Nero | Page 8

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,