and private, to his mother.
The word which he gave the first day of his reign to the tribune on guard,
was, “The (343) Best of Mothers,” and afterwards he frequently
appeared with her in the streets of Rome in her litter. He settled a colony
at Antium, in which he placed the veteran soldiers belonging to the guards;
and obliged several of the richest centurions of the first rank to transfer
their residence to that place; where he likewise made a noble harbour at
a prodigious expense. [568]
X. To establish still further his character, he declared, “that
he designed to govern according to the model of Augustus;” and omitted
no opportunity of showing his generosity, clemency, and complaisance. The
more burthensome taxes he either entirely took off, or diminished. The rewards
appointed for informers by the Papian law, he reduced to a fourth part,
and distributed to the people four hundred sesterces a man. To the noblest
of the senators who were much reduced in their circumstances, he granted
annual allowances, in some cases as much as five hundred thousand sesterces;
and to the pretorian cohorts a monthly allowance of corn gratis. When called
upon to subscribe the sentence, according to custom, of a criminal condemned
to die, “I wish,” said he, “I had never learnt to read and
write.” He continually saluted people of the several orders by name,
without a prompter. When the senate returned him their thanks for his good
government, he replied to them, “It will be time enough to do so when
I shall have deserved it.” He admitted the common people to see him
perform his exercises in the Campus Martius. He frequently declaimed in
public, and recited verses of his own composing, not only at home, but in
the theatre; so much to the joy of all the people, that public prayers were
appointed to be put up to the gods upon that account; and the verses which
had been publicly read, were, after being written in gold letters, consecrated
to Jupiter Capitolinus.
(344) XI. He presented the people with a great number and variety of
spectacles, as the Juvenal and Circensian games, stage-plays, and an exhibition
of gladiators. In the Juvenal, he even admitted senators and aged matrons
to perform parts. In the Circensian games, he assigned the equestrian order
seats apart from the rest of the people, and had races performed by chariots
drawn each by four camels. In the games which he instituted for the eternal
duration of the empire, and therefore ordered to be called Maximi, many
of the senatorian and equestrian order, of both sexes, performed. A distinguished
Roman knight descended on the stage by a rope, mounted on an elephant. A
Roman play, likewise, composed by Afranius, was brought upon the stage.
It was entitled, “The Fire;” and in it the performers were allowed
to carry off, and to keep to themselves, the furniture of the house, which,
as the plot of the play required, was burnt down in the theatre. Every day
during the solemnity, many thousand articles of all descriptions were thrown
amongst the people to scramble for; such as fowls of different kinds, tickets
for corn, clothes, gold, silver, gems, pearls, pictures, slaves, beasts
of burden, wild beasts that had been tamed; at last, ships, lots of houses,
and lands, were offered as prizes in a lottery.
XII. These games he beheld from the front of the proscenium. In the show
of gladiators, which he exhibited in a wooden amphitheatre, built within
a year in the district of the Campus Martius [569], he ordered that none
should be slain, not even the condemned criminals employed in the combats.
He secured four hundred senators, and six hundred Roman knights, amongst
whom were some of unbroken fortunes and unblemished reputation, to act as
gladiators. From the same orders, he engaged persons to encounter wild beasts,
and for various other services in the theatre. He presented the public with
the representation of a naval fight, upon sea-water, with huge fishes swimming
in it; as also with the Pyrrhic dance, performed by certain youths, to each
of whom, after the performance was over, he granted the freedom of Rome.
During this diversion, a bull covered Pasiphae, concealed within a wooden
statue of a cow, as many of the spectators believed. Icarus, upon his first
attempt to fly, fell on the stage close to (345) the emperor’s pavilion,
and bespattered him with blood. For he very seldom presided in the games,
but used to view them reclining on a couch, at first through some narrow
apertures, but afterwards with the Podium [570] quite open. He was the first
who instituted [571], in imitation of the Greeks, a trial of skill in the
three several exercises of music, wrestling, and horse-racing, to be performed
at Rome every five years, and which he called Neronia. Upon the dedication
of his bath [572] and gymnasium, he furnished the senate and the equestrian
order with oil. He appointed as judges of the trial men of consular rank,
chosen by lot, who sat with the praetors. At this time he went down into
the orchestra amongst the senators, and received the crown for the best
performance in Latin prose and verse, for which several persons of the greatest
merit contended, but they unanimously yielded to him. The crown for the
best performer on the harp, being likewise awarded to him by the judges,
he devoutly saluted it, and ordered it to be carried to the statue of Augustus.
In the gymnastic exercises, which he presented in the Septa, while they
were preparing the great sacrifice of an ox, he shaved his beard for thefirst
time [573], and putting it up in a casket of gold studded with pearls of
great price, consecrated it to Jupiter Capitolinus. He invited the Vestal
Virgins to see the (346) wrestlers perform, because, at Olympia, the priestesses
of Ceres are allowed the privilege of witnessing that exhibition.
XIII. Amongst the spectacles presented by him, the solemn entrance of
Tiridates [574] into the city deserves to be mentioned. This personage,
who was king of Armenia, he invited to Rome by very liberal promises. But
being prevented by unfavourable weather from showing him to the people upon
the day fixed by proclamation, he took the first opportunity which occurred;
several cohorts being drawn up under arms, about the temples in the forum,
while he was seated on a curule chair on the rostra, in a triumphal dress,
amidst the military standards and ensigns. Upon Tiridates advancing towards
him, on a stage made shelving for the purpose, he permitted him to throw
himself at his feet, but quickly raised him with his right hand, and kissed
him. The emperor then, at the king’s request, took the turban from his head,
and replaced it by a crown, whilst a person of pretorian rank proclaimed
in Latin the words in which the prince addressed the emperor as a suppliant.
After this ceremony, the king was conducted to the theatre, where, after
renewing his obeisance, Nero seated him on his right hand. Being then greeted
by universal acclamation with the title of Emperor, and sending his laurel
crown to the Capitol, Nero shut the temple of the two-faced Janus, as though
there now existed no war throughout the Roman empire.
XIV. He filled the consulship four times [575]: the first for two months,
the second and last for six, and the third for four; the two intermediate
ones he held successively, but the others after an interval of some years
between them.
XV. In the administration of justice, he scarcely ever gave his decision
on the pleadings before the next day, and then in writing. His manner of
hearing causes was not to allow any adjournment, but to dispatch them in
order as they stood. When he withdrew to consult his assessors, he did not
debate the matter openly with them; but silently and privately reading over
their opinions, which they gave separately in writing, (347) he pronounced
sentence from the tribunal according to his own view of the case, as if
it was the opinion of the majority. For a long time he would not admit the
sons of freedmen into the senate; and those who had been admitted by former
princes, he excluded from all public offices. To supernumerary candidates
he gave command in the legions, to comfort them under the delay of their
hopes. The consulship he commonly conferred for six months; and one of the
two consuls dying a little before the first of January, he substituted no
one in his place; disliking what had been formerly done for Caninius Rebilus
on such an occasion, who was consul for one day only. He allowed the triumphal
honours only to those who were of quaestorian rank, and to some of the equestrian
order; and bestowed them without regard to military service. And instead
of the quaestors, whose office it properly was, he frequently ordered that
the addresses, which he sent to the senate on certain occasions, should
be read by the consuls.
XVI. He devised a new style of building in the city, ordering piazzas
to be erected before all houses, both in the streets and detached, to give
facilities from their terraces, in case of fire, for preventing it from
spreading; and these he built at his own expense. He likewise designed to
extend the city walls as far as Ostia, and bring the sea from thence by
a canal into the old city. Many severe regulations and new orders were made
in his time. A sumptuary law was enacted. Public suppers were limited to
the Sportulae [576]; and victualling-houses restrained from selling any
dressed victuals, except pulse and herbs, whereas before they sold all kinds
of meat. He likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of
people who held a new and impious [577] superstition. (348) He forbad the
revels of the charioteers, who had long assumed a licence to stroll about,
and established for themselves a kind of prescriptive right to cheat and
thieve, making a jest of it. The partisans of the rival theatrical performers
were banished, as well as the actors themselves.
XVII. To prevent forgery, a method was then first invented, of having
writings bored, run through three times with a thread, and then sealed.
It was likewise provided that in wills, the two first pages, with only the
testator’s name upon them, should be presented blank to those who were to
sign them as witnesses; and that no one who wrote a will for another, should
insert any legacy for himself. It was likewise ordained that clients should
pay their advocates a certain reasonable fee, but nothing for the court,
which was to be gratuitous, the charges for it being paid out of the public
treasury; that causes, the cognizance of which before belonged to the judges
of the exchequer, should be transferred to the forum, and the ordinary tribunals;
and that all appeals from the judges should be made to the senate.
XVIII. He never entertained the least ambition or hope of augmenting
and extending the frontiers of the empire. On the contrary, he had thoughts
of withdrawing the troops from Britain, and was only restrained from so
doing by the fear of appearing to detract from the glory of his father [578].
All (349) that he did was to reduce the kingdom of Pontus, which was ceded
to him by Polemon, and also the Alps [579], upon the death of Cottius, into
the form of a province.
XIX. Twice only he undertook any foreign expeditions, one to Alexandria,
and the other to Achaia; but he abandoned the prosecution of the former
on the very day fixed for his departure, by being deterred both by ill omens,
and the hazard of the voyage. For while he was making the circuit of the
temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise,
the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he was instantly seized with such
a dimness in his eyes, that he could not see a yard before him. In Achaia,
he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus [580]; and, having made a
speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given
by sound of trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade, and carried off
a basket full of earth upon his shoulders. He made preparations for an expedition
to the Pass of the Caspian mountains [581]; forming a new legion out of
his late levies in Italy, of men all six feet high, which he called the
phalanx of Alexander the Great. These transactions, in part unexceptionable,
and in part highly commendable, I have brought into one view, in order to
separate them from the scandalous and criminal part of his conduct, of which
I shall now give an account.
