FIGURE 10. The Acraephia Decree.
THE EMPEROR AS ARTIST AND SHOWMAN
INTRODUCTION
Thanks to Agrippina’s intervention, even before his adoption by Claudius, Nero had been put in the charge of Annaeus Seneca, now restored from exile and granted a praetorship, for his education in rhetoric and public behavior. Supervised by Seneca and Afranius Burrus, Nero, as Claudius’s adopted heir, was prepared for his future role. There seems to have been little opposition to his advancement, and he fully exploited his head start over Britannicus, some three years younger (see Chapter I appendix), and met no challenge for the succession. This chapter illustrates how the young prince, even while he was being groomed for future public functions as advocate and commander, moved away from this conventional education to spend ever more time on his enthusiasm for performance, racing chariots, the passion of his father and grandfather before him, and then gradually seeking increasing publicity. His overwhelming desire to become a musical artist, composing and singing his own compositions to the cithara, would begin slightly later. This chapter follows his growing obsession with stage performance, not only as artist but also as impresario, controlling the performances of respectable private citizens as well as sporting and artistic professionals and becoming the chief entertainer of the Roman people.
SOURCES
Tac. Ann.13.2.1. [Afranius Burrus and Seneca] were the men guiding the emperor’s youth, and (a rare phenomenon when power is shared) they acted in harmony, exercising equal influence but in different spheres, Burrus with his military interests and strict morality, Seneca with his oratorical teaching and principled cordiality.1 The two worked together so that they could more easily confine the unsteady age of the emperor (if he rejected virtue) to acceptable diversions.
Tac. Ann. 12.58.1 (AD 53). In the consulship of Decimus Junius and Quintus Haterius, Nero, now aged sixteen, married Claudius’s daughter Octavia. And to gain a brilliant reputation for honorable pursuits and public speaking, he took up the cause of the people of Ilium. After an eloquent disquisition on the Roman people’s Trojan descent, on Aeneas as the founder of the Julian family, and other old tales not far removed from legend, he succeeded in having the people of Ilium granted immunity from all public taxation.2 Thanks to the same public speaker, the colony of Bononia, which had been razed by fire, was assisted with a grant of ten million sestertii. The Rhodians had their freedom restored—it had often been taken from them, or confirmed, depending on their service in foreign wars or their misdeeds in times of civil discord—and Apamea, shaken by an earthquake, was excused payment of tribute for a five-year period.3
Suet. Ner. 7.2. When he was first escorted into the Forum as a novice, Nero announced a distribution of largesse to the people and a donative to the soldiers, and after giving the praetorians notice of a march past he took the lead, shield in hand.4 After that, he offered his thanks to his father in the Senate. Nero also spoke as advocate, for the people of Bononia in Latin and for the Rhodians and the people of Ilium in Greek, before Claudius, who was presiding as consul. His introduction to the administration of justice came when he was city prefect in the Latin festival, and there, though it had been forbidden by Claudius, the most famous advocates competed with each other to present to him not the usual inconsequential and brief cases but very important ones, and those in large numbers.5
Nero pursued oratory and poetry.
Tac. Ann. 14.16.1. But so as not to have the imperial fame restricted to theatrical skills, Nero also adopted the pursuit of poetry, gathering around him men who had some as yet unrecognized proficiency in composition.6 These would sit with him and string together lines of verse they had brought along or that they improvised on the spot, and they supplemented Nero’s own words in whatever meter he had used. (This process is betrayed by the very features of the poetry, which in its flow has no drive or inspiration or uniformity of style.) 2. Nero would also devote some time to professors of philosophy, after-dinner affairs at which he would also enjoy the conflict of opposing opinions. And there was no shortage of people wanting to be seen at the royal entertainments with their gloomy faces and expressions.
Suet. Ner. 52. As a boy, he sampled all the liberal arts. But his mother turned him away from philosophy, with the warning that it was a detriment to a future ruler. His teacher Seneca held Nero back from discovering the old classical orators, in order to keep him longer in his thrall, so being inclined to poetry he happily and effortlessly composed poems, nor did he, as some people think, produce other men’s work as his own. His writing pads have come into my possession, as have notebooks containing some very familiar verses written in his own hand, so that it was quite obvious they were not borrowed or taken down at someone’s dictation but clearly written as if he were thinking them out and devising them—there were so many erasures and words written in between or above the lines. He also enjoyed no mild enthusiasm for painting and modeling.
Suet. Ner. 10. He recited his poems not only in private but in the theater as well, which gave everybody such pleasure that a day of thanksgiving was decreed in honor of his recitation, and the poems that he had read were inscribed in letters of gold and dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter.
Dio 62.29.1. Nero did other absurd things, such as once coming down to the orchestra of the theater at a public show and reading some of his Trojan lays, and many sacrifices were made in their honor, as for all his other enterprises. 2. He was also preparing to record all the heroic deeds of Rome in heroic verse and was considering the number of volumes before compiling any part of them, seeking advice on that from others, especially Annaeus Cornutus, at that time well reputed for his learning. 3. And Nero almost killed the man (but instead exiled him to an island) because, when some friends were advising him to compose four hundred volumes, Cornutus said that was too many, and no one would read them. And when someone objected “Chrysippus, whom you praise and imitate, filled far more volumes,” he answered, “but they are useful to the lives of mankind.” Now for this Cornutus incurred exile, but Lucan was forbidden to compose poetry, because he was receiving so much praise for his work.
We can preface the evidence for Nero’s games and other performances with the record of Augustus’s benefactions to the people of Rome as empresario.
Augustus, Res Gestae 22. I gave a gladiatorial show three times on my own account and five times in the name of my sons or grandsons; at these shows about ten thousand men were in combat. I also twice presented to the people a show of athletes, summoned from all lands, in my own name, and a third time in the name of my grandson. I held games four times on my own account. And standing in for other magistrates, I held games twenty-three times. On behalf of the College of Fifteen (Quindecimviri), as master of their college with my colleague Marcus Agrippa, I held Secular Games when Gaius Furnius and Gaius Silanus were consuls. As consul, I was the first to hold Games of Mars, which subsequently were conducted by the consuls each year on the authority of the Senate and the law.7 I made a present to the people of African wild beast hunts in my name or that of my sons and grandsons in the Circus, the Forum, or the amphitheaters twenty-six times, and in them about three thousand five hundred beasts were slaughtered.8 23. I gave the people the show of a naval battle across the Tiber, on the site of the Groves of the Caesars. … [I]n this conflict, thirty beaked ships, both triremes and biremes, and more smaller craft clashed with each other, and about three thousand men fought besides the oarsmen.9
Suet. Aug. 43.1. [Augustus] says that he “four times held games on his own account and twenty-three times on behalf of other magistrates who were either absent or could not meet the cost.” He also at times held games in the districts and on several stages using actors speaking all languages. These performances could be held not only in the Forum or the amphitheater but also in the Circus and the Saepta (voting enclosures), and on several occasions he gave only an animal hunt. He also exhibited athletes, erecting wooden benches on the Campus Martius; likewise, he “staged a naval battle after excavating the ground around the Tiber where there is now the grove of the Caesars.” On these days, he set guards in the city so that it would not be at the mercy of thugs because so few people had stayed at home.
44.1. He disciplined the utterly random and rowdy behavior of the spectators provoked by the abuse of a senator to whom no man would give a seat in the packed crowd at the very popular games at Puteoli. On this account, the Senate passed a decree that, whenever any public show was put on, the first rank of seats should be left open for the senators, and he prohibited the envoys of free and allied nations from sitting in the orchestra at Rome when he discovered that some envoys were even freedmen. 2. He separated the soldiery from the people. He assigned their own rows to husbands from the plebs and their own wedge of seats to boys, next to their slave escorts, and ordained that no one wearing rough tunics could sit in the main auditorium. He did not allow women, who had formerly followed the practice of sitting at random, to watch even the gladiators, except from the upper rows. 3. He gave only the vestal virgins a separate place in the theater, facing the praetor’s box. Indeed, he completely banned the female sex from the displays of athletes. …
45.3. He thought every kind of person offering their services to a public show was worthy of care; he both kept and extended the privileges of athletes, banned gladiators from being presented without the chance of appeal, and removed from magistrates the right to use force on actors, permitted by an old law at every time and occasion except at the games and onstage. … 4. Upon a praetor’s complaint, he thrashed Hylas the pantomimus in his own atrium open to the public and exiled Pylades from the city and from Italy because he had pointed at and made a show of a spectator who was hissing him.10
Macrobius Saturnalia 2.5.18. Since it was believed that Pylades had changed the old manner of that dance that was popular with our ancestors and had introduced a new kind of charm, when Augustus asked him what he had contributed to the art of the dance, he said “the air of pipes and flutes and the throng of men.” 19. When Augustus was outraged because the people were rioting on account of the rivalry between himself and Hylas, Pylades retorted, “you are ungrateful, your majesty, let them be distracted with our affairs.”
