While he was singing no one could leave the theatre however urgent the need, forcing women to give birth there, or so they say. Many spectators, wearied with listening and applauding, furtively dropped from the wall at the back, since the doors were closed, or pretended to die and have themselves carried off for burial. His nervousness and anxiety when he took part, his acute competitiveness where rivals were concerned, and his awe of the judges, were scarcely credible.
He would treat the other contestants with respect almost as if they were equals, and try to curry favour with them, while abusing them behind their backs, and occasionally to their faces if he encountered them elsewhere, even offering bribes to those who were particularly skilled to encourage them to perform badly.
Before he began his performance he would address the judges with the utmost deference, saying that he had prepared as well as he could, and that the outcome was in the hands of Fortune, but that they were equipped with the knowledge and experience to ignore the effects of chance. When they had reassured him, he would take his place with greater equanimity, but not without a degree of anxiety even then, interpreting the diffidence and taciturnity of some as severity and malevolence, and declaring that he was doubtful of their intentions.
He observed the rules scrupulously while competing, not daring to clear his throat, and wiping sweat from his brow only with his bare arm. Once, while acting in a tragedy, he dropped his sceptre and quickly recovered it, but was terrified of being disqualified as a result, and his confidence was only restored when his accompanist whispered that the slip had passed unnoticed amidst the delight and acclamation of the audience.
He took it upon himself to announce his own victories, and so always took part in the competition to select the heralds. To erase the record of previous victors in the contest, and suppress their memory, he ordered all their busts and statues to be toppled, dragged away with hooks and thrown into the sewers. At many events he also raced a chariot, driving a ten-horse team at Olympia , although he had criticised Mithridates in one of his own poems for doing just that, though after being thrown from the chariot and helped back in, he was too shaken to stay the course, though he won the crown just the same.
Before his departure, on the day of the Isthmian Games, he himself announced, from the midst of the stadium, that he granted the whole province of Achaia the freedom of self-government, and all the judges Roman citizenship plus a large gratuity. Returning to Italy, Nero landed at Naples , since he had made his first stage appearance there. He had part of the city wall levelled, as is the custom for welcoming back victors in the sacred Games, and rode through behind a team of white horses.
At Rome he rode in the same chariot that Augustus had used for his triumphs in former times, and wore a purple robe, and a Greek cloak decorated with gold stars.
He was crowned with an Olympic wreath, and carried a Pythian wreath in his right hand, while the other wreaths he had won were borne before him inscribed with details of the various contests and competitors, the titles of the songs he had sung, and the subjects of the plays in which he had acted.
His chariot was followed by his band of hired applauders as if they were the escort to a triumphal procession, shouting as they went that they were the companions of Augustus, and his victorious troops. He progressed through the Circus , the entrance arch having been demolished, then via the Velabrum and Forum to the Palatine Temple of Apollo.
Sacrificial offerings were made all along the route and the streets were sprinkled with fragrances, while song-birds were released, and ribbons and sweetmeats showered on him. He scattered the sacred wreaths around the couches in his sleeping quarters, and set up statues of himself playing the lyre. He also ordered a coin to be struck bearing the same device. Far from neglecting or moderating his practice of the art thereafter, he would address his troops by letter or have his speeches delivered by someone else, to preserve his voice.
And he never carried out anything in the way of business or entertainment without his elocutionist beside him, telling him to spare his vocal chords, and proffering a handkerchief with which to protect his mouth. He offered his friendship to, or declared his hostility towards, hosts of people depending on how generous or grudging towards him they had shown themselves by their applause.
His initial acts of insolence, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty were furtive, increasing in frequency quite gradually, and therefore were condoned as youthful follies, but even then their nature was such they were clearly due to defects of character, and not simply his age. As soon as darkness fell, he would pull on a cap or wig and make a round of the inns or prowl the streets causing mischief, and these were no harmless pranks either; since he would beat up citizens walking home from a meal, stabbing those who resisted and tumbling them into the sewer.
He broke into shops and stole the goods, selling them at auctions he held in the Palace as if in a marketplace, and squandering the proceeds. In the violence that ensued from his exploits he often ran the risk of losing his sight or even his life, being beaten almost to death by a Senator whose wife he maltreated. This taught him never to venture out after dark without an escort of Guards colonels following him at a distance, unobserved. Gradually, as the strength of his vices increased, he no longer hid them, or laughed them off, but dropped all disguise, and indulged freely in greater depths of wickedness.