XX. Among the other liberal arts which he was taught in his youth, he
was instructed in music; and immediately after (350) his advancement to
the empire, he sent for Terpnus, a performer upon the harp [582], who flourished
at that time with the highest reputation. Sitting with him for several days
following, as he sang and played after supper, until late at night, he began
by degrees to practise upon the instrument himself. Nor did he omit any
of those expedients which artists in music adopt, for the preservation and
improvement of their voices. He would lie upon his back with a sheet of
lead upon his breast, clear his stomach and bowels by vomits and clysters,
and forbear the eating of fruits, or food prejudicial to the voice. Encouraged
by his proficiency, though his voice was naturally neither loud nor clear,
he was desirous of appearing upon the stage, frequently repeating amongst
his friends a Greek proverb to this effect: “that no one had any regard
for music which they never heard.” Accordingly, he made his first public
appearance at Naples; and although the theatre quivered with the sudden
shock of an earthquake, he did not desist, until he had finished the piece
of music he had begun. He played and sung in the same place several times,
and for several days together; taking only now and then a little respite
to refresh his voice. Impatient of retirement, it was his custom to go from
the bath to the theatre; and after dining in the orchestra, amidst a crowded
assembly of the people, he promised them in Greek [583], “that after
he had drank a little, he would give them a tune which would make their
ears tingle.” Being highly pleased with the songs that were sung in
his praise by some Alexandrians belonging to the fleet just arrived at Naples
[584], he sent for more of the like singers from Alexandria. At the same
time, he chose young men of the equestrian order, and above five thousand
robust young fellows from the common people, on purpose to learn various
kinds of applause, called bombi, imbrices, and testae [585], which they
were to practise in his favour, whenever he performed. They were (351) divided
into several parties, and were remarkable for their fine heads of hair,
and were extremely well dressed, with rings upon their left hands. The leaders
of these bands had salaries of forty thousand sesterces allowed them.
XXI. At Rome also, being extremely proud of his singing, he ordered the
games called Neronia to be celebrated before the time fixed for their return.
All now becoming importunate to hear “his heavenly voice,” he
informed them, “that he would gratify those who desired it at the gardens.”
But the soldiers then on guard seconding the voice of the people, he promised
to comply with their request immediately, and with all his heart. He instantly
ordered his name to be entered upon the list of musicians who proposed to
contend, and having thrown his lot into the urn among the rest, took his
turn, and entered, attended by the prefects of the pretorian cohorts bearing
his harp, and followed by the military tribunes, and several of his intimate
friends. After he had taken his station, and made the usual prelude, he
commanded Cluvius Rufus, a man of consular rank, to proclaim in the theatre,
that he intended to sing the story of Niobe. This he accordingly did, and
continued it until nearly ten o’clock, but deferred the disposal of the
crown, and the remaining part of the solemnity, until the next year; that
he might have more frequent opportunities of performing. But that being
too long, he could not refrain from often appearing as a public performer
during the interval. He made no scruple of exhibiting on the stage, even
in the spectacles presented to the people by private persons, and was offered
by one of the praetors, no less than a million of sesterces for his services.
He likewise sang tragedies in a mask; the visors of the heroes and gods,
as also of the heroines and goddesses, being formed into a resemblance of
his own face, and that of any woman he was in love with. Amongst the rest,
he sung “Canace in Labour,” [586] “Orestes the Murderer of
his Mother,” “Oedipus (352) Blinded,” and “Hercules
Mad.” In the last tragedy, it is said that a young sentinel, posted
at the entrance of the stage, seeing him in a prison dress and bound with
fetters, as the fable of the play required, ran to his assistance.
XXII. He had from his childhood an extravagant passion for horses; and
his constant talk was of the Circensian races, notwithstanding it was prohibited
him. Lamenting once, among his fellow-pupils, the case of a charioteer of
the green party, who was dragged round the circus at the tail of his chariot,
and being reprimanded by his tutor for it, he pretended that he was talking
of Hector. In the beginning of his reign, he used to amuse himself daily
with chariots drawn by four horses, made of ivory, upon a table. He attended
at all the lesser exhibitions in the circus, at first privately, but at
last openly; so that nobody ever doubted of his presence on any particular
day. Nor did he conceal his desire to have the number of the prizes doubled;
so that the races being increased accordingly, the diversion continued until
a late hour; the leaders of parties refusing now to bring out their companies
for any time less than the whole day. Upon this, he took a fancy for driving
the chariot himself, and that even publicly. Having made his first experiment
in the gardens, amidst crowds of slaves and other rabble, he at length performed
in the view of all the people, in the Circus Maximus, whilst one of his
freedmen dropped the napkin in the place where the magistrates used to give
the signal. Not satisfied with exhibiting various specimens of his skill
in those arts at Rome, he went over to Achaia, as has been already said,
principally for this purpose. The several cities, in which solemn trials
of musical skill used to be publicly held, had resolved to send him the
crowns belonging to those who bore away the prize. These he accepted so
graciously, that he not only gave the deputies who brought them an immediate
audience, but even invited them to his table. Being requested by some of
them to sing at supper, and prodigiously applauded, he said, “the Greeks
were the only people who has an ear for music, and were the only good judges
of him and his attainments.” Without delay he commenced his journey,
and on his arrival at Cassiope [587], (352) exhibited his first musical
performance before the altar of Jupiter Cassius.
XXIII. He afterwards appeared at the celebration of all public games
in Greece: for such as fell in different years, he brought within the compass
of one, and some he ordered to be celebrated a second time in the same year.
At Olympia, likewise, contrary to custom, he appointed a public performance
in music: and that he might meet with no interruption in this employment,
when he was informed by his freedman Helius, that affairs at Rome required
his presence, he wrote to him in these words: “Though now all your
hopes and wishes are for my speedy return, yet you ought rather to advise
and hope that I may come back with a character worthy of Nero.” During
the time of his musical performance, nobody was allowed to stir out of the
theatre upon any account, however necessary; insomuch, that it is said some
women with child were delivered there. Many of the spectators being quite
wearied with hearing and applauding him, because the town gates were shut,
slipped privately over the walls; or counterfeiting themselves dead, were
carried out for their funeral. With what extreme anxiety he engaged in these
contests, with what keen desire to bear away the prize, and with how much
awe of the judges, is scarcely to be believed. As if his adversaries had
been on a level with himself, he would watch them narrowly, defame them
privately, and sometimes, upon meeting them, rail at them in very scurrilous
language; or bribe them, if they were better performers than himself. He
always addressed the judges with the most profound reverence before he began,
telling them, “he had done all things that were necessary, by way of
preparation, but that the issue of the approaching trial was in the hand
of fortune; and that they, as wise and skilful men, ought to exclude from
their judgment things merely accidental.” Upon their encouraging him
to have a good heart, he went off with more assurance, but not entirely
free from anxiety; interpreting the silence and modesty of some of them
into sourness and ill-nature, and saying that he was suspicious of them.
XXIV. In these contests, he adhered so strictly to the rules, (354) that
he never durst spit, nor wipe the sweat from his forehead in any other way
than with his sleeve. Having, in the performance of a tragedy, dropped his
sceptre, and not quickly recovering it, he was in a great fright, lest he
should be set aside for the miscarriage, and could not regain his assurance,
until an actor who stood by swore he was certain it had not been observed
in the midst of the acclamations and exultations of the people. When the
prize was adjudged to him, he always proclaimed it himself; and even entered
the lists with the heralds. That no memory or the least monument might remain
of any other victor in the sacred Grecian games, he ordered all their statues
and pictures to be pulled down, dragged away with hooks, and thrown into
the common sewers. He drove the chariot with various numbers of horses,
and at the Olympic games with no fewer than ten; though, in a poem of his,
he had reflected upon Mithridates for that innovation. Being thrown out
of his chariot, he was again replaced, but could not retain his seat, and
was obliged to give up, before he reached the goal, but was crowned notwithstanding.
On his departure, he declared the whole province a free country, and conferred
upon the judges in the several games the freedom of Rome, with large sums
of money. All these favours he proclaimed himself with his own voice, from
the middle of the Stadium, during the solemnity of the Isthmian games.
XXV. On his return from Greece, arriving at Naples, because he had commenced
his career as a public performer in that city, he made his entrance in a
chariot drawn by white horses through a breach in the city-wall, according
to the practice of those who were victorious in the sacred Grecian games.
In the same manner he entered Antium, Alba, and Rome. He made his entry
into the city riding in the same chariot in which Augustus had triumphed,
in a purple tunic, and a cloak embroidered with golden stars, having on
his head the crown won at Olympia, and in his right hand that which was
given him at the Parthian games: the rest being carried in a procession
before him, with inscriptions denoting the places where they had been won,
from whom, and in what plays or musical performances; whilst a train followed
him with loud acclamations, crying out, that “they (355) were the emperor’s
attendants, and the soldiers of his triumph.” Having then caused an
arch of the Circus Maximus [588] to be taken down, he passed through the
breach, as also through the Velabrum [589] and the forum, to the Palatine
hill and the temple of Apollo. Everywhere as he marched along, victims were
slain, whilst the streets were strewed with saffron, and birds, chaplets,
and sweetmeats scattered abroad. He suspended the sacred crowns in his chamber,
about his beds, and caused statues of himself to be erected in the attire
of a harper, and had his likeness stamped upon the coin in the same dress.
After this period, he was so far from abating any thing of his application
to music, that, for the preservation of his voice, he never addressed the
soldiers but by messages, or with some person to deliver his speeches for
him, when he thought fit to make his appearance amongst them. Nor did he
ever do any thing either in jest or earnest, without a voice-master standing
by him to caution him against overstraining his vocal organs, and to apply
a handkerchief to his mouth when he did. He offered his friendship, or avowed
(356) open enmity to many, according as they were lavish or sparing in giving
him their applause.
XXVI. Petulancy, lewdness, luxury, avarice, and cruelty, he practised
at first with reserve and in private, as if prompted to them only by the
folly of youth; but, even then, the world was of opinion that they were
the faults of his nature, and not of his age. After it was dark, he used
to enter the taverns disguised in a cap or a wig, and ramble about the streets
in sport, which was not void of mischief. He used to beat those he met coming
home from supper; and, if they made any resistance, would wound them, and
throw them into the common sewer. He broke open and robbed shops; establishing
an auction at home for selling his booty. In the scuffles which took place
on those occasions, he often ran the hazard of losing his eyes, and even
his life; being beaten almost to death by a senator, for handling his wife
indecently. After this adventure, he never again ventured abroad at that
time of night, without some tribunes following him at a little distance.