Tac. Ann. 1.77 (AD 14). Disorderly behavior in the theater, which had first manifested itself the previous year, at this point broke out more seriously. Not only members of the public but also soldiers and a centurion were killed—and a tribune of the praetorian cohorts was also wounded—as they attempted to stem abuse that was being hurled at the magistrates and halt disputes among the common people. 2. The fracas was discussed in the Senate, and opinions were voiced to the effect that the praetors should have the authority to thrash actors. 3. Haterius Agrippa, a plebeian tribune, vetoed the motion and received a tongue-lashing from Asinius Gallus, but Tiberius … remained silent. The veto remained in force, however, because the deified Augustus had once expressed the opinion that actors were not subject to floggings. …. 4. On limiting actors’ pay and combating the unruly behavior of their supporters, many decrees were passed. The most striking were the following: no senator was to enter the homes of pantomimes; Roman knights were not to escort actors when they appeared in public; and the actors were to be viewed nowhere but in the theater. Also, the praetors were to have the right to punish with exile any outrageous behavior on the spectators’ part.
Nero’s first year as emperor witnesses audience indiscipline and actual rioting.
Tac. Ann. 13.24 (55 AD). At the end of the year, the cohort usually stationed to keep watch over the games was removed. The point of this was to provide a greater impression of freedom, to lessen corruption among the military by isolating them from the permissive atmosphere of the theater, and to test whether the plebs would maintain order if their guardians were removed. …
25.4. [Nero] also created virtual battles from unruly behavior in the theater and the factions supporting the actors (i.e., pantomimi) by granting amnesty and awarding prizes, and even by viewing the troubles himself, sometimes hidden but very often quite openly. Finally, with the people at each other’s throats and the frightening prospect of more serious disturbances, the only remedy that was found was the banishment of the actors from Italy and the return of a military presence in the theater.
Nero’s shows exhibit varieties of physical and artistic skill.
Suet. Ner.11.1. He presented a great number of shows of different kinds: his Iuvenalia, the chariot races, the staging of plays, and a gladiatorial contest. At the Iuvenalia, he invited even old men of consular status and elderly married ladies to perform. At the chariot races, he marked off a space for the knights separated from the rest of the audience and even raced camels in teams of four. 2. At the games, which he wanted to call “Greatest,” on the grounds that they were offered to promote the eternity of Rome’s empire, a great many of both ranks and sexes performed stage roles; most conspicuously, a Roman knight seated on an elephant made a circuit in the ring of the theatre. …
12.1. At the entertainment that he offered in the wooden amphitheater, which had been constructed in the Campus Martius within the year, he killed no one, not even condemned criminals.11 But he put on show for combat four hundred senators and six hundred Roman knights, and some people of unblemished standing and repute, including from this category beast slaughterers and various servants for the arena. He also displayed a naval battle with sea creatures swimming in saltwater. Also, he staged Pyrrhic dances from the ranks of ephebes and offered the ephebes certificates of Roman citizenship after their regular services.12
Dio 61.17.2. In honor of his mother, he celebrated a huge and most extravagant festival, so that the gatherings were held in five or six theaters over many days.13 An elephant with a rider on its back was led up to the gallery of a theater, where it ran the circuit on a rope. 3. But the most shameful and awful event was when both men and women not just of the equestrian class but of senatorial rank presented themselves in the orchestra, the racetrack, and the hunting theater as if they were the lowest and most dishonored, and some of them played the pipes, danced tragedies, acted comedies, and sang to the cithara: they drove horses, killed wild beasts, and fought single combats, some willingly but others completely against their will. 4. And men of that generation viewed the noble clans, the Furii and Horatii, the Fabii, Porcii, and Valerii, and all the others whose trophies and temples were to be seen, standing up and doing acts that they would not even have watched done by others … such were the ceremonies that Nero chose to offer as the initiation of his own disgrace.
In AD 59 Nero staged a special celebration of his coming of age and made this personal and private rite a pretext for bringing respectable amateurs before the public. He also inaugurated a more “high brow” set of contests in the Greek style.
Dio 61.19.1. For this feast (the Iuvenalia), everyone, even the most nobly born, were put on show.14 2. As an example, Aelia Catella, who was prominent in birth and wealth, and well advanced in years (she was an octogenarian), danced, and others who could not perform individually because of their age or sickness sang in the choruses. Everyone practiced whatever they could, and the most distinguished persons attended designated schools—men and women, girls and youths, old women and old men. 3. If anyone could not put on any other act, Nero demoted them to the choruses. And when some of them in shame put on masks so as not to be recognized, Nero took them away, saying that the public demanded it and displayed them to people who just before had been under their authority.
Suet. Ner. 12.3. He was first of all men at Rome to found a quinquennial contest, in three categories, according to Greek custom—musical, athletic, and equestrian performances—which he called the Neronia; and at the dedication of the hot baths and gymnasium, he provided oil to both the Senate and order of knights.15 He appointed as masters of the whole contest ex-consuls, selected by lot, holding the power of praetors. Then he came down into the orchestra and accepted in person the crown in Latin oratory and poetry, for which all the most respected men had competed but that had been passed to him by their unanimous agreement; he paid reverence to the lyre bestowed on him by the judges and ordered it to be conveyed to the statue of Augustus. 4. At the gymnastic contest that he was holding in the Saepta, he offered up his first beard amid the equipment of the ox sacrifice, enclosing it in a golden pyxis embellished with the most costly pearls, and dedicated this personal relic on the Capitol. He even invited the vestal virgins to attend the athletic displays since the priestesses of Ceres were permitted to watch at Olympia.
Tac. Ann. 14.20. During the consulship of Nero (his fourth) and Cornelius Cossus, Quinquennial Games were established at Rome on the model of the Greek competition, and, as with nearly all innovations, opinions were mixed. …16
21. Most were actually pleased with the permissive climate, but they still cloaked it with respectable terms. Their ancestors, too, had not shunned agreeable spectacles, as far as the resources of the day allowed, they would say. And so actors had been brought from Etruria and horse racing from Thurii. With the annexation of Achaea and Asia, games were staged more elaborately, but in the last two centuries since the triumph of Lucius Mummius (146 BC), the first to put on that kind of show in the city, no Roman of decent background had disgraced himself by taking up professional acting.17 Victory in the oratorical or poetic spheres would be an incentive for talent, and no judge would find it offensive to lend his ear to honorable intellectual activities and legitimate diversions.
In their reports of Nero’s early games, as throughout the life of Nero, Suetonius and Dio both stress Nero’s coercive pressure on the nobility (“invitations” to respectable middle-aged senators and ladies of their class to perform), always a source of easy indignation in the Roman elite. Suetonius adds to the reports of Nero’s prodigal generosity to the audience (see Suet. Ner. 11.2) events he created for the public outside the theaters and extravagant entertainments (the elephant, the naval battle), before moving to an account of the more highbrow Greek festival to which Nero gave his own name, the Neronia (12.3), established in AD 60.
Tacitus uses the Neronia, the quinquennale ludicrum, at Ann. 14.20–21, to offer a balance of criticism and praise (including a brief history of resistance to the construction of a permanent theater at Rome) before reporting the apparently favorable reaction of the majority to the use of theater buildings, which saved magistrates reiterated expense for temporary structures (21.2) and would benefit society through the stimulus to emulation provided by poetry and oratory (21.3). In favor of the new-style athletic and musical games, Tacitus’s speakers add that participating in these (as opposed to theatrical shows) involved no serious shame or damage (dehonestamentum) to men’s dignity and met with even stronger popular enthusiasm because the pantomimi had been permitted to return to the stage but were banned from sacred contests (21.4).
Nero exploited the diplomatic visit to Rome of king Tiridates of Armenia.
Suet. Ner. 13.1. It is not unjustified for me to report the ceremonial entrance of Tiridates into the city among Nero’s public displays. After pressing this king of Armenia with lavish promises when, on account of cloudy weather, Nero had postponed the day destined by edict for him to show the king to the people, he presented him at the most convenient time, distributing armed cohorts around the temples of the Forum, and seating himself in his curule chair by the speakers’ platform in the costume of a triumphant commander, surrounded by military standards and banners.
