CHAPTER LXII NERO IN GREECE Hæc opera atque hæ sunt generosi Principis artes Juv. Sat. viii. 224. NERO grew weary of Rome. While he was there he could not wholly exclude the voice of the conscience of mankind which awoke echoes in his own. With art, and æsthetics, and the race-course, and the theatre, he tried to create around him the elements of a sham and shadowy world. It was a world filled with the ghosts of crime and weird with insensate projects and monstrous revellings. He had attempted everything, abused everything, polluted everything, and the scoriac river of passion accursed,' of which lie drank so freely, did but consume and burn up his powers. He had become like a dead thing in a wilderness of dead capacities, inspired at once by insatiable desires and incurable disgusts.' While he played the god he sank lower than Christian eye can follow him, into the beast. With Domitian, Tiberius, Caligula, and Helagabalus - with Vitellius, Commodus, and Maximin he was one of a group of Cæsars who have been set forth last on the stage of history, a spectacle to angels and to men to show that human nature can sink into half beast and half devil' when there are no restraints to save men from all that is most abject. They became, as St. Paul said, inventors of evil; not only doers of whatsoever things are vile, whatsoever things are infamous, whatsoever things are of ill report, but also delighters in those that do them. But at Rome, even in his beloved theatre, Nero was not safe from insults. They scorched him as with the touch of flame, and yet were so impalpable that he could not avenge them unless he put a whole population to death. Opposite his Palace, or on the outer circus, were written, in chalk or coal, denunciations so stinging as to show that if blank walls are the paper of fools they may also be the avengers of tyrants. One of these pasquinades hailed him as the true descendant of Eneas, since Æneas 'took off' his father, Nero his mother. Another criticised the over-grown space of the Golden House, and bade the Quirites to emigrate to Veii, if the House did not forestall them by extending so far. Yet another reminded him that the Parthian could be an Apollo with his arrows no less than Nero with his harp. He pretended indifference to these things, but he felt them, and longed to find a fresh scene for display. At Rome he considered that his musical talent, though he had exhibited it to the promiscuous populace, was yet a flower which blushed. unseen. The astute and adulatory Greeks had sent him the crowns of all their citharœedic contests. He was delighted, and asked their delegates to supper. When they begged him to give them a specimen of his powers, they went into such ecstasies over his performance that he said the Greeks were the only connoisseurs who were worthy of his proficiency. To Greece, therefore, he set forth with a retinue which would have sufficed for the conquest of India, only that they were more concerned with masks and robes and musical instruments than with arms. He was accompanied, too, by all his train of minions, as well as by an army of claqueurs. When he appeared at Naples he was so enchanted by the 'Kentish fire' of some Alexandrians who were present a mode of applause which was new to him that he took a number of these Egyptians into his service. He had also trained a band of youths of equestrian rank, and more than five thousand of the lustiest plebeians to act together in bands and learn certain modes of cheering, which were called 'buzzings,' 'tiles,' and 'jars.' They were mostly boys, and were arrayed in fine dresses, with their thick hair shining with perfumes, and with rings on their left hands. With such accompaniments he might feel tolerably secure of victory, yet when he appeared at a contest he always felt or pretended a girlish timidity. The Emperor of Rome might be seen on the stage of Greek towns bending his knee before the mob, humbly adoring them with his hands, assuring the judges that he had done his little best, tremblingly solicitous |