In the day-time he would be carried to the theatre incognito in a litter,
placing himself upon the upper part of the proscenium, where he not only
witnessed the quarrels which arose on account of the performances, but also
encouraged them. When they came to blows, and stones and pieces of broken
benches began to fly about, he threw them plentifully amongst the people,
and once even broke a praetor’s head.
XXVII. His vices gaining strength by degrees, he laid aside his jocular
amusements, and all disguise; breaking out into enormous crimes, without
the least attempt to conceal them. His revels were prolonged from mid-day
to midnight, while he was frequently refreshed by warm baths, and, in the
summer time, by such as were cooled with snow. He often supped in public,
in the Naumachia, with the sluices shut, or in the Campus Martius, or the
Circus Maximus, being waited upon at table by common prostitutes of the
town, and Syrian strumpets and glee-girls. As often as he went down the
Tiber to Ostia, or coasted through the gulf of Baiae, booths furnished as
brothels and eating-houses, were erected along the shore and river banks;
before which stood matrons, who, like bawds and hostesses, allured him to
land. It was also his custom to invite (357) himself to supper with his
friends; at one of which was expended no less than four millions of sesterces
in chaplets, and at another something more in roses.
XXVIII. Besides the abuse of free-born lads, and the debauch of married
women, he committed a rape upon Rubria, a Vestal Virgin. He was upon the
point of marrying Acte [590], his freedwoman, having suborned some men of
consular rank to swear that she was of royal descent. He gelded the boy
Sporus, and endeavoured to transform him into a woman. He even went so far
as to marry him, with all the usual formalities of a marriage settlement,
the rose-coloured nuptial veil, and a numerous company at the wedding. When
the ceremony was over, he had him conducted like a bride to his own house,
and treated him as his wife [591]. It was jocularly observed by some person,
“that it would have been well for mankind, had such a wife fallen to
the lot of his father Domitius.” This Sporus he carried about with
him in a litter round the solemn assemblies and fairs of Greece, and afterwards
at Rome through the Sigillaria [592], dressed in the rich attire of an empress;
kissing him from time to time as they rode together. That he entertained
an incestuous passion for his mother [593], but was deterred by her enemies,
for fear that this haughty and overbearing woman should, by her compliance,
get him entirely into her power, and govern in every thing, was universally
believed; especially after he had introduced amongst his concubines a strumpet,
who was reported to have a strong resemblance to Agrippina [594].——–
XXIX. He prostituted his own chastity to such a degree, that (358) after
he had defiled every part of his person with some unnatural pollution, he
at last invented an extraordinary kind of diversion; which was, to be let
out of a den in the arena, covered with the skin of a wild beast, and then
assail with violence the private parts both of men and women, while they
were bound to stakes. After he had vented his furious passion upon them,
he finished the play in the embraces of his freedman Doryphorus [595], to
whom he was married in the same way that Sporus had been married to himself;
imitating the cries and shrieks of young virgins, when they are ravished.
I have been informed from numerous sources, that he firmly believed, no
man in the world to be chaste, or any part of his person undefiled; but
that most men concealed that vice, and were cunning enough to keep it secret.
To those, herefore, who frankly owned their unnatural lewdness, he forgave
all other crimes.
XXX. He thought there was no other use of riches and money than to squander
them away profusely; regarding all those as sordid wretches who kept their
expenses within due bounds; and extolling those as truly noble and generous
souls, who lavished away and wasted all they possessed. He praised and admired
his uncle Caius [596], upon no account more, than for squandering in a short
time the vast treasure left him by Tiberius. Accordingly, he was himself
extravagant and profuse, beyond all bounds. He spent upon Tiridates eight
hundred thousand sesterces a day, a sum almost incredible; and at his departure,
presented him with upwards of a million [597]. He likewise bestowed upon
Menecrates the harper, and Spicillus a gladiator, the estates and houses
of men who had received the honour of a triumph. He enriched the usurer
Cercopithecus Panerotes with estates both in town and country; and gave
him a funeral, in pomp and magnificence little inferior to that of princes.
He never wore the same garment twice. He (359) has been known to stake four
hundred thousand sesterces on a throw of the dice. It was his custom to
fish with a golden net, drawn by silken cords of purple and scarlet. It
is said, that he never travelled with less than a thousand baggage-carts;
the mules being all shod with silver, and the drivers dressed in scarlet
jackets of the finest Canusian cloth [598], with a numerous train of footmen,
and troops of Mazacans [599], with bracelets on their arms, and mounted
upon horses in splendid trappings.
XXXI. In nothing was he more prodigal than in his buildings. He completed
his palace by continuing it from the Palatine to the Esquiline hill, calling
the building at first only “The Passage,” but, after it was burnt
down and rebuilt, “The Golden House.” [600] Of its dimensions
and furniture, it may be sufficient to say thus much: the porch was so high
that there stood in it a colossal statue of himself a hundred and twenty
feet in height; and the space included in it was so ample, that it had triple
porticos a mile in length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with buildings
which had the appearance of a city. Within its area were corn fields, vineyards,
pastures, and woods, containing a vast number of animals of various kinds,
both wild and tame. In other parts it was entirely over-laid with gold,
and adorned with jewels and mother of pearl. The supper rooms were vaulted,
and compartments of the ceilings, inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve,
and scatter flowers; while they contained pipes which (360) shed unguents
upon the guests. The chief banqueting room was circular, and revolved perpetually,
night and day, in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies. The baths
were supplied with water from the sea and the Albula. Upon the dedication
of this magnificent house after it was finished, all he said in approval
of it was, “that he had now a dwelling fit for a man.” He commenced
making a pond for the reception of all the hot streams from Baiae, which
he designed to have continued from Misenum to the Avernian lake, in a conduit,
enclosed in galleries; and also a canal from Avernum to Ostia, that ships
might pass from one to the other, without a sea voyage. The length of the
proposed canal was one hundred and sixty miles; and it was intended to be
of breadth sufficient to permit ships with five banks of oars to pass each
other. For the execution of these designs, he ordered all prisoners, in
every part of the empire, to be brought to Italy; and that even those who
were convicted of the most heinous crimes, in lieu of any other sentence,
should be condemned to work at them. He was encouraged to all this wild
and enormous profusion, not only by the great revenue of the empire, but
by the sudden hopes given him of an immense hidden treasure, which queen
Dido, upon her flight from Tyre, had brought with her to Africa. This, a
Roman knight pretended to assure him, upon good grounds, was still hid there
in some deep caverns, and might with a little labour be recovered.
XXXII. But being disappointed in his expectations of this resource, and
reduced to such difficulties, for want of money, that he was obliged to
defer paying his troops, and the rewards due to the veterans; he resolved
upon supplying his necessities by means of false accusations and plunder.
In the first place, he ordered, that if any freedman, without sufficient
reason, bore the name of the family to which he belonged; the half, instead
of three fourths, of his estate should be brought into the exchequer at
his decease: also that the estates of all such persons as had not in their
wills been mindful of their prince, should be confiscated; and that the
lawyers who had drawn or dictated such wills, should be liable to a fine.
He ordained likewise, that all words and actions, upon which any informer
could ground a prosecution, should be deemed treason. He demanded an equivalent
for the crowns which the cities of (361) Greece had at any time offered
him in the solemn games. Having forbad any one to use the colours of amethyst
and Tyrian purple, he privately sent a person to sell a few ounces of them
upon the day of the Nundinae, and then shut up all the merchants’ shops,
on the pretext that his edict had been violated. It is said, that, as he
was playing and singing in the theatre, observing a married lady dressed
in the purple which he had prohibited, he pointed her out to his procurators;
upon which she was immediately dragged out of her seat, and not only stripped
of her clothes, but her property. He never nominated a person to any office
without saying to him, “You know what I want; and let us take care
that nobody has any thing he can call his own.” At last he rifled many
temples of the rich offerings with which they were stored, and melted down
all the gold and silver statues, and amongst them those of the penates [601],
which Galba afterwards restored.
XXXIII. He began the practice of parricide and murder with Claudius himself;
for although he was not the contriver of his death, he was privy to the
plot. Nor did he make any secret of it; but used afterwards to commend,
in a Greek proverb, mushrooms as food fit for the gods, because Claudius
had been poisoned with them. He traduced his memory both by word and deed
in the grossest manner; one while charging him with folly, another while
with cruelty. For he used to say by way of jest, that he had ceased morari
[602] amongst men, pronouncing the first syllable long; and treated as null
many of his decrees and ordinances, as made by a doting old blockhead. He
enclosed the place where his body was burnt with only a low wall of rough
masonry. He attempted to poison (362) Britannicus, as much out of envy because
he had a sweeter voice, as from apprehension of what might ensue from the
respect which the people entertained for his father’s memory. He employed
for this purpose a woman named Locusta, who had been a witness against some
persons guilty of like practices. But the poison she gave him, working more
slowly than he expected, and only causing a purge, he sent for the woman,
and beat her with his own hand, charging her with administering an antidote
instead of poison; and upon her alleging in excuse, that she had given Britannicus
but a gentle mixture in order to prevent suspicion, “Think you,”
said he, “that I am afraid of the Julian law;” and obliged her
to prepare, in his own chamber and before his eyes, as quick and strong
a dose as possible. This he tried upon a kid: but the animal lingering for
five hours before it expired, he ordered her to go to work again; and when
she had done, he gave the poison to a pig, which dying immediately, he commanded
the potion to be brought into the eating-room and given to Britannicus,
while he was at supper with him. The prince had no sooner tasted it than
he sunk on the floor, Nero meanwhile, pretending to the guests, that it
was only a fit of the falling sickness, to which, he said, he was subject.
He buried him the following day, in a mean and hurried way, during violent
storms of rain. He gave Locusta a pardon, and rewarded her with a great
estate in land, placing some disciples with her, to be instructed in her
trade.