Dio 63.1.1. In the consulship of Gaius Telesinus and Suetonius Paulinus (66 AD), two events took place, one most glorious but the other most disgraceful. Nero competed among the citharodes, and when Menecrates, his former teacher, organized a victory celebration in the circus, he drove his chariot.18
2. Also, Tiridates was conveyed to Rome, bringing not only his own children but also those of Vologaeses, Pacorus, and Monobazus with him, and their procession journeyed through all the lands from the Euphrates like a triumphal parade.19 2.1. Indeed Tiridates was in his prime of youth, strength, and beauty, and all the courtiers and his royal baggage train escorted him, while three thousand Parthian cavalry and a great number of Romans followed separately after them. 2. The cities had been splendidly decked out, and their populace also welcomed them, calling out many flattering salutations. They received all their maintenance free of charge, so that a daily charge of 200,000 [sestertii] was calculated as a public expense. And this was maintained consistently for all nine months of their journey. 3. The king rode on horseback all the way as far as Italy, and his wife rode alongside him, wearing a golden helmet in place of her veil, so as not to be seen and contravene their national traditions. But in Italy Tiridates was conveyed in a two-horse coach sent to him by Nero and reached him traveling through Picenum to Naples. 4. But he would not put aside the scimitar when he approached the emperor, despite his instructions, but fastened it with nails inside its sheath; even so, he knelt on the ground and, crossing his arms and bowing to the earth before him, called Nero master. 3.1. So Nero, admiring his action, honored him with many entertainments, and in particular a gladiatorial show at Puteoli. Patrobius, one of Nero’s freedmen, produced it, employing such a dazzling and costly display that on one day he brought only Ethiopians onstage—men, women, and children. 2. Since there was an obligation to pay Patrobius some honor for this, Tiridates shot at some of the wild beasts from his high balcony and hit and killed two bulls with a single shot, if you can believe it.
4.1. After this, Nero escorted him to Rome and placed the diadem on his head. The whole city was decorated with lights and garlands, and huge crowds were seen everywhere, with the Forum exceptionally full. 2. The people occupied its central area, arranged by rank, wearing white garments and carrying laurel branches, while soldiers filled the rest, brilliantly armed so that their weapons and standards glittered and flashed. The tiled roofs of all the houses in the neighborhood were covered with people who had climbed up onto them. 3. Every one of these features had been prepared during the night, and now Nero, clad in triumphal costume, entered the Forum at dawn along with the Senate and his praetorian guard, mounted the dais, and sat on the ruler’s throne; after this, Tiridates made his way with his retinue through ranks of heavily armed soldiers arrayed on either side. 5.1. When an immense shout arose at this, Tiridates was frightened and for a while was dumbstruck as if at the point of death. Then, when the herald called for silence, he gained courage and, swallowing his pride, submitted himself to the circumstances and necessity, no longer caring whether he said something humble when he had such prospects in view.
2. And this is how he spoke:
“Master, I, a descendant of Arsaces and brother of the kings Vologaeses and Pacorus, am thy slave. And I have come to thee, my god, bowing before thee like Mithras, and shall be whatever thou makest of me. For thou art my destiny and my fortune.” 3. And Nero answered him, “You have acted well in coming here in person, so that you may enjoy my favor face to face. Indeed, what neither your father left to you nor your brothers gave and preserved for you I bestow upon you and name you King of Armenia, so that you and they may learn that I can both take away kingdoms and bestow them.”
4. After this speech, he bade Tiridates go up the steps, made for this purpose, that led to the speakers’ platform, and when he was seated there at his feet, Nero set the diadem on his head. At this, there were many acclamations of all kinds.
6.1. By decree, there was a theatrical festival. And the theater—not just the stage but the whole proscenium all around—was gilded, and everything that was brought on stage was also adorned with gold. This was the reason that they also called it the Golden Day. 2. The awnings spread in the sky to ward off the sunshine were purple dyed and at their center was embroidered the likeness of Nero driving his chariot, and around him golden stars glittered.20
3. Such was the event, and Nero gave an extravagant banquet, after which he sang to the lyre and drove his chariot in a public show wearing the uniform of the Green team and the charioteer’s helmet.21 4. Tiridates was disgusted at this display and praised Nero’s general Corbulo, reproaching him only for tolerating such a master. Nor did he conceal this feeling from Nero but said to him, “Master, thou hast a good slave in Corbulo.”22 5. But Nero did not understand his meaning.
Plin. HN 33.54. Nero had the theater of Pompey covered with gold for a single day’s use, the day on which he proposed to show it to King Tiridates of Armenia.
Suet. Ner. 13.2. As Tiridates approached up a sloping ramp, Nero let the king fall at his feet, then raised him with his right hand and kissed him. Then, at the king’s request, he removed his tiara and set the diadem on his head, while a man of praetorian rank proclaimed the suppliant’s words to the crowd in translation. Then Tiridates was escorted to the theater and repeated his supplication; Nero had the king seated beside him on his right. For this, Nero was hailed as Imperator and, after bearing a laurel branch up to the Capitol, he closed the Temple of Janus Geminus on the grounds that no possibility of war now remained.23
Suet. Ner. 30. Nero’s lavishness on Tiridates seemed almost unbelievable. He spent 800,000 sestertii every day, and when the king left Rome, he gave him more than 100 million.
Nero began to adapt his youthful talent as a racing charioteer and his more formal development of the art of a citharode.
Suet. Ner. 19.3. I have brought together these acts of Nero, some of them deserving no criticism and some even modest praise, to separate them from his scandals and crimes, which I shall discuss from this point.24
20.1. Along with the other disciplines he studied in his boyhood days, he was also steeped in music. As soon as he reached the imperial office, he summoned Terpnus the citharode, who at that time flourished ahead of all others, and, seated day after day beside him as he sang after dinner late into the night, he, too, began to practice and train, not missing any of the devices that the artists in that skill used to employ in order to preserve or develop his voice; he even lay down wearing a lead sheet on his breast and would gargle with a clyster and vomit, and avoid apples and foods injurious to his objectives until his efforts so beguiled him that, despite having a thin and husky voice, he longed to appear on stage, regularly saying to his friends that music concealed met no respect.
Tac. Ann. 14.14. Nero had long had a hankering to drive a four-horse chariot, and a no less disgraceful desire to sing accompanied by the lyre like a stage performer. Horse racing, he would say, was the sport of kings, one in which leaders of old would frequently indulge, and it was celebrated in the panegyrics of the bards and put on in honor of the gods. Furthermore, he said, singing was sacred to Apollo, and it was dressed for this activity that this outstanding, prescient deity stood not only in the cities of Greece but also in the temples of Rome. There was now no holding him, and Seneca and Burrus thought that, to prevent him from gaining both ends, they should grant him one. And so an area was fenced off in the Vatican valley for him to drive his horses without making a public spectacle of it. Soon the Roman people were actually invited to watch, and they praised Nero to the skies. … However, the exposure of his humiliating activities did not induce weariness of them as his advisers had expected but further stimulation.
Suet. Ner. 20.2. And his debut was at Naples, where the theater was shaken by earth tremors during his performance, but even so, he did not abandon singing until he had completed the aria. He sang there repeatedly over several days. When he had taken a brief rest to refresh his voice, he tired of seclusion and moved from the baths to the theater, and there, after feasting in the orchestra surrounded by a large crowd, he promised in Greek that after a little more to drink he would offer them a resounding encore. 3. He was charmed by the harmonized acclamations of the Alexandrians who had poured into Naples from the freshly arrived grain freighters, and summoned more from Alexandria. But he called up with equal enthusiasm young lads of equestrian rank and more than 5,000 of the strongest youths from the common people all around, who divided into teams and learned the types of applause—“buzzes,” “rooftiles,” and “potsherds”25—and gave their services when he sang. These were men recognizable from their thick hair and preeminent grooming, their left hands bare, without rings. Their leaders earned 400,000 sestertii.
Suet. Ner. 25.1. When he returned from Greece … his claque followed his chariot like victory celebrators shouting that they were “Augustiani” and soldiers of his triumph.
Dio 62.20.4. [Upon his entry into Rome], the city was all adorned with swags of flowers and blazing with lamps and incense, and everyone, especially the senators, shouted out together: “Hail Olympic victor, Hail Pythian victor, Augustus. Augustus, hail to Nero Hercules, hail to Nero Apollo.26 You are the only victor in the circuit, the only one in all ages, Augustus. Your voice is holy, and those who hear you are blessed.”
Suet. Ner. 22.1. He burned with a passion for horses even from his early boyhood, and most of his chatter was about chariot races, although it was forbidden. Once when he was complaining among his fellow students about the dragging of a Green charioteer27 and his paedagogus scolded him, he lied that he was talking about Hector. At the beginning of his principate, however, he played every day with ivory teams on the gaming table, and he used to leave his country retreat to watch even the minor races, at first secretly and then more or less openly so that no one was left in doubt that he would be there on that day. 2. Nor did he hide the fact that he wanted the number of prizes to be increased, so that the show was extended into nightfall, with the sessions multiplied, since not even the masters of the factions would condescend to bring their teams unless it was for a whole day’s run.28
Soon he wanted to drive himself and even be watched frequently, and after building up his experience among the slaves and common folk, he displayed himself in the Circus Maximus to the eyes of the whole crowd, using a freedman to raise the starting signal from the point where the magistrates usually did.
