The sources all agree that on the dock Nero clasped his mother to him tight and kissed her eyes gently. He knew that this would be the last time he would see her alive. This woman who had dedicated half her life to him, who had swaddled him and cared for him, who had taught him and watched him train birds to speak and learn to act and sing, who named him Domitius and then made him Nero, who gave him an empire of his own. It is impossible to think of this final moment between them without knowing that this is the last time they will be together, and that Nero knows this, and not wonder how he
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