XXXIV. His mother being used to make strict inquiry into hat he said
or did, and to reprimand him with the freedom of a parent, he was so much
offended, that he endeavoured to expose her to public resentment, by frequently
pretending a resolution to quit the government, and retire to Rhodes. Soon
afterwards, he deprived her of all honour and power, took from her the guard
of Roman and German soldiers, banished her from the palace and from his
society, and persecuted her in every way he could contrive; employing persons
to harass her when at Rome with law-suits, and to disturb her in her retirement
from town with the most scurrilous and abusive language, following her about
by land and sea. But being terrified with her menaces and violent spirit,
he resolved upon her destruction, and thrice attempted it by poison. Finding,
however, (363) that she had previously secured herself by antidotes, he
contrived machinery, by which the floor over her bed-chamber might be made
to fall upon her while she was asleep in the night. This design miscarrying
likewise, through the little caution used by those who were in the secret,
his next stratagem was to construct a ship which could be easily shivered,
in hopes of destroying her either by drowning, or by the deck above her
cabin crushing her in its fall. Accordingly, under colour of a pretended
reconciliation, he wrote her an extremely affectionate letter, inviting
her to Baiae, to celebrate with him the festival of Minerva. He had given
private orders to the captains of the galleys which were to attend her,
to shatter to pieces the ship in which she had come, by falling foul of
it, but in such manner that it might appear to be done accidentally. He
prolonged the entertainment, for the more convenient opportunity of executing
the plot in the night; and at her return for Bauli [603], instead of the
old ship which had conveyed her to Baiae, he offered that which he had contrived
for her destruction. He attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful mood,
and, at parting with her, kissed her breasts; after which he sat up very
late in the night, waiting with great anxiety to learn the issue of his
project. But receiving information that every thing had fallen out contrary
to his wish, and that she had saved herself by swimming,–not knowing what
course to take, upon her freedman, Lucius Agerinus bringing word, with great
joy, that she was safe and well, he privately dropped a poniard by him.
He then commanded the freedman to be seized and put in chains, under pretence
of his having been employed by his mother to assassinate him; at the same
time ordering her to be put to death, and giving out, that, to avoid punishment
for her intended crime, she had laid violent hands upon herself. Other circumstances,
still more horrible, are related on good authority; as that he went to view
her corpse, and handling her limbs, pointed out some blemishes, and commended
other points; and that, growing thirsty during the survey, he called for
drink. Yet he was never afterwards able to bear the stings of his own conscience
for this atrocious act, although encouraged by the congratulatory addresses
of the army, the senate, and people. He frequently affirmed that he was
haunted by his mother’s ghost, and persecuted with the whips (364) and burning
torches of the Furies. Nay, he attempted by magical rites to bring up her
ghost from below, and soften her rage against him. When he was in Greece,
he durst not attend the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, at the
initiation of which, impious and wicked persons are warned by the voice
of the herald from approaching the rites [604]. Besides the murder of his
mother, he had been guilty of that of his aunt; for, being obliged to keep
her bed in consequence of a complaint in her bowels, he paid her a visit,
and she, being then advanced in years, stroking his downy chin, in the tenderness
of affection, said to him: “May I but live to see the day when this
is shaved for the first time [605], and I shall then die contented.”
He turned, however, to those about him, made a jest of it, saying, that
he would have his beard immediately taken off, and ordered the physicians
to give her more violent purgatives. He seized upon her estate before she
had expired; suppressing her will, that he might enjoy the whole himself.
XXXV. He had, besides Octavia, two other wives: Poppaea Sabina, whose
father had borne the office of quaestor, and who had been married before
to a Roman knight: and, after her, Statilia Messalina, great-grand-daughter
of Taurus [606] who was twice consul, and received the honur of a triumph.
To obtain possession of her, he put to death her husband, Atticus Vestinus,
who was then consul. He soon became disgusted with Octavia, and ceased from
having any intercourse with her; and being censured by his friends for it,
he replied, “She ought to be satisfied with having the rank and appendages
of his wife.” Soon afterwards, he made several attempts, but in vain,
to strangle her, and then divorced her for barrenness. But the people, disapproving
of the divorce, and making severe comments upon it, he also banished her
[607]. At last he (365) put her to death, upon a charge of adultery, so
impudent and false, that, when all those who were put to the torture positively
denied their knowledge of it, he suborned his pedagogue, Anicetus, to affirm,
that he had secretly intrigued with and debauched her. He married Poppaea
twelve days after the divorce of Octavia [608], and entertained a great
affection for her; but, nevertheless, killed her with a kick which he gave
her when she was big with child, and in bad health, only because she found
fault with him for returning late from driving his chariot. He had by her
a daughter, Claudia Augusta, who died an infant. There was no person at
all connected with him who escaped his deadly and unjust cruelty. Under
pretence of her being engaged in a plot against him, he put to death Antonia,
Claudius’s daughter, who refused to marry him after the death of Poppaea.
In the same way, he destroyed all who were allied to him either by blood
or marriage; amongst whom was young Aulus Plautinus. He first compelled
him to submit to his unnatural lust, and then ordered him to be executed,
crying out, “Let my mother bestow her kisses on my successor thus defiled;”
pretending that he had been his mothers paramour, and by her encouraged
to aspire to the empire. His step-son, Rufinus Crispinus, Poppaea’s son,
though a minor, he ordered to be drowned in the sea, while he was fishing,
by his own slaves, because he was reported to act frequently amongst his
play-fellows the part of a general or an emperor. He banished Tuscus, his
nurse’s son, for presuming, when he was procurator of Egypt, to wash in
the baths which had been constructed in expectation of his own coming. Seneca,
his preceptor, he forced to kill himself [609], though, upon his desiring
leave to retire, and offering to surrender his estate, he solemnly swore,
“that there was no foundation for his suspicions, and that he would
perish himself sooner than hurt him.” Having promised Burrhus, the
pretorian prefect, a remedy for a swelling in his throat, he sent him poison.
Some old rich freedmen of Claudius, who had formerly not only promoted (366)
his adoption, but were also instrumental to his advancement to the empire,
and had been his governors, he took off by poison given them in their meat
or drink.
XXXVI. Nor did he proceed with less cruelty against those who were not
of his family. A blazing star, which is vulgarly supposed to portend destruction
to kings and princes, appeared above the horizon several nights successively
[610]. He felt great anxiety on account of this phenomenon, and being informed
by one Babilus, an astrologer, that princes were used to expiate such omens
by the sacrifice of illustrious persons, and so avert the danger foreboded
to their own persons, by bringing it on the heads of their chief men, he
resolved on the destruction of the principal nobility in Rome. He was the
more encouraged to this, because he had some plausible pretence for carrying
it into execution, from the discovery of two conspiracies against him; the
former and more dangerous of which was that formed by Piso [611], and discovered
at Rome; the other was that of Vinicius [612], at Beneventum. The conspirators
were brought to their trials loaded with triple fetters. Some ingenuously
confessed the charge; others avowed that they thought the design against
his life an act of favour for which he was obliged to them, as it was impossible
in any other way than by death to relieve a person rendered infamous by
crimes of the greatest enormity. The children of those who had been condemned,
were banished the city, and afterwards either poisoned or starved to death.
It is asserted that some of them, with their tutors, and the slaves who
carried their satchels, were all poisoned together at one dinner; and others
not suffered to seek their daily bread.
XXXVII. From this period he butchered, without distinction or quarter,
all whom his caprice suggested as objects for his cruelty; and upon the
most frivolous pretences. To mention only a few: Salvidienus Orfitus was
accused of letting (367) out three taverns attached to his house in the
Forum to some cities for the use of their deputies at Rome. The charge against
Cassius Longinus, a lawyer who had lost his sight, was, that he kept amongst
the busts of his ancestors that of Caius Cassius, who was concerned in the
death of Julius Caesar. The only charge objected against Paetus Thrasea
was, that he had a melancholy cast of features, and looked like a schoolmaster.
He allowed but one hour to those whom he obliged to kill themselves; and,
to prevent delay, he sent them physicians “to cure them immediately,
if they lingered beyond that time;” for so he called bleeding them
to death. There was at that time an Egyptian of a most voracious appetite,
who would digest raw flesh, or any thing else that was given him. It was
credibly reported, that the emperor was extremely desirous of furnishing
him with living men to tear and devour. Being elated with his great success
in the perpetration of crimes, he declared, “that no prince before
himself ever knew the extent of his power.” He threw out strong intimations
that he would not even spare the senators who survived, but would entirely
extirpate that order, and put the provinces and armies into the hands of
the Roman knights and his own freedmen. It is certain that he never gave
or vouchsafed to allow any one the customary kiss, either on entering or
departing, or even returned a salute. And at the inauguration of a work,
the cut through the Isthmus [613], he, with a loud voice, amidst the assembled
multitude, uttered a prayer, that “the undertaking might prove fortunate
for himself and the Roman people,” without taking the smallest notice
of the senate.
XXXVIII. He spared, moreover, neither the people of Rome, nor the capital
of his country. Somebody in conversation saying–
Emou thanontos gaia michthaeto pyri
When I am dead let fire devour the world–
“Nay,” said he, “let it be while I am living” [emou
xontos]. And he acted accordingly: for, pretending to be disgusted with
the old buildings, and the narrow and winding streets, he set the city on
fire so openly, that many of consular rank caught his own household servants
on their property with tow, and (368) torches in their hands, but durst
not meddle with them. There being near his Golden House some granaries,
the site of which he exceedingly coveted, they were battered as if with
machines of war, and set on fire, the walls being built of stone. During
six days and seven nights this terrible devastation continued, the people
being obliged to fly to the tombs and monuments for lodging and shelter.
Meanwhile, a vast number of stately buildings, the houses of generals celebrated
in former times, and even then still decorated with the spoils of war, were
laid in ashes; as well as the temples of the gods, which had been vowed
and dedicated by the kings of Rome, and afterwards in the Punic and Gallic
wars: in short, everything that was remarkable and worthy to be seen which
time had spared [614]. This fire he beheld from a tower in the house of
Mecaenas, and “being greatly delighted,” as he said, “with
the beautiful effects of the conflagration,” he sung a poem on the
ruin of Troy, in the tragic dress he used on the stage. To turn this calamity
to his own advantage by plunder and rapine, he promised to remove the bodies
of those who had perished in the fire, and clear the rubbish at his own
expense; suffering no one to meddle with the remains of their property.