Both Tacitus and Suetonius give parallel treatment to the young emperor’s pursuit of the two widely different skills; both build up a crescendo in the shame of publicity from initially quasi-private performances—first singing in Greek Naples, away from Rome and then later in Rome, and first watching the races but soon actually driving chariots on private grounds for a domestic audience. Roman readers did not need instruction in the techniques of chariot racing, but the art of singing to the lyre would be quite alien and require details of training methods, and this may be why Suetonius has less to say about Nero’s racing career than his singing ambitions, both as citharode and as tragic hero in the genre of quasi-operatic scenes or sequences of scenes that Nero chose to perform.
Suet. Ner. 21.1. Thinking it very important to sing even at Rome, he revived the Neronian contest before the predetermined date, and when everybody demanded to hear his divine voice, he answered that he would give the opportunity to those so interested to do so in his park. However, when even the detachment of soldiers on duty at the time backed up the prayers of the crowd, he gladly promised he would perform it again and instantly ordered his name to be inscribed in the register of citharodes claiming a turn. Then, when his lot had been dropped in the urn with the rest, he entered in his turn, the prefects of the praetorian guard holding his lyre, followed by the military tribunes and his closest friends. 2. When he paused after completing the prelude, he used Cluvius Rufus the ex-consul to announce that he would sing Niobe, and he went on into the tenth hour and postponed the crowning and the rest of the contest to the next year to give himself more opportunities to sing.29 And as this seemed a long delay, he did not stop repeatedly making himself public. He even hesitated whether to offer his services among the stage performers at private shows, when one of the praetors offered 1,000,000 sestertii.
3. He also sang tragedies,30 wearing the masks of heroes and gods, and similarly of heroines and goddesses, having the masks designed to resemble his features and those of whatever woman he loved.31 Among other scenes, he sang Canace in labor, Orestes as mother killer, Oedipus blinded, and Hercules driven mad, and there is a story that in this drama a raw recruit, who was set to guard the entrances, saw Nero loaded and bound with chains, as the plot required, and ran up to bring him aid.
Dio 62.20.1. To provide a climax worthy of these performances, Nero himself came onstage and had Gallio announce his name. Caesar himself stood onstage dressed in a citharode’s costume. “My lords, listen to me kindly,” he said, and 2. it was the emperor who said this, playing and singing the role of Attis or the Bacchantes, while many soldiers stood on guard and all the populace that the seats could hold sat watching. And yet his voice was weak and husky, as tradition has it, so that he provoked laughter and tears from them all. 3. Burrus and Seneca stood by him, prompting like a pair of instructors, and they waved their arms and robes whenever he sang, urging the rest to do the same.
It looks as though the senior members of Nero’s court and his military officers had decided to put a brave face on it and back Nero up in a performance that they must have felt was incongruous. Like Cluvius Rufus, Seneca’s brother Gallio was an ex-consul; the prefects of the guard were the most senior military officers in Rome. Suetonius returns to Nero’s behavior as a singing contestant in the context of his tour of the Greek games, describing it in section 23 and the first part of 24, before breaking in suddenly with a report of Nero’s multiple acts of charioteering, culminating in his attempt to steer a ten-horse chariot at Olympia (although he had jeered at Mithridates in an unidentified poem for attempting this). Although he was thrown, he picked himself up, but abandoned the race before the end—and yet still was awarded the crown. (Again, our text of Tacitus has broken off before the missing narrative of the Greek tour.) But difficult as it is to disentangle Suetonius’s alternation of Nero’s twin enthusiasms, Dio’s and Suetonius’s versions are both leading up to the climax of his return to Italy and Rome itself.
Nero now turned to the fully professionalized cycles of both song and equestrian skills.
Our elite sources treat as shameful aspects of his enthusiasm both Nero’s effort to switch from the status of noble amateur to professional and the fact that he entered as a contestant at Rome and in Greece, even adding criticism of his consideration of performing for payment. Suetonius reports both Nero’s alleged respect for the Greeks as the only worthy critics of his art (Ner. 22.3) and the way he showed no respect for the schedules of the Sacred Games (23.1). Like Suetonius, Dio is fascinated by the implications of the emperor aspiring to compete professionally, and both authors offer detailed reports of Nero’s deportment onstage and jealousy toward rival contestants, a strange mixture of apparent timidity and shameless rivalry.
Tacitus’s text breaks off before the narrative of Nero’s tour of Greece in AD 66–67, so we must rely on Suetonius and Dio for both his tour and his return to Rome.
Tac. Ann.16.4.1. Meanwhile, as the fiveyear games approached (the lustral games of AD 65), the Senate, wishing to avoid a scandal, offered the emperor victory in singing and added the crown for eloquence, in order to keep hidden a scandalous stage performance. 2. Nero, however, kept saying he had no need of the influence or the authority of the Senate: he was as good as his competitors and would win the praise he deserved from the impartial decision of the judges. He began by reciting a poem onstage. 3. Then the crowd insisted that he “put on show his entire repertoire” (these were their very words), and he entered the theater again. This time, he followed all the rules of lyre playing—not sitting when he was tired, wiping away the sweat only with the garment he was wearing, and keeping from view any emissions from his mouth or nose. 4. Finally, bending his knee and with a respectful wave of his hand to the crowd, he awaited the verdict of the judges with feigned anxiety. And the city plebs, used to encouraging the body movements even of actors (i.e., dancers), thundered its applause, in time and with orchestrated clapping.32 One might have thought them delighted, and perhaps they were delighted, with no concern for the public disgrace.
Suet. Ner. 23.1. Nero entered all the contests; he ordered games scheduled for quite different seasons to be concentrated in one year, even demanding that some be repeated, and at Olympia, too, contrary to its tradition, he added a contest in music to the program. … 2. While Nero sang, it was not permitted to leave the theater, even under necessity.33 Hence, some women are said to have given birth at the shows, and a number of men, when they grew weary of listening and praising him, and the gates to the city were closed, either jumped surreptitiously from the wall or feigned death and were carried out for burial.34 Now it is almost beyond belief how anxiously and tremulously he competed, what with jealousy of his fellow contestants and fear of the judges. He would treat his rivals as if they were on equal terms with him, slandering them in secret, at times cursing them when they encountered him, or if any were distinguished in their skill, even bribing them. 3. In addition, before he began, he would address the judges most respectfully, saying he had done everything that was required but the outcome was in the hands of Fortune, but they as expert and wise persons should exclude the accidents of Fortune. Then, when they encouraged him to be bold, he would retreat more calmly, yet not even then without anxiety, accusing their silence and modesty as grimness and ill will and saying he suspected them.
24.1. Indeed, when competing, he obeyed the code so strictly that he never dared to spit, and even wiped away his perspiring brow with his arm; in one tragic scene, he was quick to pick up his stick, which had fallen, and panicked, afraid of being disqualified for the lapse, and he was not reassured until an actor swore he had seen nothing because of the delight and cheers of the crowd. Then he declared himself victor; for this reason, he also competed as herald in all contests. To prevent any memory or trace of other sacred victors surviving anywhere, he ordered all their statues and portraits to be overthrown and dragged away by the hook and thrown into the latrines.
Dio 62.8.4. But [Nero’s retinue] were such as you would expect Nero’s soldiers to be, and their weapons were lyres and plectra, masks and buskins. And his victories were the kind of thing that suited such an army, and he defeated Terpnus, Diodorus, and Pammenes as if they were Philip, Perseus, or Antiochus.35 And it seems he compelled Pammenes, old as he was, to compete (he had been in his prime during Gaius’s years) so as to do violence to the statues dedicated to him. 9.1. If that were all he had done, he would have incurred mockery. But how could one endure hearing, let alone seeing, a Roman, a senator, a nobleman and high priest, Caesar Augustus the emperor, listed on the white board of contestants, practicing voice exercises, rehearsing songs, and cultivating long hair and a shaved chin, 2. tossing his garment over his shoulder at the races, walking around with one or two attendants, glaring at his opponents and constantly uttering provocative insults at them, scared of the masters of ceremony and floggers at the games and secretly paying out cash to them so as not to be caught and flogged? But though he did all this just to win in the competitions of citharodes and tragic singers and heralds, he was defeated in the contest of Caesars.
Dio 62.12.1–2. With the excuse of needing something from them, Nero had actually taken off to Greece with him large numbers of leading citizens, so they would die there. Those in Rome and Italy he surrendered to the charge of one Helios, a member of the imperial household. The man had been given absolute carte blanche so that he could confiscate property and send into exile or execute private citizens, equestrians, and senators even before informing Nero.
And so at that time the Roman empire was simultaneously a slave to two rulers, Nero and Helios, and I cannot say which of them was worse. In general, their comportment was much the same, but in this one regard they were different: the descendant of Augustus was emulating lyre players and tragic actors, and Claudius’s freedman was emulating the Caesars.