His revels lasted from noon to midnight. If it were winter he restored himself by a warm bath, or in summer plunged into water cooled with snow. Occasionally he would drain the lake in the Campus Martius, and hold a public banquet on its bed, or in the Circus , waited on by harlots and dancing-girls from all over the City.
And whenever he floated down the Tiber to Ostia , or sailed over the Gulf of Baiae , temporary eating and drinking houses appeared at intervals along the banks and shores, with married women playing the role of barmaids, peddling their wares, and urging him on, from every side, to land. He extracted promises of banquets from his friends too; one spending forty thousand gold pieces on a dinner with an Eastern theme; another consuming an even vaster sum on a party themed with roses.
Nero not only abused freeborn boys, and seduced married women, but also forced the Vestal Virgin Rubria. He virtually married the freedwoman Acte , after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves and swear she was of royal birth.
He tried to turn the boy Sporus into a woman by castration, wed him in the usual manner, including bridal veil and dowry, took him off to the Palace attended by a vast crowd, and proceeded to treat him as his wife. He harboured a notorious passion for his own mother, but was prevented from consummating it by the actions of her enemies who feared the proud and headstrong woman would acquire too great an influence.
His desire was more apparent after he found a new courtesan who was the very image of Agrippina , for his harem. Some say his incestuous relations with his mother were proven before then, by the stains on his clothing whenever he had accompanied her in her litter.
I have been told, more than once, of his unshakeable belief that no man was physically pure and chaste, but that most concealed their vices and veiled them cunningly. He therefore pardoned every other fault in those who confessed to their perversions. Nero thought a magnificent fortune could only be enjoyed by squandering it, claiming that only tight-fisted miserly people kept a close account of their spending, while truly fine and superior people scattered their wealth extravagantly.
So he showered gifts on people and poured money away. He spent eight thousand gold pieces a day on Tiridates , though it seems barely believable, and made him a gift on parting of more than a million.
He presented Menecrates the lyre-player and Spiculus the gladiator with mansions and property worthy of those who had celebrated triumphs, and gifted the monkey-faced moneylender Paneros town-houses and country estates, burying him with well-nigh regal splendour when he died. Nero never wore the same clothes twice. He placed bets of four thousand gold pieces a point on the winning dice when he played.
He fished with a golden net strung with purple and scarlet cord. The following details will give a good idea of its size and splendour. The entrance hall was large enough to contain a huge, hundred-foot high, statue of the Emperor, and covered so much ground the triple colonnade was marked by milestones.
There was an enormous lake, too, like a small sea, surrounded by buildings representing cities, also landscaped gardens, with ploughed fields, vineyards, woods and pastures, stocked with wild and domestic creatures. Inside there was gold everywhere, with gems and mother-of-pearl. There were dining rooms whose ceilings were of fretted ivory, with rotating panels that could rain down flowers, and concealed sprinklers to shower the guests with perfume.
The main banqueting hall was circular with a revolving dome, rotating day and night to mirror the heavens. And there were baths with sea-water and sulphur water on tap. When the palace, decorated in this lavish style, was complete, Nero dedicated the building, condescending to say by way of approval that he was at last beginning to live like a human being. He began work on a covered waterway flanked by colonnades, stretching from Misenum to Lake Avernus, into which he planned to divert all the various hot springs rising at Baiae.
And he also started on a ship-canal connecting Avernus to Ostia , a distance of a hundred and sixty miles, of a breadth to allow two quinqueremes to pass.
To provide labour for the tasks he ordered convicts from all over the Empire to be transported to Italy, making work on these projects the required punishment for all capital crimes. Firstly, he introduced a law stating that if a freedman died who had taken the name of a family connected to himself, and could not justify why, five-sixths of their estate rather than merely half should be made over to him. Furthermore those who showed ingratitude by leaving him nothing or some paltry amount forfeited their property to the Privy Purse, and the lawyers who had written and dictated such wills were to be punished.