But he not only received, but exacted contributions on account of the loss,
until he had exhausted the means both of the provinces and private persons.
XXXIX. To these terrible and shameful calamities brought upon the people
by their prince, were added some proceeding from misfortune. Such were a
pestilence, by which, within the space of one autumn, there died no less
than thirty thousand persons, as appeared from the registers in the temple
of Libitina; a great disaster in Britain [615], where two of the principal
towns belonging to the Romans were plundered; and a (369) dreadful havoc
made both amongst our troops and allies; a shameful discomfiture of the
army of the East; where, in Armenia, the legions were obliged to pass under
the yoke, and it was with great difficulty that Syria was retained. Amidst
all these disasters, it was strange, and, indeed, particularly remarkable,
that he bore nothing more patiently than the scurrilous language and railing
abuse which was in every one’s mouth; treating no class of persons with
more gentleness, than those who assailed him with invective and lampoons.
Many things of that kind were posted up about the city, or otherwise published,
both in Greek and Latin: such as these,
Neron, Orestaes, Alkmaion, maetroktonai.
Neonymphon [616] Neron, idian maeter apekteinen.
Orestes and Alcaeon–Nero too,
The lustful Nero, worst of all the crew,
Fresh from his bridal–their own mothers slew.
Quis neget Aeneae magna de stirpe Neronem?
Sustulit hic matrem: sustulit [617] ille patrem.
Sprung from Aeneas, pious, wise and great,
Who says that Nero is degenerate?
Safe through the flames, one bore his sire; the other,
To save himself, took off his loving mother.
Dum tendit citharam noster, dum cornua Parthus,
Noster erit Paean, ille Ekataebeletaes.
His lyre to harmony our Nero strings;
His arrows o’er the plain the Parthian wings:
Ours call the tuneful Paean,–famed in war,
The other Phoebus name, the god who shoots afar. [618]
Roma domus fiet: Vejos migrate, Quirites,
Si non et Vejos occupat ista domus.
All Rome will be one house: to Veii fly,
Should it not stretch to Veii, by and by. [619]
(370) But he neither made any inquiry after the authors, nor when information
was laid before the senate against some of them, would he allow a severe
sentence to be passed. Isidorus, the Cynic philosopher, said to him aloud,
as he was passing along the streets, “You sing the misfortunes of Nauplius
well, but behave badly yourself.” And Datus, a comic actor, when repeating
these words in the piece, “Farewell, father! Farewell mother!”
mimicked the gestures of persons drinking and swimming, significantly alluding
to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina: and on uttering the last clause,
Orcus vobis ducit pedes;
You stand this moment on the brink of Orcus;
he plainly intimated his application of it to the precarious position
of the senate. Yet Nero only banished the player and philosopher from the
city and Italy; either because he was insensible to shame, or from apprehension
that if he discovered his vexation, still keener things might be said of
him.
XL. The world, after tolerating such an emperor for little less than
fourteen years, at length forsook him; the Gauls, headed by Julius Vindex,
who at that time governed the province as pro-praetor, being the first to
revolt. Nero had been formerly told by astrologers, that it would be his
fortune to be at last deserted by all the world; and this occasioned that
celebrated saying of his, “An artist can live in any country;”
by which he meant to offer as an excuse for his practice of music, that
it was not only his amusement as a prince, but might be his support when
reduced to a private station. Yet some of the astrologers promised him,
in his forlorn state, the rule of the East, and some in express words the
kingdom of Jerusalem. But the greater part of them flattered him with assurances
of his being restored to his former fortune. And being most inclined to
believe the latter prediction, upon losing Britain and Armenia, he imagined
he had run through all the misfortunes which the fates had decreed him.
But when, upon consulting the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, he was advised
to beware of the seventy-third year, as if he were not to die till then,
never thinking of Galba’s age, he conceived such hopes, not only of living
to advanced years, but of constant and singular good fortune, that having
lost some things of great value by shipwreck, he scrupled not to say amongst
his friends, that (371) “the fishes would bring them back to him.”
At Naples he heard of the insurrection in Gaul, on the anniversary of the
day on which he killed his mother, and bore it with so much unconcern, as
to excite a suspicion that he was really glad of it, since he had now a
fair opportunity of plundering those wealthy provinces by the right of war.
Immediately going to the gymnasium, he witnessed the exercise of the wrestlers
with the greatest delight. Being interrupted at supper with letters which
brought yet worse news, he expressed no greater resentment, than only to
threaten the rebels. For eight days together, he never attempted to answer
any letters, nor give any orders, but buried the whole affair in profound
silence.
XLI. Being roused at last by numerous proclamations of Vindex, treating
him with reproaches and contempt, he in a letter to the senate exhorted
them to avenge his wrongs and those of the republic; desiring them to excuse
his not appearing in the senate-house, because he had got cold. But nothing
so much galled him, as to find himself railed at as a pitiful harper, and,
instead of Nero, styled Aenobarbus: which being his family name, since he
was upbraided with it, he declared that he would resume it, and lay aside
the name he had taken by adoption. Passing by the other accusations as wholly
groundless, he earnestly refuted that of his want of skill in an art upon
which he had bestowed so much pains, and in which he had arrived at such
perfection; asking frequently those about him, “if they knew any one
who was a more accomplished musician?” But being alarmed by messengers
after messengers of ill news from Gaul, he returned in great consternation
to Rome. On the road, his mind was somewhat relieved, by observing the frivolous
omen of a Gaulish soldier defeated and dragged by the hair by a Roman knight,
which was sculptured on a monument; so that he leaped for joy, and adored
the heavens. Even then he made no appeal either to the senate or people,
but calling together some of the leading men at his own house, he held a
hasty consultation upon the present state of affairs, and then, during the
remainder of the day, carried them about with him to view some musical instruments,
of a new invention, which were played by water [620] (372) exhibiting all
the parts, and discoursing upon the principles and difficulties of the contrivance;
which, he told them, he intended to produce in the theatre, if Vindex would
give him leave.
XLII. Soon afterwards, he received intelligence that Galba and the Spaniards
had declared against him; upon which, he fainted, and losing his reason,
lay a long time speechless, apparently dead. As soon as recovered from this
state stupefaction he tore his clothes, and beat his head, crying out, “It
is all over with me!” His nurse endeavouring to comfort him, and telling
him that the like things had happened to other princes before him, he replied,
“I am beyond all example wretched, for I have lost an empire whilst
I am still living.” He, nevertheless, abated nothing of his luxury
and inattention to business. Nay, on the arrival of good news from the provinces,
he, at a sumptuous entertainment, sung with an air of merriment, some jovial
verses upon the leaders of the revolt, which were made public; and accompanied
them with suitable gestures. Being carried privately to the theatre, he
sent word to an actor who was applauded by the spectators, “that he
had it all his own way, now that he himself did not appear on the stage.”
XLIII. At the first breaking out of these troubles, it is believed that
he had formed many designs of a monstrous nature, although conformable enough
to his natural disposition. These were to send new governors and commanders
to the provinces and the armies, and employ assassins to butcher all the
former governors and commanders, as men unanimously engaged in a conspiracy
against him; to massacre t e exiles in every quarter, and all the Gaulish
population in Rome; the former lest they should join the insurrection; the
latter as privy to the designs of their countrymen, and ready to support
(373) them; to abandon Gaul itself, to be wasted and plundered by his armies;
to poison the whole senate at a feast; to fire the city, and then let loose
the wild beasts upon the people, in order to impede their stopping the progress
of the flames. But being deterred from the execution of these designs not
so much by remorse of conscience, as by despair of being able to effect
them, and judging an expedition into Gaul necessary, he removed the consuls
from their office, before the time of its expiration was arrived; and in
their room assumed the consulship himself without a colleague, as if the
fates had decreed that Gaul should not be conquered, but by a consul. Upon
assuming the fasces, after an entertainment at the palace, as he walked
out of the room leaning on the arms of some of his friends, he declared,
that as soon as he arrived in the province, he would make his appearance
amongst the troops, unarmed, and do nothing but weep: and that, after he
had brought the mutineers to repentance, he would, the next day, in the
public rejoicings, sing songs of triumph, which he must now, without loss
of time, apply himself to compose.
XLIV. In preparing for this expedition, his first care was to provide
carriages for his musical instruments and machinery to be used upon the
stage; to have the hair of the concubines he carried with him dressed in
the fashion of men; and to supply them with battle-axes, and Amazonian bucklers.
He summoned the city-tribes to enlist; but no qualified persons appearing,
he ordered all masters to send a certain number of slaves, the best they
had, not excepting their stewards and secretaries. He commanded the several
orders of the people to bring in a fixed proportion of their estates, as
they stood in the censor’s books; all tenants of houses and mansions to
pay one year’s rent forthwith into the exchequer; and, with unheard-of strictness,
would receive only new coin of the purest silver and the finest gold; insomuch
that most people refused to pay, crying out unanimously that he ought to
squeeze the informers, and oblige them to surrender their gains.
XLV. The general odium in which he was held received an increase by the
great scarcity of corn, and an occurrence connected with it. For, as it
happened just at that time, there arrived from Alexandria a ship, which
was said to be freighted (374) with dust for the wrestlers belonging to
the emperor [621]. This so much inflamed the public rage, that he was treated
with the utmost abuse and scurrility. Upon the top of one of his statues
was placed the figure of a chariot with a Greek inscription, that “Now
indeed he had a race to run; let him be gone.” A little bag was tied
about another, with a ticket containing these words; “What could I
do?”–“Truly thou hast merited the sack.” [622] Some person
likewise wrote on the pillars in the forum, “that he had even woke
the cocks [623] with his singing.” And many, in the night-time, pretending
to find fault with their servants, frequently called for a Vindex. [624]
XLVI. He was also terrified with manifest warnings, both old and new,
arising from dreams, auspices, and omens. He had never been used to dream
before the murder of his mother. After that event, he fancied in his sleep
that he was steering a ship, and that the rudder was forced from him: that
he was dragged by his wife Octavia into a prodigiously dark place; and was
at one time covered over with a vast swarm of winged ants, and at another,
surrounded by the national images which were set up near Pompey’s theatre,
and hindered from advancing farther; that a Spanish jennet he was fond of,
had his hinder parts so changed, as to resemble those of an ape; and having
his head only left unaltered, neighed very harmoniously. The doors of the
mausoleum of Augustus flying open of themselves, there issued from it a
voice, calling on him by name. The Lares being adorned with fresh garlands
on the calends (the first) of January, fell down during the preparations
for sacrificing to them. While he was taking (375) the omens, Sporus presented
him with a ring, the stone of which had carved upon it the Rape of Proserpine.