Dio 62.14.3. Nero competed in every city that held a contest, using Cluvius Rufus, a former consul, as the herald for all the heraldic duties, except at Sparta and Athens. He shunned Sparta because he thought the laws of Lycurgus were opposed to his purpose and shunned Athens because of the myth of the Erinyes. 4. His announcement was: “Nero Caesar wins this contest and crowns the Roman people and the inhabited world, which is his domain.” Thus, while apparently possessing the whole world, he sang to the cithara, acted as herald, and played tragic roles.
While he was in Greece, Nero provided a concrete demonstration of his admiration for the Greeks by declaring their freedom, recorded in this inscription preserved on a marble slab in the wall of the Church of St. George at Acraephia in northeast Boeotia. The inscription comprises what are really three separate documents: (a) the edict of Nero summoning Greeks to Corinth, (b) the speech he made in Corinth about the liberation of Greece, and (c) the decree of Epaminondas of Acraephia passed by that city dedicating an altar and offering sacrifices in gratitude for Nero’s gesture.
ILS 8794 (Smallwood 64, see Figure 10) The Emperor (Nero) Caesar declares:
Since I wish to repay the most eminent of the Greeks for their goodwill and pious conduct toward me, I bid as many people as is practicable from this province to gather at Corinth on November 28th
When the crowds came together in an assembly, Nero addressed them as follows:
Gentlemen of Greece: Even though no request made to my generous nature can be without hope, what I grant to you is something you did not even presume to request. All of you Greeks living in Achaea and in what until now has been the Peloponnese: accept the gift of freedom without taxation, something that none of you ever possessed even in your most prosperous times, as you were subservient to foreigners or to others among you. I only wish that I were granting you this gift when Greece was flourishing, so that more people would be benefiting from my favor. I therefore find fault with the present age for using up the greatness of this kindness of mine too early. Furthermore, I now grant you this favor not from pity but from goodwill, and I do it also in repayment to your gods, whose benefaction I have always experienced in my land and sea journeys, for granting me the ability to confer such benefactions. For other leaders, too, have given freedom to cities, [erased but Nero alone] has granted it to a province.
Epaminondas, son of Epaminondas,36 high priest for life of the Augusti and of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus, then spoke, moving that this preliminary decree that he formulated go to the Boule and the People:37
Inasmuch as Nero, lord of the entire world, Emperor almighty, appointed to hold tribunician power for the 13th time,38 father of his fatherland, a new Sun that has shone on the Greeks, has chosen to confer a benefit on Greece, repaying and respecting our gods who always stand by him to care for him and protect him, and as he who is the one and only most grand emperor of all time and a philhellene, [erased Nero] Zeus the Deliverer has restored to us what was from time immemorial the liberty that was native to us and born in our land, but which was taken away from the Greeks, and has brought us back to our ancient condition of autonomy and liberty, adding immunity from taxation to his great and unexpected gift, something that none of the earlier Augusti fully gave us; for all of this the decision has been made by the archons, the councilors and the people to consecrate at this time an altar beside Zeus the Savior, inscribing on it:
“To Zeus [erased Nero] the Deliverer, for evermore”
and also dedicating to [erased our] ancestral gods, in the temple of Apollo Ptoos, statues of [erased Nero] Zeus the Deliverer and the goddess Augusta [erased Messalina], so that when these measures have been taken in this way our city, too, may be clearly seen to have fully shown honor and reverence toward the lord Augustus [erased Nero’s house]. The decree is to appear as an inscription on a stele both in the temple of Zeus the Savior in the Agora, and in the shrine of Apollo Ptoos.39
The high point of Nero’s tour of Greece must surely have been the declaration that the whole of Achaea would be “liberated,” given autonomy and exemption from tribute. Plutarch sees his gesture as a reprise of the famous decree of Titus Flamininus in 196 BC declaring the freedom of the Greeks in the very same city, Corinth. Plutarch observes, however, that while Flamininus used a herald, Nero proclaimed the initiative in person, from a dais in the crowded agora (Plut. Flam. 12.8; Suet. Ner. 24.2 says from inside the stadium). The inscription dates this occasion to November 28. The year is not specified but is almost certainly 67, toward the end of Nero’s tour, as Suetonius indicates, but since the thirteenth year of Nero’s tribunician authority would have expired on October 13, 67, we must either assume that there is a mistake in the inscription or that the tribunician year is deemed to have begun not on the anniversary of Claudius’s death but on December 4, when the law to confer the authority was passed by the popular assembly, the date when it was officially celebrated in Rome (Smallwood 19.14–15, 21.21). Some have argued that the occasion should be placed in 66. According to Plutarch and Suetonius, Nero’s announcement took place during the Isthmian Games. They were due to be held in 67, but they would normally take place in the spring, so presumably they would have had to be postponed until later in that same year. Acraephia proposed a decree in honor of Zeus Eleutherios Nero, Zeus the Deliverer, or Jupiter Liberator, Nero. A rare, undated coin from Corinth that may be connected to the event has the legend IUPPITER LIBERATOR (Mattingly [1920], 38).
It is of course important to realize that the decree meant much less than it might sound to modern ears. Greece was not to be detached from the empire; it would receive a very limited autonomy, most notably exemption from tribute. Also, it is to be noted that a number of important Greek cities, such as Athens and Sparta, were already “free,” with the status of civitates liberae et immunes (“communities free and exempt from tribute”). Greece seems to have been suffering from economic hardship, as alluded to in Nero’s speech, and this gesture would have given the area a considerable financial boost, as well as allowing Nero to mark his thanks for his unblemished record of victories.
In return for the loss of a public province, Sardinia was assigned to senatorial administration. The arrangement proved short-lived, as Vespasian annulled Nero’s measure, alleging internal dissent in Greece (Paus. 7.7.14; Suet. Vesp. 8.2; Philos. Apol. 5.41). Moreover, the Acraephians’ gratitude was short-lived: they later systematically erased the instances of Nero’s, as well as Statilia Messalina’s, names from the inscription (although they did overlook the one at the beginning of the decree!).
Nero returns to Rome.
Suet. Ner. 25.1. When he returned from Greece, Nero entered Naples, because this was the first place he had displayed his art, with white horses, having dismantled part of the wall as is the practice of Sacred Victors;40 he entered Antium, then Alba, and then Rome in the same way, in the chariot in which Augustus had once triumphed, wearing a purple robe and a cloak adorned with gold stars and with the Olympic garland on his brow and the Pythian garland in his right hand. He was preceded by a parade of the other crowns, with their titles recording where, over whom, and with what themes of song or dramatic plots he had been victorious; his applauders followed his chariot like celebrating soldiers, shouting that they were “Augustiani” and soldiers in his triumph. 2. From there, after demolishing the entrance arch of the Circus Maximus, he proceeded through the Velabrum and Forum, making for Apollo’s temple on the Palatine.41 As he advanced, victims were sacrificed at intervals, as crocus perfume was repeatedly sprinkled over the roads and birds, crescents, and sweetmeats were piled on the crowd. He put his sacred crowns in his bedchamber around the couches, also statues of himself in the costume of a citharode, an emblem that he also struck on his coinage. 3. After that, he was so far from easing off his passion and letting it lapse that, in order to preserve his voice, he never addressed the soldiers except in absence or with a spokesman to utter his words, and he did nothing serious or in play without his voice trainer standing by him to warn him to spare his windpipe and apply a handkerchief to his mouth. And he offered his friendship or declared hostility to many according to whether they praised him more or less generously.
FIGURE 11. RIC2 Nero 416, Copper As. Obverse: NERO CLAVDIUS CAESAR AVG(ustus) GERM(anicus), “Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.” Reverse: PONTIF(ex) MAX(imus) T(ribunicia P(otestate) IMP(erator) P(ater) P(atriae), S(enatus) C(onsulto), “Chief Priest, with Tribunician Authority, Imperator, Father of the Country. By a decree of the Senate.” From the collection of Andreas Pangerl ∕ romancoins.info.
Suetonius here makes a rare reference to a coin type in explaining that upon his return from Greece, Nero struck a coin of himself in the garb of a citharode. Suetonius had no doubt seen the coin illustrated in Figure 11, but he was mistaken in his belief that it was not struck until AD 67. The type is a common issue from about AD 62. Moreover, it is likely that the figure on the reverse is technically Apollo, in flowing robes and playing the cithara, a harplike instrument. But an association with Nero himself was surely to be drawn, reinforced by the fact that Nero’s legend carries over onto the reverse of the coin. In Apocolocyntosis 4, Apollo wishes Nero his own grace and musical talents. The image of the citharode may be intended to recall the statue of Apollo Citharoedos at the Palatine temple, said by some sources to have the facial features of Augustus.
