Lives of the Caesars

by Suetonius

At the games which, since they were undertaken for the everlasting future of the empire, he wished to be termed ‘The Greatest’, a significant number of men and women from both the senatorial and the equestrian orders took on the parts of actors.* A very well-known Roman knight rode down a rope mounted on an elephant.

[12] He would watch these games from the top of the proscenium.

At the gladiatorial games, which he gave in a wooden amphitheatre constructed in less than a year in the Campus Martius part of the city, he had no one put to death, not even criminals. However, he put on show as fighters four hundred senators and six hundred Roman knights, some of whom were wealthy men of good reputation.*

Even those who fought the wild beasts and served as assistants in the arena were drawn from the senatorial and equestrian orders. He also gave a naval battle on ...

He put on shows of young Greeks as Pyrrhic dancers* and after the games he gave each of them a diploma of Roman citizenship. In one of these Pyrrhic dances, a bull mounted Pasiphae* concealed within a wooden model of a heifer in such ...

In another, an Icarus on his first attempt fell immediately to the ground* right next to the emperor’s co...

He was also the first to establish at Rome a five-yearly competition, in the Greek manner, made up of three events, musical, gymnastic, and equestrian, which he termed the Neronia.

He also dedicated his baths and gymnasium,* distributing gifts of oil to each senator and each knight. He put in charge of the whole competition ex-consuls, chosen by lot, who occupied the seats of the praetors.*

[18] Nero was never moved by the slightest desire or hope to extend or add to the empire, and he even considered withdrawing the army from Britain but was dissuaded by the shame which he would have incurred in seeming to detract from the glory won by his own parent.*

[19] He undertook only two tours, to Alexandria and to Achaea. But on the very day he had set sail he suspended his Alexandrian trip, disturbed both by religious feeling and by a sense of danger.

[20] Amongst the other attainments of his youth, he was also very knowledgeable about music so that, as soon as he became emperor, he summoned Terpnus, the leading lyre-player of the time and as he sat, while the latter sang after dinner day after day late into the night, he began himself to study and practise little by little, omitting none of those exercises by which artists of that kind preserve and strengthen their voices.

Rather, he would lie on his back, holding a lead tablet on his chest, and cleanse his system with a syringe and with vomiting, and he would abstain from fruits and other foods harmful to the voice. Finally, pleased by his progress, although his voice was thin and indistinct, he conceived a desire to go on the stage, from time to time repeating to his companions the Greek proverb that hidden music has no admirers.*

Indeed, he made his first appearance in Naples and, though the theatre was shaken by a sudden earthquake, he did not leave off singing until he had ...

In the same city he sang often and over many days. And even when he had taken a short break to rest his voice, he could not bear being apart from his audience. After bathing he went to the theatre, where he took his dinner...

And with no less enthusiasm he selected some youths of the equestrian order and more than five thousand of the strongest young men of the common people from all over, who were divided into groups and taught different methods of applauding—they called them buzzers, hollow tiles and flat tiles—which they were to employ vigorously when he was singing.

[21] Since he set great store by singing even in Rome, he gave orders for a Neronian competition in advance of the regular date and, when everyone called out for his divine voice, he replied that, for those who wished to come, he would put on a good show in his gardens.

He even debated whether to take the stage with professional actors in private performances when one of the praetors offered a million sesterces.*

[28] Besides his seduction of free-born boys and his relations with married women, he also forced himself on the Vestal Virgin Rubria.

He came very close to making the freedwoman Acte his lawful wife, having bribed some men of consular rank to swear falsely that she was descended from kings.

had the testicles cut off a boy named Sporus and attempted to transform him into a woman, marrying him with dowry and bridal veil and all due ceremony, then, accompanied by a great crowd, takin...

This Sporus, decked out in the ornaments of an empress and carried in a litter, he took with him around the meeting places and markets of Greece and later, at Rome, around the Sigillaria, kissing him from time to time.

And all were convinced that he had desired to sleep with his mother but was frightened off by her detractors, who were concerned lest this ferocious and power-hungry woman acquire greater influence through this kind of favour.

[29] He prostituted his own body to such a degree that, when virtually every part of his person had been employed in filthy lusts, he devised a new and unprecedented practice as a kind of game, in which, disguised in the pelt of a wild animal, he would rush out of a den and attack the private parts of men and women who had been tied to stakes, and, when he had wearied of playing the beast, he would be ‘run through’ by his freedman Doryphorus.*

With this man he played the role of bride, as Sporus had done with him, and he even imitated the shouts and cries of virgins being raped. From quite a few sources I have gathered that he was fully convinced that no one was truly chaste or pure in any part of their body but that many chose to conceal their vices and hid them cleverly.

[30] He believed that the proper use for riches and wealth was extravagance and that people who kept an account of their expenses were vulgar and miserly, while those who squandered and frittered away their money were refined and truly splendid.

He praised and admired his uncle Caligula, above all because, in so brief a period, he had worked his way through the vast fortune left him by Tiberius.* Accordingly there was no limit to his gift-giving or consumption.

[31] There was, however, nothing in which he was more prodigal than in construction, extending from the Palatine as far as the Esquiline the palace which he called first the House of Passage,* then, after it had been destroyed by fire and rebuilt, the Golden House.

It should suffice to relate the following concerning its extent and splendour. There was a vestibule area in which stood a colossal statue, one hundred and twenty feet tall, in the image of the emperor himself.* So great was its extent that its triple colonnade was a mile in length.

There was also a lake, which resembled the sea, surrounded by buildings made to look like cities. Besides this, there were grounds of all kinds, with fields and vineyards, pasture and woodland, and a...