When a great multitude of the several orders was assembled, to attend at
the solemnity of making vows to the gods, it was a long time before the
keys of the Capitol could be found. And when, in a speech of his to the
senate against Vindex, these words were read, “that the miscreants
should be punished and soon make the end they merited,” they all cried
out, “You will do it, Augustus.” It was likewise remarked, that
the last tragic piece which he sung, was Oedipus in Exile, and that he fell
as he was repeating this verse:
Thanein m’ anoge syngamos, maetaer, pataer.
Wife, mother, father, force me to my end.
XLVII. Meanwhile, on the arrival of the news, that the rest of the armies
had declared against him, he tore to pieces the letters which were delivered
to him at dinner, overthrew the table, and dashed with violence against
the ground two favourite cups, which he called Homer’s, because some of
that poet’s verses were cut upon them. Then taking from Locusta a dose of
poison, which he put up in a golden box, he went into the Servilian gardens,
and thence dispatching a trusty freedman to Ostia, with orders to make ready
a fleet, he endeavoured to prevail with some tribunes and centurions of
the pretorian guards to attend him in his flight; but part of them showing
no great inclination to comply, others absolutely refusing, and one of them
crying out aloud,
Usque adeone mori miserum est?
Say, is it then so sad a thing to die? [625]
he was in great perplexity whether he should submit himself to Galba,
or apply to the Parthians for protection, or else appear before the people
dressed in mourning, and, upon the rostra, in the most piteous manner, beg
pardon for his past misdemeanors, and, if he could not prevail, request
of them to grant him at least the government of Egypt. A speech to this
purpose was afterwards found in his writing-case. But it is conjectured
that he durst not venture upon this project, for fear of being torn to pieces,
before he could get to the Forum. Deferring, therefore, his resolution until
the next (376) day, he awoke about midnight, and finding the guards withdrawn,
he leaped out of bed, and sent round for his friends. But none of them vouchsafing
any message in reply, he went with a few attendants to their houses. The
doors being every where shut, and no one giving him any answer, he returned
to his bed-chamber; whence those who had the charge of it had all now eloped;
some having gone one way, and some another, carrying off with them his bedding
and box of poison. He then endeavoured to find Spicillus, the gladiator,
or some one to kill him; but not being able to procure any one, “What!”
said he, “have I then neither friend nor foe?” and immediately
ran out, as if he would throw himself into the Tiber.
XLVIII. But this furious impulse subsiding, he wished for some place
of privacy, where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon
offering him his country-house, between the Salarian [626] and Nomentan
[627] roads, about four miles from the city, he mounted a horse, barefoot
as he was, and in his tunic, only slipping over it an old soiled cloak;
with his head muffled up, and an handkerchief before his face, and four
persons only to attend him, of whom Sporus was one. He was suddenly struck
with horror by an earthquake, and by a flash of lightning which darted full
in his face, and heard from the neighbouring camp [628] the shouts of the
soldiers, ishing his destruction, and prosperity to Galba. He also heard
a traveller they met on the road, say, “They are (377) in pursuit of
Nero:” and another ask, “Is there any news in the city about Nero?”
Uncovering his face when his horse was started by the scent of a carcase
which lay in the road, he was recognized and saluted by an old soldier who
had been discharged from the guards. When they came to the lane which turned
up to the house, they quitted their horses, and with much difficulty he
wound among bushes, and briars, and along a track through a bed of rushes,
over which they spread their cloaks for him to walk on. Having reached a
wall at the back of the villa, Phaon advised him to hide himself awhile
in a sand-pit; when he replied, “I will not go under-ground alive.”
Staying there some little time, while preparations were made for bringing
him privately into the villa, he took up some water out of a neighbouring
tank in his hand, to drink, saying, “This is Nero’s distilled water.”
[629] Then his cloak having been torn by the brambles, he pulled out the
thorns which stuck in it. At last, being admitted, creeping upon his hands
and knees, through a hole made for him in the wall, he lay down in the first
closet he came to, upon a miserable pallet, with an old coverlet thrown
over it; and being both hungry and thirsty, though he refused some coarse
bread that was brought him, he drank a little warm water.
XLIX. All who surrounded him now pressing him to save himself from the
indignities which were ready to befall him, he ordered a pit to be sunk
before his eyes, of the size of his body, and the bottom to be covered with
pieces of marble put together, if any could be found about the house; and
water and wood [630], to be got ready for immediate use about his corpse;
weeping at every thing that was done, and frequently saying, “What
an artist is now about to perish!” Meanwhile, letters being brought
in by a servant belonging to Phaon, he snatched them out of his hand, and
there read, “That he had been declared an enemy by the senate, and
that search was making for him, that he might be punished according to the
ancient custom of the Romans.” He then inquired what kind of punishment
that was; and being told, that the (378) practice was to strip the criminal
naked, and scourge him to death, while his neck was fastened within a forked
stake, he was so terrified that he took up two daggers which he had brought
with him, and after feeling the points of both, put them up again, saying,
“The fatal hour is not yet come.” One while, he begged of Sporus
to begin to wail and lament; another while, he entreated that one of them
would set him an example by killing himself; and then again, he condemned
his own want of resolution in these words: “I yet live to my shame
and disgrace: this is not becoming for Nero: it is not becoming. Thou oughtest
in such circumstances to have a good heart: Come, then: courage, man!”
[631] The horsemen who had received orders to bring him away alive, were
now approaching the house. As soon as he heard them coming, he uttered with
a trembling voice the following verse,
Hippon m’ okupodon amphi ktupos ouata ballei; [632]
The noise of swift-heel’d steeds assails my ears;
he drove a dagger into his throat, being assisted in the act by Epaphroditus,
his secretary. A centurion bursting in just as he was half-dead, and applying
his cloak to the wound, pretending that he was come to his assistance, he
made no other reply but this, “‘Tis too late;” and “Is this
your loyalty?” Immediately after pronouncing these words, he expired,
with his eyes fixed and starting out of his head, to the terror of all who
beheld him. He had requested of his attendants, as the most essential favour,
that they would let no one have his head, but that by all means his body
might be burnt entire. And this, Icelus, Galba’s freedman, granted. He had
but a little before been discharged from the prison into which he had been
thrown, when the disturbances first broke out.
L. The expenses of his funeral amounted to two hundred thousand sesterces;
the bed upon which his body was carried to the pile and burnt, being covered
with the white robes, interwoven with gold, which he had worn upon the calends
of January preceding. His nurses, Ecloge and Alexandra, with his concubine
Acte, deposited his remains in the tomb belonging (379) to the family of
the Domitii, which stands upon the top of the Hill of the Gardens [633],
and is to be seen from the Campus Martius. In that monument, a coffin of
porphyry, with an altar of marble of Luna over it, is enclosed by a wall
built of stone brought from Thasos. [634]
LI. In stature he was a little below the common height; his skin was
foul and spotted; his hair inclined to yellow; his features were agreeable,
rather than handsome; his eyes grey and dull, his neck was thick, his belly
prominent, his legs very slender, his constitution sound. For, though excessively
luxurious in his mode of living, he had, in the course of fourteen years,
only three fits of sickness; which were so slight, that he neither forbore
the use of wine, nor made any alteration in his usual diet. In his dress,
and the care of his person, he was so careless, that he had his hair cut
in rings, one above another; and when in Achaia, he let it grow long behind;
and he generally appeared in public in the loose dress which he used at
table, with a handkerchief about his neck, and without either a girdle or
shoes.
LII. He was instructed, when a boy, in the rudiments of almost all the
liberal sciences; but his mother diverted him from the study of philosophy,
as unsuited to one destined to be an emperor; and his preceptor, Seneca,
discouraged him from reading the ancient orators, that he might longer secure
his devotion to himself. Therefore, having a turn for poetry, (380) he composed
verses both with pleasure and ease; nor did he, as some think, publish those
of other writers as his own. Several little pocket-books and loose sheets
have cone into my possession, which contain some well-known verses in his
own hand, and written in such a manner, that it was very evident, from the
blotting and interlining, that they had not been transcribed from a copy,
nor dictated by another, but were written by the composer of them.
LIII. He had likewise great taste for drawing and painting, as well as
for moulding statues in plaster. But, above all things, he most eagerly
coveted popularity, being the rival of every man who obtained the applause
of the people for any thing he did. It was the general belief, that, after
the crowns he won by his performances on the stage, he would the next lustrum
have taken his place among the wrestlers at the Olympic games. For he was
continually practising that art; nor did he witness the gymnastic games
in any part of Greece otherwise than sitting upon the ground in the stadium,
as the umpires do. And if a pair of wrestlers happened to break the bounds,
he would with his own hands drag them back into the centre of the circle.
Because he was thought to equal Apollo in music, and the sun in chariot-driving,
he resolved also to imitate the achievements of Hercules. And they say that
a lion was got ready for him to kill, either with a club, or with a close
hug, in view of the people in the amphitheatre; which he was to perform
naked.
LIV. Towards the end of his life, he publicly vowed, that if his power
in the state was securely re-established, he would, in the spectacles which
he intended to exhibit in honour of his success, include a performance upon
organs [635], as well as upon flutes and bagpipes, and, on the last day
of the games, would act in the play, and take the part of Turnus, as we
find it in Virgil. And there are some who say, that he put to death the
player Paris as a dangerous rival.