Dio 62.20.1. When he entered Rome, a portion of the wall was torn down and a section of the gates broken through, because some people claimed each of these customs was observed for crowned victors of the contests. 2. And, first of all, men entered bearing the crowns he [Nero] had won, and behind them came other men, carrying placards on spears on which the name of each event and the form of the contest were inscribed with a statement that Nero Caesar was first of all Romans to win it in all of time.
3. Then Nero himself appeared on the victory chariot in which Augustus once had paraded his many victories;42 he wore a purple garment studded with gold, he was crowned with a garland of wild olive, and he held before him the Pythian laurel. Diodorus the citharode rode with him, 4. and he went up through the racecourse and the Forum with the footsoldiers, the knights, and the Senate to the Capitol and from there to the Palatine;43 the whole city was garlanded and glittering, and perfumed with incense, 5. and everyone, especially the senators, all cried together, “All hail, Olympic victor, all hail, Pythian victor, Augustus, Augustus.”
Dio and Suetonius are working from a single source, as the many details in common indicate. This was not a Roman general returning to Italy, whose triumph would lead to the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, but a Greek artist (technites) and athlete following the custom of victorious Greek charioteers in breaking down and driving through the city walls—the “eiselastic victory.”44 This was certainly the most glamorous victory in the Sacred Games honored by cities, and hymned as the Greek model of glory by Horace (Odes 1.1.3–6): “[T]here are some whose delight is to gather the dust of Olympia in the race, and avoid the turning post with burning wheels, men whom the glorious palm of victory has swept up to the gods, masters of the earth.” But by the end of the fifth century, nobles like Alcibiades did not drive their own chariot teams. At Rome, Nero differed from the triumphator not only in his unheroic musical achievements but because the triumphator himself traditionally did not drive in the city: he rode with a charioteer as chauffeur.
APPENDIX
Nero as the Object of Contemporary Poetry
We saw earlier in this chapter that both Tacitus (Ann. 14.16.1) and Suetonius (Ner. 52) attest to Nero’s preoccupation with composing poetry in a social setting, most likely in competitive individual recitals at drinking parties of young courtiers. While Tacitus stresses the emperor’s dependence on the language and ideas of his companions, Suetonius actually took advantage of his access to imperial archives to vindicate Nero’s originality by examining the emperor’s notebooks, with their evidence of his revisions and corrections.
More scattered evidence confirms that the young emperor was an ambitious poet both in occasional short forms and potential epic lays, but formal poetry was probably only a default while he was thwarted from more showy performance genres. Quite soon, there were new imperial genres that could only be addressed to the emperor and not composed by him: panegyric, occasional forms of welcome or sendoff (“bon voyage”), birthday celebrations, and poems of thanks. This can be illustrated by Apollo’s salute to the new golden prince in the anonymous parodic Apocolocyntosis, generally attributed to Seneca, and by Lucan’s grandiose imitation in the proem of his epic of the civil war of the prayerful salute to Augustus in Virgil’s first Georgic.
Hailing the New Prince: The “Laudes Neronis”
We are told by Lucan’s late antique biographer Vacca (Rostagni; Suetonius de Poetis, Vacca line 40) that the young poet made his debut at Nero’s eponymous festival with a poem in praise of the emperor, the Laudes Neronis. To understand this performance requires knowledge of Roman rhetorical training and the practice of uttering public praises, whether of dead kinsmen or living victorious generals. In the declamatory schools, boys exercised on the genre of praise (laus, laudatio, known today by the Greek terms encomium or eulogy). The simplest and earliest form was the laudatio given at a nobleman’s funeral, often performed in the Forum itself by his young son. But politics naturally required official praise in the Senate or assembly of a living and powerful commander such as Pompey or Caesar. A distinguished speaker, such as Cicero, would weave his politically motivated eulogies into the fabric of a larger speech, such as his praises of Pompey in the speech supporting Manilius’s law (66 BC), the more flattering praises of Caesar in the speech on the allocation of consular provinces (57 BC), or again—a pivotal moment toward the development of the principate—his praise of Caesar, now absolute autocrat as consul and dictator at Rome, for his clemency in consenting to the return of the self-exiled republican Marcus Claudius Marcellus to Italy (September or October 46 BC).
The Greeks had developed the art of composing such speeches in praise or blame (for which the same subject matter could be used negatively) not only of public figures but of the cities that offered public hospitality. But with the development of the principate at Rome, it became unwise to praise any prominent person except the autocrat, the princeps or “first citizen.” Poets, too, who had previously praised their private patrons, as Tibullus praised Valerius Messala, gradually realized that it was essential to success that they should praise the great leader, whether as inspiration for their own verse or as a public benefactor, soon to be a god.
Praising “Caesar,” the First Princeps in the Epics of Virgil and Ovid
Before we come to Nero, it will be helpful to survey the ways in which the first and second imperial generations, represented by Virgil and Ovid, praised Octavian, the young Caesar. Virgil’s first collection, the Eclogues, assumes that boys would learn to read the praises of the ancient heroes—Homeric epic (Ecl. 4.26)—and that adults would be eager to sing the praises of generals like Virgil’s early patrons Asinius Pollio and Varus (Ecl. 6.6ff.) However, he assumes a more indirect approach to Octavian himself, when, in the first Eclogue, the shepherd Tityrus tells Menalcas of his journey to Rome to appeal to the heroic young Caesar who restored his land to him: “[H]e will always be a god to me, a God, I say, and I will make sacrifice to him annually at the altar” (Ecl. 1.6–8, 42–45). Virgil’s next poem, the four books of Georgics, is in the more solemn didactic genre, which encourages more explicit praise of the new ruler. The first book opens with an invocation to many country gods and leads up to the climax of Octavius Caesar himself (Georg. 1.24–42), wishing or praying that Caesar, whether he will prefer to be a god of the sea or the heavens or supervise the cities, may take pity on Italy’s farmers and accept their worship.
The new “Caesar” returns in the grand dedication that opens Georgics 3. As poet, Virgil has brought the Muses to Rome and will celebrate games in their honor, dedicating a temple: “Caesar will be at its center for me.” The formal proem could have been called laudes Caesaris (“Praises of Caesar”) but is adapted to both Virgil’s poetic ideals and the glorious victories that Caesar will bring to Rome (Georg. 3.46–48). Caesar Augustus brought Rome to accept his growing authority, so that by the end of his long life, forty odd years later, Ovid—born a whole generation after Virgil—would first dedicate his Fasti, the poem of the Roman calendar, to Augustus (Fasti. 2.119–32) and then, upon the emperor’s death, redirect his praise and dedication to Augustus’s adopted grandson, the popular Germanicus. Germanicus had written a verse translation of Aratus’s astronomical poem, so the poet was able to combine praise of his new patron as both poet and prince. By now, it was expected that poetry would be dedicated to members of the imperial dynasty.
However, the first poetic Laudes Neronis were not identified as such. When Claudius died, Nero had just come of age, but he had more promise than achievements. So after Claudius had been piously hailed by the Senate as a God, with Agrippina as his priestess, an anonymous composition, almost certainly a mime, mocked the dead emperor’s attempt to gain admission to the divine council, not an Apotheosis but an Apocolocyntosis, not a “dei-fication” but a Pumpkini-fication. But first the poet (most people believe it was Seneca himself) staged a scene in which the Fates presided over the birth of a godlike future prince who would bring the golden age to Rome—NERO. Here is their song and Apollo’s blessing on them.
As the scene opens, the Fate Clotho breaks off the thread of Claudius’s life and spins an exceptionally long and beautiful thread for his heir Nero, who is hailed in lyric song by Apollo himself, before the action moves to Olympus.
Apocolocyntosis 4
So spake she, winding thread on the ugly spindle
And snapped the royal duration of his brutish life.
But Lachesis, her tresses bound and adorned,
Setting a laurel garland on her locks and brow
Took up the shining fibers of the snowy fleece 5
To discipline with blessed hand45: then once drawn out
They took on a new color, making her sisters marvel;
Cheap wool now is replaced by precious metal
And golden ages emerge with fine-spun yarn,
This without end; they draw the blessed fibers out 10
Glad to fill up their hands; their chores are sweet
Their task speeds on unprompted, and without effort
The softened threads fall from the twisted spindle,
Surpassing Nestor’s or Tithonus’s lifetime.46
Apollo comes and gives his aid to future joys with song,47 15
Happily now plucking strings, now passing skeins
Charming with song the busy sisters to ease their efforts.
And while they warmly praise their brother’s lyrics
Their hands spin ever faster and their work exceeds
The fates of men, winning praise. “Dear Fates, don’t stint,” 20
said he,
“But let this prince outdo the measure of human life
My like in mien and grace, equal in song and voice;
He will give blessed ages to the weary, ending
The silencing of laws. Like Lucifer at dawn
Dispersing stars, or Hesperus when he rises48 25
At evening leading back the stars to the skies,
Or like Aurora when the darkness first dissolves
Bringing on the day, the sun looks on the world,
All glowing, and drives his chariot from its gate;
Such is now Caesar among us, and such a NERO 30
Will Rome behold, his shining face and lovely neck
Burning as he restrains his dazzling brilliance.”