Finally, anyone whose words or actions left them open to being charged by an informer was liable under the treason laws. He recalled the gifts he had made to Greek cities which had awarded him prizes in their contests. After prohibiting the use of amethystine and Tyrian purple dyes, he sent an agent to sell them covertly in the markets, and closed down all the dealers who bought, confiscating their assets. It is even said that on noticing a married woman in the audience at one of his recitals wearing the forbidden colour he pointed her out to his agents who dragged her out and stripped her there and then, not only of her robes but also her property.
Ultimately he stripped the very temples of their treasures and melted down the gold and silver images, including the Household Gods Penates of Rome, which Galba however recast not long afterwards. He tested it on a kid, but the creature took five hours to die, so he had her make a more concentrated brew and gave it to a pig which died on the spot. He then had it administered to Britannicus with his food. The lad dropped dead after the very first taste, but Nero lied to the guests claiming it as an instance of the epileptic fits to which the boy was liable.
The next day he had Britannicus interred, hastily and unceremoniously, during a heavy downpour. Lucusta was rewarded with a free pardon for past offences, and extensive country estates, and Nero also provided her with a stream of willing acolytes. His mother Agrippina annoyed him deeply, by casting an over-critical eye on his words and actions.
Initially he discharged his resentment simply by frequent attempts to damage her popularity, pretending he would be driven to abdicate and flee to Rhodes. He progressively deprived her of her honours and power, then of her Roman and German bodyguard, refusing to let her live with him, and expelling her from the Palace. He passed all extremes in his hounding of her, paying people to annoy her with lawsuits while she was in the City, and then after her retirement to the country, sending them by land and sea to haunt the grounds and disturb her peace, with mockery and abuse.
Weary at last of her violent and threatening behaviour, he decided to have her killed, and after three poisoning attempts which she evaded by the use of antidotes, he had a false ceiling created to her bedroom, with a mechanism for dropping the heavy panelling on her as she slept. When those involved chanced to reveal the plot, he next had a collapsible boat designed which would cause her drowning or crush her in her cabin.
He then feigned reconciliation and sent her a cordial letter inviting her to Baiae to celebrate the Feast of Minerva Quinquatria with him. He instructed one of his naval captains to ensure the galley she arrived in was damaged, as if by accident, while he detained her at a banquet.
When she wished to return to Bauli Bacoli he offered his collapsible boat in place of the damaged one, escorting her to the quay in jovial mood, and even kissing her breasts before she boarded. He then passed a deeply anxious and sleepless night, awaiting the outcome of his actions. Driven to desperation by subsequent news that his plan had failed, and that she had escaped by swimming, he ordered her freedman, Lucius Agermus , who had joyfully brought the information, arrested and bound, a dagger having been surreptitiously dropped near him, on a charge of attempting to kill his Emperor, and commanded that his mother be executed, giving out meanwhile that she had escaped the consequences of her premeditated crime by committing suicide.
Reputable sources add the more gruesome details: that he rushed off to view the corpse, pawing her limbs while criticising or commending their features, and taking a drink to satisfy the thirst that overcome him.
He went to the lengths of having Magi perform their rites, in an effort to summon her shade and beg for forgiveness. And on his travels in Greece he dared not participate in the Eleusinian mysteries, since before the ceremony the herald warns the impious and wicked to depart. Having committed matricide, he now compounded his crimes by murdering his aunt, Domitia. He found her confined to bed with severe constipation.
He married two wives after Octavia. The first was Poppaea Sabina from AD62 , daughter of an ex-quaestor, married at that time to a Roman knight, and the second was Statilia Messalina, great-great-granddaughter of Statilius Taurus, who had twice been consul and had been awarded a triumph. In order to wed Statilia in AD66 he first murdered her husband Atticus Vestinus, who was then a consul.
Life with Octavia had soon bored him, and when his friends criticised his attitude, he replied that she should have contented herself with bearing the name of wife. He tried to strangle her on several occasions but failed, so divorced her, claiming she was barren. He responded to public disapproval and reproach by banishing her, as well, and finally had her executed on a charge of adultery so ludicrous and insubstantial that after torturing witnesses who merely substantiated her innocence, he was forced to bribe his former tutor Anicetus to provide a false confession that through her deceit he had lain with her.