LV. He had an insatiable desire to immortalize his name, and acquire
a reputation which should last through all succeeding ages; but it was capriciously
directed. He therefore (381) took from several things and places their former
appellations, and gave them new names derived from his own. He called the
month of April, Neroneus, and designed changing the name of Rome into that
of Neropolis.
LVI. He held all religious rites in contempt, except those of the Syrian
Goddess [636]; but at last he paid her so little reverence, that he made
water upon her; being now engaged in another superstition, in which only
he obstinately persisted. For having received from some obscure plebeian
a little image of a girl, as a preservative against plots, and discovering
a conspiracy immediately after, he constantly worshipped his imaginary protectress
as the greatest amongst the gods, offering to her three sacrifices daily.
He was also desirous to have it supposed that he had, by revelations from
this deity, a knowledge of future events. A few months before he died, he
attended a sacrifice, according to the Etruscan rites, but the omens were
not favourable.
LVII. He died in the thirty-second year of his age [637], upon the same
day on which he had formerly put Octavia to death; and the public joy was
so great upon the occasion, that the common people ran about the city with
caps upon their heads. Some, however, were not wanting, who for a long time
decked his tomb with spring and summer flowers. Sometimes they placed his
image upon the rostra, dressed in robes of state; at another, they published
proclamations in his name, as if he were still alive, and would shortly
return to Rome, and take vengeance on all his enemies. Vologesus, king of
the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the senate to renew his alliance
with the Roman people, earnestly requested that due honour should be paid
to the memory of Nero; and, to conclude, when, twenty years afterwards,
at which time I was a young man [638], some person of obscure birth gave
himself out for Nero, that name secured him so favourable a reception (382)
from the Parthians, that he was very zealously supported, and it was with
much difficulty that they were prevailed upon to give him up.
* * * * * * *
FOOTNOTES: Suetonius Life of Nero.
[548] A.U.C. 593, 632, 658, 660, 700, 722, 785.
[549] A.U.C. 632.
[550] A.U.C. 639, 663.
[551] For the distinction between the praenomen and cognomen, see note,
p. 192.
[552] A.U.C. 632.
[553] The Allobroges were a tribe of Gauls, inhabiting Dauphiny and
Savoy; the Arverni have left their name in Auvergne.
[554] A.U.C. 695.
[555] A.U.C. 700.
[556] A.U.C. 711.
[557] A.U.C. 723.
[558] Nais seems to have been a freedwoman, who had been allowed to
adopt the family name of her master.
[559] By one of those fictions of law, which have abounded in all
systems of jurisprudence, a nominal alienation of his property was made
in the testator’s life-time.
[560] The suggestion offered (note, p. 123), that the Argentarii, like
the goldsmiths of the middle ages, combined the business of bankers,
or
money-changers, with dealings in gold and silver plate, is confirmed
by
this passage. It does not, however, appear that they were artificers
of
the precious metals, though they dealt in old and current coins,
sculptured vessels, gems, and precious stones.
[561] Pyrgi was a town of the ancient Etruria, near Antium, on the sea-
coast, but it has long been destroyed.
[562] A.U.C. 791; A.D. 39.
[563] The purification, and giving the name, took place, among the
Romans, in the case of boys, on the ninth, and of girls, on the tenth
day. The customs of the Judaical law were similar. See Matt. i. 59-63;
Luke iii. 21. 22.
[564] A.U.C. 806.
[565] Seneca, the celebrated philosophical writer, had been released
from exile in Corsica, shortly before the death of Tiberius. He
afterwards fell a sacrifice to the jealousy and cruelty of his former
pupil, Nero.
[566] Caligula.
[567] A.U.C. 809–A.D. 57.
[568] Antium, the birth-place of Nero, an ancient city of the Volscians,
stood on a rocky promontory of the coast, now called Capo d’ Anzo, about
thirty-eight miles from Rome. Though always a place of some naval
importance, it was indebted to Nero for its noble harbour. The ruins
of
the moles yet remain; and there are vestiges of the temples and villas
of
the town, which was the resort of the wealthy Romans, it being a most
delightful winter residence. The Apollo Belvidere was discovered among
these ruins.
[569] A.U.C. 810.
[570] The Podium was part of the amphitheatre, near the orchestra,
allotted to the senators, and the ambassadors of foreign nations; and
where also was the seat of the emperor, of the person who exhibited the
games, and of the Vestal Virgins. It projected over the wall which
surrounded the area of the amphitheatre, and was raised between twelve
and fifteen feet above it; secured with a breast-work or parapet against
the irruption of wild beasts.
[571] A.U.C. 813.
[572] The baths of Nero stood to the west of the Pantheon. They were,
probably, incorporated with those afterwards constructed by Alexander
Severus; but no vestige of them remains. That the former were
magnificent, we may infer from the verses of Martial:
——–Quid Nerone pejus?
Quid thermis melius Neronianis.–B. vii. ch. 34.
What worse than Nero?
What better than his baths?
[573] Among the Romans, the time at which young men first shaved the
beard was marked with particular ceremony. It was usually in their
twenty-first year, but the period varied. Caligula (c. x.) first shaved
at twenty; Augustus at twenty-five.
[574] A.U.C. 819. See afterwards, c. xxx.
[575] A.U.C. 808, 810, 811, 813.
[576] The Sportulae were small wicker baskets, in which victuals or
money were carried. The word was in consequence applied to the public
entertainments at which food was distributed, or money given in lieu
of
it.
[577] “Superstitionis novae et maleficae,” are the words of
Suetonius;
the latter conveying the idea of witchcraft or enchantment. Suidas
relates that a certain martyr cried out from his dungeon–“Ye have
loaded
me with fetters as a sorcerer and profane person.” Tacitus calls
the
Christian religion “a foreign and deadly [exitiabilis] superstition,”
Annal. xiii. 32; Pliny, in his celebrated letter to Trajan, “a depraved,
wicked (or prava), and outrageous superstition.” Epist. x. 97.
Tacitus also describes the excruciating torments inflicted on the Roman
Christians by Nero. He says that they were subjected to the derision
of
the people; dressed in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to be torn
to pieces by dogs in the public games, that they were crucified, or
condemned to be burnt; and at night-fall served in place of lamps to
lighten the darkness, Nero’s own gardens being used for the spectacle.
Annal. xv. 44.
Traditions of the church place the martyrdoms of SS. Peter and Paul at
Rome, under the reign of Nero. The legends are given by Ordericus
Vitalis. See vol. i. of the edition in the Antiq. Lib. pp. 206, etc.,
with the notes and reference to the apocryphal works on which they are
founded.
[578] Claudius had received the submission of some of the British
tribes. See c. xvii. of his Life. In the reign of Nero, his general,
Suetonius Paulinus, attacked Mona or Anglesey, the chief seat of the
Druids, and extirpated them with great cruelty. The successes of
Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, who inhabited Derbyshire, were probably
the
cause of Nero’s wishing to withdraw the legions; she having reduced
London, Colchester, and Verulam, and put to death seventy thousand of
the
Romans and their British allies. She was, however, at length defeated
by
Suetonius Paulinus, who was recalled for his severities. See Tacit.
Agric. xv. 1, xvi. 1; and Annal. xiv. 29.
[579] The dominions of Cottius embraced the vallies in the chain of the
Alps extending between Piedmont and Dauphiny, called by the Romans the
Cottian Alps. See TIBERIUS, c. xxxvii.
[580] It was a favourite project of the Caesars to make a navigable
canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, to avoid the circumnavigation of
the southern extremity of the Morea, now Cape Matapan, which, even in
our
days, has its perils. See JULIUS CAESAR, c. xliv. and CALIGULA, c. xxi.
[581] Caspiae Portae; so called from the difficulties opposed by the
narrow and rocky defile to the passage of the Caucasus from the country
washed by the Euxine, now called Georgia, to that lying between the
Caspian and the sea of Azof. It commences a few miles north of Teflis,
and is frequently the scene of contests between the Russians and the
Circassian tribes.
[582] Citharoedus: the word signifies a vocalist, who with his singing
gave an accompaniment on the harp.
[583] It has been already observed that Naples was a Greek colony, and
consequently Greek appears to have continued the vernacular tongue.
[584] See AUGUSTUS, c. xcviii.
[585] Of the strange names given to the different modes of applauding
in
the theatre, the first was derived from the humming of bees; the second
from the rattling of rain or hail on the roofs; and the third from the
tinkling of porcelain vessels when clashed together.
[586] Canace was the daughter of an Etrurian king, whose incestuous
intercourse with her brother having been detected, in consequence of
the
cries of the infant of which she was delivered, she killed herself. It
was a joke at Rome, that some one asking, when Nero was performing in
Canace, what the emperor was doing; a wag replied. “He is labouring
in
child-birth.”
[587] A town in Corcyra, now Corfu. There was a sea-port of the same
name in Epirus.
[588] The Circus Maximus, frequently mentioned by Suetonius, was so
called because it was the largest of all the circuses in and about Rome.
Rudely constructed of timber by Tarquinius Drusus, and enlarged and
improved with the growing fortunes of the republic, under the emperors
it
became a most superb building. Julius Caesar (c. xxxix) extended it,
and
surrounded it with a canal, ten feet deep and as many broad, to protect
the spectators against danger from the chariots during the races.
Claudius (c. xxi.) rebuilt the carceres with marble, and gilded the
metae. This vast centre of attraction to the Roman people, in the games
of which religion, politics, and amusement, were combined, was, according
to Pliny, three stadia (of 625 feet) long, and one broad, and held
260,000 spectators; so that Juvenal says,
“Totam hodie Romam circus capit.”–Sat. xi. 195.
This poetical exaggeration is applied by Addison to the Colosseum.
“That on its public shews unpeopled Rome.”–Letter to Lord
Halifax.
The area of the Circus Maximus occupied the hollow between the Palatine
and Aventine hills, so that it was overlooked by the imperial palace,
from which the emperors had so full a view of it, that they could from
that height give the signals for commencing the races. Few fragments
of
it remain; but from the circus of Caracalla, which is better preserved,
a
tolerably good idea of the ancient circus may he formed. For details
of
its parts, and the mode in which the sports were conducted, see Burton’s
Antiquities, p. 309, etc.