As Nero’s tutor, Seneca had seized the opportunity to promote his nephew Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, bringing him back to Rome from his studies at Athens to be a companion, or perhaps a pacemaker, for the young Emperor (two years older than Lucan). Lucan began well, but they soon quarrelled, as Suetonius explains. What we cannot know is whether the two ambitious young men were still friends when Lucan came to compose the ceremonial dedication of his poem on the civil war, which was in honor of the emperor. Or was it?
Suetonius On the Poets: Life of Lucan, lines 7–19
At the beginning of his youth … he [Lucan] was recalled by Nero from Athens and added to his group of friends, and was even honored with the quaestorship. He did not, however, remain in favor. This was because Lucan took offense when Nero summoned a meeting of the Senate and left in the middle of a recitation of his. He believed that Nero had done this only to chill the impact of his recital and did not spare abuse of the emperor or provocative actions, so much so that once he declaimed in the public latrines, with a very loud fart, a half-line of Nero’s verse, “you would think it had thundered beneath the earth,” which put his fellow occupants to flight. He even savagely tore apart both Nero and his most powerful friends in a notorious poem.
Lucan, On the Civil War, 33–66
But if the fates could find no other path 33
For Nero’s coming, and lasting kingdoms for the gods
Come at great cost, and heaven was subject to its Thunderer
Only when savage giants were overwhelmed in war,
Ye gods, we now complain no more; those crimes,
That evil, are welcome on these terms; let Pharsalus49
Fill her grim plains with corpses and the Punic dead50
Be satiated with our blood; let Munda51 last of all 40
His battles be engaged; let, Caesar, the starvation
Of Perugia and Mutina’s hardships52 join these fates,
The fleets that cruel Leucas53 will submerge, wars with slaves
Fought under Aetna’s fires;54 yet still Rome owes
A mighty debt to all this civil violence,
Because it was for you the wars were won. 45
When late in time your duty is completed
And you pursue the stars, preferring heaven’s palace
You will be welcomed and the vaults rejoice,
Whether you choose to wield the scepter of power
Or you rejoice to mount the fiery car of Phoebus55
Crossing with wandering fire the earth, that need not fear 50
A change of sun-god, every deity shall give way.
Nature shall yield you power to decide your choice
Of godhead,56 and your capital to command the world.
But do not choose your place in northern spheres
Nor in the steamy vault of distant Southern winds
From which to gaze aslant upon your city Rome. 55
If you should load one portion of the enormous ether,
Its pole will feel your burden. Keep to the center
The weight of balanced heaven; let all that region
Of sky be clear and empty, and no clouds obstruct
Coming from Caesar. Then let all mankind discard
Its weapons, cherishing itself, and every nation 60
Show mutual love; let peace throughout the world
Control the iron doors of Janus’s house of war.57
To me, you are god already, and if as poet
I take you in my breast, I would have no desire
To trouble Apollo, when the god inspires the caves
Of Cirrha, or turn Bacchus away from Nysa.58 65
You are enough to give me power for Roman songs.
Panegyric usually compared princes or bridegrooms to the stars, but Lucan’s god goes further, presenting Nero as his own avatar among men. In other respects, the verse is a highly repetitious sample of conventional panegyric, combining allusions to divine blessing and guaranteed earthly success.
Seneca’s nephew, the poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, won fame and the emperor’s goodwill with a (now lost) encomium, the “Praises of Nero” (Laudes Neronis), at the prince’s first literary festival, the Neronia of AD 60. But the goodwill was soon destroyed by mutual jealousy, and within his civil war epic there is a huge contrast between a literal interpretation of Lucan’s panegyric dedication of his poem to Nero and his subsequent indignation in Book 7, especially the denunciation (7.407–60) of the loss of republican liberty to dynastic tyranny. A number of recent scholars have read the passage translated here as heavy irony, presumably calculated to appeal to Nero’s enemies while escaping the emperor’s notice. But these fine phrases, however extravagant, closely follow the tradition started by Virgil’s opening dedication of the Georgics to Octavian.
1 At Nero’s age, the elite Roman would begin instruction in rhetoric, both systematic theory and the technique of declamation (philosophy was an option for boys of sixteen or older). Nero would also be expected to learn horsemanship and the skills of an army officer, in which Burrus, as commander of the imperial guard, would instruct him.
On Seneca’s earlier life, see Chapter I. He would become famous for his moral writings: the twelve Dialogues, the tragedies, his seven books “On Benefactions,” his “Natural Questions,” and the progressive moral instruction to Lucilius (“Moral Letters”), but in AD 49 he had written only three Dialogues and perhaps some tragedies.
2 When cities of the empire sent boundary disputes with neighbors or petitions for immunity from taxation and other services to the emperor in Rome for his decision, they would be represented by a Roman advocate. Ilium (Troy) had been destroyed in 85 BC by Flavius Fimbria, the supporter of Marius and ruthless commander of the anti-Sullan forces in the East. It was restored mainly through the favor of Caesar and then Augustus, who traced their lineage back to the Trojan hero Aeneas. It had always been a privileged city. Sulla restored it and granted it freedom from tribute (App. Mith. 61), which Julius Caesar confirmed (Strabo 13.1.27). The remarks here indicate that it had at some point once again become tributary, and this is supported by Suetonius’s statement (Claud. 25.3) that Claudius granted the citizens of Ilium a perpetual exemption from tax on the grounds that they were the ancestors of the Roman people (IGR 4.208–9).
3 Rhodes and Apamea in Asia Minor were excused taxes to compensate for the natural disaster.
4 Tacitus (Ann. 12.41.1) notes that the largesse was given by Claudius in connection with Nero’s assumption of the toga virilis.
5 The ancient office of prefect of the city had become largely ritual by the late republic but was given real functions by Augustus, when the prefect was charged with maintaining order in Rome and dispensed summary justice in dealing with minor criminal cases. Through time, he was granted responsibility for more serious cases. In the later empire, the prefect became an individual of considerable importance. The office referred to by Suetonius here was a relic of the republican one, and its purpose was to take charge of the city during the Feriae Latinae, the celebration of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Hill. Magistrates were required to attend, and the prefect was expected to exercise authority in their absence. Clearly, the prefect was not expected to hear important cases, and Claudius imposed a ban on such procedures, but without much success.
6 Tacitus and Suetonius agree on Nero’s enthusiasm (compare his output mentioned later), but Suetonius, with access to the imperial archives, had seen Nero’s pugillares (notebooks), not available to Tacitus. Nero certainly had some fluency and great ambition as a poet: compare his public recitation of his own poetry and mention of his Trojan lays (to be identified with his Fall of Troy mentioned by both Suetonius [Ner. 38.2] and Tacitus [Ann. 15.39.3]). Add to this the prospective epic of all past Roman achievements—all the poems mentioned seem to have been narrative epics.
Three hexameters by Nero about the Tigris disappearing underground before its delta are quoted by the Scholiast on Lucan 3.261–62, showing a turn of phrase similar to Lucan’s conception; a single line is quoted by Seneca (QNat.1.5.6). Some half verses together with one four-line fragment, denounced by Persius (1.93–102) as affected and decadent, while certainly in the style of the times and on mythological topics that appealed to Nero (Attis; the Maenads escorting Bacchus), may not have been his but display a nimble command of alliteration and perverse ingenuity in wordplay. Like other elite Romans, Nero probably composed epigrams on social occasions; if not an epigram, what was the “poem” (Suet. Ner. 24.2) in which he criticized Mithridates’ ambitious attempt to drive a ten-horse chariot? Nero could have been expected to display his intellect and Grecizing tastes in the language arts, and his enthusiasm for singing as a citharode (see discussion later) also entailed the language art of verse composition, albeit in Greek, but the singing of lyrics was quite alien at Rome. We might equally expect young Nero, as a lad of seventeen, not just to love the speed and excitement of chariot racing as a spectator but also to want to race his own team in person; this had deep roots in the Roman tradition of public festival games, which Nero was now in a position to organize in every detail of spectacle.
7 In the republic, the six major games of the religious calendar were financed and managed by elected magistrates, but ambitious individuals took advantage of the recognized pretexts for offering gladiatorial shows, usually to honor their deceased fathers. Augustus did not need a pretext: he gave Greek-style athletic games, as Nero would, at Rome and at Naples (the Augustalia); with his wealth from the Actium campaign, he financed shows not just in his own name but to maintain the popularity of his sons and grandsons. He was also a keen spectator of theatrical performances, both comedy and mime, hence his dying request for applause for playing the mime of his life successfully (Suet. Aug. 99.1).