Nero doted on Poppeia, whom he married twelve days after divorcing Octavia, yet he caused her death by kicking her when she was pregnant and ill, because she complained of his coming home late from the races. She had borne him a daughter, Claudia Augusta, who died in infancy. There was no family relationship which Nero did not brutally violate. That was how he treated all who were connected to him by blood or marriage.
Nero openly claimed that the dead Agrippina had loved Aulus and that this had given him hopes of the succession. When Seneca , his tutor, begged to be allowed to relinquish his property and retire, Nero swore most solemnly that Seneca was wrong to suspect him of wishing to do him harm, as he would rather die than do such a thing, but he drove him to suicide, regardless. Nero sent Afranius Burrus , the Guards commander, poison instead of the throat medicine he had promised him, also poisoning the food and drink of the two rich old freedmen who had originally aided his adoption by Claudius as his heir, and who had later helped him with their advice.
He attacked those outside his family with the same ruthlessness. Nero was caused great anxiety by the appearance of a comet which was visible for several nights running, an event commonly believed to prophesy the death of some great ruler. His astrologer Balbillus told him that princes averted such omens, and diverted the effect onto their noblemen, by contriving the death of one of them, so Nero decide to kill all his most eminent statesmen, and was later convinced to do so all the more, and apparently justified in doing so, by the discovery of two conspiracies against him.
The conspirators were brought to trial triply-chained, some freely admitting guilt, and saying they had sought to do the Emperor a favour, since only his death could aid one so tainted by every kind of crime. The children of those condemned were banished, poisoned, or starved to death. A number of them were massacred together with their tutors and attendants, while at a meal, while others were prevented from earning a living in any way.
Thereafter Nero dispensed with all moderation, and ruined whoever he wished, indiscriminately and on every imaginable pretext. He was even credited with longing to see living men torn to pieces and devoured by a certain Egyptian ogre who ate raw flesh and anything else he was given.
He certainly never granted Senators the customary kiss when starting or ending a journey, nor ever returned their greetings. But Nero showed no greater mercy towards the citizens, or even the walls of Rome herself.
When in the course of conversation someone quoted the line:. Various granaries which occupied desirable sites near the Golden House were partly demolished by siege engines first, as they were built in stone, and then set ablaze.
The conflagration lasted seven nights and the intervening days, driving people to take refuge in hollow monuments and tombs. Not only a vast number of tenement blocks, but mansions built by generals of former times, and still decorated with their victory trophies, were damaged, as well as temples vowed and dedicated by the kings, or later leaders during the Punic and Gallic wars, in fact every ancient building of note still extant.
He maximised his proceeds from the disaster by preventing any owner approaching their ruined property, while promising to remove the dead and the debris free of charge.
In 64 CE, most of Rome was destroyed by a great fire. Many Romans blamed Nero for it, claiming that he started it in order to clear land for a massive palatial complex.
He was also a religious persecutor, though unlike his adopted father Claudius, who pushed the Jews out of Rome, Nero directed his ire at Christians. In response, he tried to flee Rome for the Eastern provinces. When he could not secure passage, he returned to the palace and worked out his endgame: death by suicide. Its door had been shut perhaps five or six times in all of Roman history prior to the reign of Nero: once under Numa who originated the tradition , once at the end of the Second Punic War , three times under Augustus , and, according to the poet Ovid , once under Tiberius.
He marked the event with great celebrations and struck a large and impressive series of coins. Nero ascends to the throne. British Silver Coins. Chinese Silver Pandas. New Zealand Silver. Mexican Silver Libertads. Silver Rounds. Fractional Silver Rounds. Intaglio Silver Rounds. The Awakening. Silver Bars. Kilo Silver Bars. Gram Silver Bars. Other Silver. Truth Coin Series. Scottsdale Silver. IRA Approved Silver. Other World Silver.
Gold Coins. US Gold Eagles. Gold Maple Leafs. US Gold Buffalos. Australian Gold Coins. British Gold Coins. Chinese Gold Pandas. Gold Krugerrands. Gold Philharmonics. Mexican Gold Libertads. Gold Bars. Gram Bars. Other Gold. Pre Gold. New Gold Jewelry. IRA Approved Gold. Platinum Coins. Platinum Bars. IRA Approved Platinum. Shop by Mint. US Mint.
0コメント