[589] The Velabrum was a street in Rome. See JULIUS CAESAR, c. xxxvii.
[590] Acte was a slave who had been bought in Asia, whose beauty so
captivated Nero that he redeemed her, and became greatly attached to
her.
She is supposed to be the concubine of Nero mentioned by St. Chrysostom,
as having been converted by St. Paul during his residence at Rome. The
Apostle speaks of the “Saints in Caesar’s household.”–Phil.
iv. 22.
[591] See Tacitus, Annal. xv. 37.
[592] A much-frequented street in Rome. See CLAUDIUS, c. xvi.
[593] It is said that the advances were made by Agrippina, with flagrant
indecency, to secure her power over him. See Tacitus, Annal. xiv. 2,
3.
[594] Olim etiam, quoties lectica cum matre veheretur, libidinatum
inceste, ac maculis vestis proditum, affirmant.
[595] Tacitus calls him Pythagoras, which was probably the freedman’s
proper name; Doryphorus being a name of office somewhat equivalent to
almoner. See Annal. B. xv.
[596] The emperor Caligula, who was the brother of Nero’s mother,
Agrippina.
[597] See before, c. xiii. Tiridates was nine months in Rome or the
neighbourhood, and was entertained the whole time at the emperor’s
expense.
[598] Canusium, now Canosa, was a town in Apulia, near the mouth of the
river Aufidus, celebrated for its fine wool. It is mentioned by Pliny,
and retained its reputation for the manufacture in the middle ages, as
we
find in Ordericus Vitalis.
[599] The Mazacans were an African tribe from the deserts in the
interior, famous for their spirited barbs, their powers of endurance,
and
their skill in throwing the dart.
[600] The Palace of the Caesars, on the Palatine hill, was enlarged by
Augustus from the dimensions of a private house (see AUGUSTUS, cc. xxix.,
lvii.). Tiberius made some additions to it, and Caligula extended it
to
the Forum (CALIGULA, c. xxxi.). Tacitus gives a similar account with
that of our author of the extent and splendour of the works of Nero.
Annal. xv. c. xlii. Reaching from the Palatine to the Esquiline hill,
it
covered all the intermediate space, where the Colosseum now stands. We
shall find that it was still further enlarged by Domitian, c. xv. of
his
life is the present work.
[601] The penates were worshipped in the innermost part of the house,
which was called penetralia. There were likewise publici penates,
worshipped in the Capitol, and supposed to be the guardians of the city
and temples. Some have thought that the lares and penates were the same;
and they appear to be sometimes confounded. They were, however,
different. The penates were reputed to be of divine origin; the lares,
of human. Certain persons were admitted to the worship of the lares,
who
were not to that of the penates. The latter, as has been already said,
were worshipped only in the innermost part of the house, but the former
also in the public roads, in the camp, and on sea.
[602] A play upon the Greek word moros, signifying a fool, while the
Latin morari, from moror, means “to dwell,” or “continue.”
[603] A small port between the gulf of Baiae and cape Misenum.
[604] From whence the “Procul, O procul este profani!” of the
poet; a
warning which was transferred to the Christian mysteries.
[605] See before, c. xii.
[606] Statilius Taurus; who lived in the time of Augustus, and built
the
amphitheatre called after his name. AUGUSTUS, c. xxiv. He is mentioned
by Horace, Epist. i. v. 4.
[607] Octavia was first sent away to Campania, under a guard of
soldiers, and after being recalled, in consequence of the remonstrances
of the people, by whom she was beloved, Nero banished her to the island
of Pandataria.
[608] A.U.C. 813.
[609] Seneca was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of Caius Piso.
Tacitus furnishes some interesting details of the circumstances under
which the philosopher calmly submitted to his fate, which was announced
to him when at supper with his friends, at his villa, near Rome.–
Tacitus, b. xiv. xv.
[610] This comet, as well as one which appeared the year in which
Claudius died, is described by Seneca, Natural. Quaest. VII. c. xvii.
and
xix. and by Pliny, II. c. xxv.
[611] See Tacitus, Annal. xv. 49-55.
[612] The sixteenth book of Tacitus, which would probably have given
an
account of the Vinician conspiracy, is lost. It is shortly noticed by
Plutarch.
[613] See before, c. xix.
[614] This destructive fire occurred in the end of July, or the
beginning of August, A.U.C. 816, A.D. 64. It was imputed to the
Christians, and drew on them the persecutions mentioned in c. xvi., and
the note.
[615] The revolt in Britain broke out A.U.C. 813. Xiphilinus (lxii. p.
701) attributes it to the severity of the confiscations with which the
repayment of large sums of money advanced to the Britons by the emperor
Claudius, and also by Seneca, was exacted. Tacitus adds another cause,
the insupportable tyranny and avarice of the centurions and soldiers.
Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, had named the emperor his heir. His widow
Boadicea and her daughters were shamefully used, his kinsmen reduced
to
slavery, and his whole territory ravaged; upon which the Britons flew
to
arms. See c. xviii., and the note.
[616] Neonymphon; alluding to Nero’s unnatural nuptials with Sporus or
Pythagoras. See cc. xxviii. xxix. It should be neonymphos.
[617] “Sustulit” has a double meaning, signifying both, to
bear away,
and put out of the way.
[618] The epithet applied to Apollo, as the god of music, was Paean;
as
the god of war, Ekataebaletaes.
[619] Pliny remarks, that the Golden House of Nero was swallowing up
all
Rome. Veii, an ancient Etruscan city, about twelve miles from Rome, was
originally little inferior to it, being, as Dionysius informs us, (lib.
ii. p. 16), equal in extent to Athens. See a very accurate survey of
the ruins of Veii, in Gell’s admirable TOPOGRAPHY OF ROME AND ITS
VICINITY, p. 436, of Bohn’s Edition.
[620] Suetonius calls them organa hydralica, and they seem to have been
a musical instrument on the same principle as our present organs, only
that water was the inflating power. Vitruvius (iv. ix.) mentions the
instrument as the invention of Ctesibus of Alexandria. It is also well
described by Tertullian, De Anima, c. xiv. The pneumatic organ appears
to have been a later improvement. We have before us a contorniate
medallion, of Caracalla, from the collection of Mr. W. S. Bohn, upon
which one or other of these instruments figures. On the obverse is the
bust of the emperor in armour, laureated, with the inscription as
AURELIUS ANTONINUS PIUS AUG. BRIT. (his latest title). On the reverse
is
the organ; an oblong chest with the pipes above, and a draped figure
on
each side.
[621] A fine sand from the Nile, similar to puzzuclano, which was
strewed on the stadium; the wrestlers also rolled in it, when their
bodies were slippery with oil or perspiration.
[622] The words on the ticket about the emperor’s neck, are supposed,
by
a prosopopea, to be spoken by him. The reply is Agrippina’s, or the
people’s. It alludes to the punishment due to him for his parricide.
By
the Roman law, a person who had murdered a parent or any near relation,
after being severely scourged, was sewed up in a sack, with a dog, a
cock, a viper, and an ape, and then thrown into the sea, or a deep river.
[623] Gallos, which signifies both cocks and Gauls.
[624] Vindex, it need hardly be observed, was the name of the propraetor
who had set up the standard of rebellion in Gaul. The word also
signifies an avenger of wrongs, redresser of grievances; hence vindicate,
vindictive, etc.
[625] Aen. xii. 646.
[626] The Via Salaria was so called from the Sabines using it to fetch
salt from the coast. It led from Rome to the northward, near the gardens
of Sallust, by a gate of the same name, called also Quirinalis, Agonalis,
and Collina. It was here that Alaric entered.
[627] The Via Nomentana, so named because it led to the Sabine town of
Nomentum, joined the Via Salara at Heretum on the Tiber. It was also
called Ficulnensis. It entered Rome by the Porta Viminalis, now called
Porta Pia. It was by this road that Hannibal approached the walls of
Rome. The country-house of Nero’s freedman, where he ended his days,
stood near the Anio, beyond the present church of St. Agnese, where there
was a villa of the Spada family, belonging now, we believe, to Torlonia.
[628] This description is no less exact than vivid. It was easy for
Nero to gain the nearest gate, the Nomentan, from the Esquiline quarter
of the palace, without much observation; and on issuing from it (after
midnight, it appears), the fugitives would have the pretorian camp so
close on their right hand, that they might well hear the shouts of the
soldiers.
[629] Decocta. Pliny informs us that Nero had the water he drank,
boiled, to clear it from impurities, and then cooled with ice.
[630] Wood, to warm the water for washing the corpse, and for the
funeral pile,
[631] This burst of passion was uttered in Greek, the rest was spoken
in
Latin. Both were in familiar use. The mixture, perhaps, betrays the
disturbed state of Nero’s mind.
[632] II. x. 535.
[633] Collis Hortulorum; which was afterwards called the Pincian Hill,
from a family of that name, who flourished under the lower empire. In
the time of the Caesars it was occupied by the gardens and villas of
the
wealthy and luxurious; among which those of Sallust are celebrated. Some
of the finest statues have been found in the ruins; among others, that
of
the “Dying Gladiator.” The situation was airy and healthful,
commanding
fine views, and it is still the most agreeable neighbourhood in Rome.
[634] Antiquarians suppose that some relics of the sepulchre of the
Domitian family, in which the ashes of Nero were deposited, are preserved
in the city wall which Aurelian, when he extended its circuit, carried
across the “Collis Hortulorum.” Those ancient remains, declining
from
the perpendicular, are called the Muro Torto.–The Lunan marble was
brought from quarries near a town of that name, in Etruria. It no longer
exists, but stood on the coast of what is now called the gulf of
Spezzia.–Thasos, an island in the Archipelago, was one of the Cyclades.
It produced a grey marble, much veined, but not in great repute.
[635] See c. x1i.
[636] The Syrian Goddess is supposed to have been Semiramis deified.
Her rites are mentioned by Florus, Apuleius, and Lucian.
[637] A.U.C. 821–A.D. 69.
[638] We have here one of the incidental notices which are so valuable
in an historian, as connecting him with the times of which he writes.
See also just before, c. lii.
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by C. Suetonius Tranquillus
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