8 “The amphitheaters” were temporary structures until the completion of the amphitheater of Statilius Taurus. Animals were captured in North Africa and exhibited in menageries, but sent into the arena to be killed by armed bestiarii (wild-animal fighters).
9 Suetonius says too little about Nero’s naval games, which probably reused Augustus’s old site in Trastevere.
10 This anecdote is cited only here but closely resembles the encounter with Pylades reported by Macrobius in the next passage.
11 If the wooden amphitheater was erected within a year, it shows the high priority he gave to the kinds of shows exhibited in amphitheaters, mostly gladiatorial or wild beast hunts. But another amphitheater outside Rome would collapse during his reign (Tac. Ann. 13.31).
12 See Suet. Ner. 12.3–4. A Greek type of war dance, assigned to a Greek (not Roman) age group of young men before reaching full manhood.
13 These stood in for funeral games; whether the people believed Nero’s claim that his mother had tried to murder him or knew that he himself had planned her murder, they could hardly be called games in her honor.
14 The Iuvenalia may still have counted as a private, not a public, occasion; this would go some way toward explaining the voluntary (probably enforced) performances by respectable citizens.
15 It was the custom in Greece to provide athletic contestants with rubbing oil.
16 Normally, it was the cities of the empire (Syracuse, Corinth, Naples) that instituted games named in honor of their Roman lords: Marcellus at Syracuse and Flamininus at Corinth.
The Quinquennial Games that Augustus established at Naples in his own name (Suet. Aug. 98.5), originating late in his long principate, offered Nero a model of Greek games from Italy itself. The category called “Music” covered poetry in both speech and song, as inspired by the Muses, and was extended to cover prose rhetoric.
17 Actors at Rome, like pimps, prostitutes, and undertakers, were disqualified from bearing witness in court; conservatives would thus see any performance on the public stage as dishonor (infamia).
18 The narrative has reached AD 66, when nothing inhibits the performing emperor: Nero competes in singing to the lyre with the professional citharodes and celebrates with another public display, as charioteer, but Tacitus’s account of this episode is lost and we must depend on Dio’s epitomator. Luckily, he seems to have preserved this story in full.
19 Tiridates was no doubt bringing his own children and those of his brothers, too, to be educated at Rome as hostages for his loyal behavior.
20 As Champlin ([2003], 227–29) argues, Nero had postponed the staging of this ceremony because he needed the sunshine to reflect the gold and gilded surfaces of the Forum; similarly, the purple awnings and golden image of Nero driving his chariot presented him as Apollo in his role as sun god.
21 Far from being a gentleman amateur, Nero was shamelessly professional in this partisanship.
22 Domitius Corbulo had fought Vologaeses and Tiridates for ten years and reduced them to this diplomatic face-saving ceremonial (see Chapter IV). Tiridates’ admiration may well have increased Nero’s resolve to execute his too talented and popular general.
23 The stress in Suetonius’s account, far shorter than Dio’s quoted here, is chiefly on the resemblance of the ceremony to a Roman triumph, though there is no triumphal procession entering the city. A victorious general would be hailed as Imperator by his troops, and normally brought a representative unit of his victorious army to a halt outside the walls before making his formal entry as triumphator along the processional route to the Capitol. Instead, Nero, seated on his magistrate’s chair, waits for Tiridates to approach him as a suppliant, like a conquered enemy (Suetonius notes his prostration at Nero’s knees). This royal submission is Nero’s first counterpart to a true military triumph; he will offer another version upon his return to Rome from his year of victories in the cycle of Greek athletic contests. The Temple of Janus was only closed when peace was restored and Rome was no longer at war.
While Corbulo had been the actual commander in Rome’s victorious campaigns against the Parthians, Augustus had inaugurated the tradition that all achievements of an emperor’s legate were credited to the emperor under whose auspices he had campaigned; hence, Nero is hailed as victorious commander and dedicates his laurel branch to Jupiter Capitolinus. His closing of the gates of Janus (the temple took the form of a double-gated archway) echoes a rare religious ritual that Augustus boasted of achieving three times during his long reign.
24 As he did for Caligula (Calig. 22), Suetonius has adopted the explicit procedure of separating those of Nero’s public actions that met with his approval, or at least acceptance, from his more reprehensible behavior. But he also divides the next six chapters (Ner. 20–25) between Nero’s passions for singing and for charioteering, assigning to each activity first a private phase of training and then a section on his more public performances. So in Chapter 20 he reports Nero’s early enthusiasm and vocal training methods with Terpnus and then breaks off to begin again with his early enthusiasm for horses and chariot racing in Chapters 21 and 22: see Tac. Ann.14.14, combining Nero’s two passions.
25 These names may evoke the rhythms of the various types of cheering, whether continuous buzzes or staccato, on one note or undulating.
26 Common to all these excerpts are the organized cheers and slogans both of Nero’s “Alexandrian” cheerleaders (“Augustus’s men,” a group he formed early in his singing career) and of his official welcome back to Rome. This is the most explicit of various occasions on which Nero encourages his own identification with Apollo.
27 The Green teams were most favored in Nero’s day, and if the charioteer was dragged along the ground, it could be reinterpreted as Hector’s brutal dragging by Achilles around the walls of Troy.
28 Suetonius offers a glimpse—and perhaps the only one from this period—of the all-important owners and trainers who controlled the availability of horses, chariots, and drivers for the Circus that represented the teams of each “color.” Nero clearly favored the Greens (see the preceding Tiridates narrative). But while Suetonius deliberately reports both of Nero’s passions in matching installments, Tacitus introduces both crazes in one sentence and then proceeds to describe the same early races in a different location.
29 Cluvius Rufus was not only a former consul, one of the most senior men in the Senate, but a historian cited by Tacitus (Ann. 14.20–21) as one of his sources for Nero (see the Introduction); he may well be the chief source for Nero’s behavior as a contestant in the Greek Sacred Games.
30 The key to Nero’s art form is “sang.” While the star dancers enacted scenes or whole mythical narratives, Nero seems to have recognized that he could not compete in dancing (Dio 62.18.1: “Nero ordered Paris, the pantomime dancer, to be executed because he had wanted to learn dancing from Paris but could not succeed”). The roles from myth or tragedy specified here might refer only to climactic scenes (the equivalent of the baroque operatic scena ed aria), such as the incestuous Canace’s labor, though he may have extended them to a sequence of dramatic episodes.
31 Nero carries his impersonation to the level of identification. When performing as a citharode, he would wear a rich, ornate costume but no mask, and presumably when singing “Niobe” would keep his own identity while voicing the bereaved queen’s emotions.
32 Tacitus’s account of Nero competing as citharode at Rome (in AD 65) matches in detail Suetonius’s report of his stage behavior (Ner. 23.3, where he addressed the judges most respectfully, and 24.1, where he scrupulously obeyed the code, adding only the rhythmic clapping and chanting previously associated with Nero’s corps of Augustiani). To counter this picture of public rejoicing, Tacitus next reports as the more severe judgment of old-fashioned country gentlemen his personal disapproval of Nero’s theatrical activities, which he sees as an offense against his class and birth and supreme office. In 16.5.2, he illustrates the consequences with audience misbehavior during these games that shocked foreign delegations, and mob rioting resulted in the deaths of knights trampled underfoot and incurred mass executions.
33 Suetonius seems to shift here from the theme of Greek contests to describing Nero’s performances in general.
34 Compare Dio 62.15.3 on the subterfuges of members of the audience who could not endure until the end of Nero’s extended performances.
35 Terpnus had been Nero’s teacher; the two others were probably of the older generation, but Nero’s pride in his victory was as great as if he had won the famous Roman victories of the second century BC over King Philip V of Macedon, his son Perseus, or King Antiochus III (“The Great”) of Syria.
36 Epaminondas, a wealthy pro-Roman citizen of Acraephia, is known from other inscriptions in the town. He was the priest of the local imperial cult, and an ambassador sent on behalf of the Boeotian Koinon (Federation) to congratulate Caligula on his accession (IG VII.211–12).
37 The Boule was broadly a council of citizens that would oversee the regular operations of the city and prepare measures for the public assembly (“the People”). Little was known of such councils outside Attica. In Boeotia in the classical period, a municipality of full citizens was split into departments, each of which acted alternately as council.
38 The Greek word used here, apodeigmenos, is regularly the equivalent of the Latin designatus, a term used of someone assigned an office sometime before their actual tenure. It is not appropriate to the holding of tribunician power, and the town has either made a mistake or is using the expression loosely in a nontechnical sense, as conveyed in the translation.
39 Mt. Ptoon was located in Boeotia. It was the site of a sanctuary of Apollo, under the administration of Acraephia. It was destroyed by Alexander and later rebuilt. Evidence of it is still attested in the archaeological remains.
40 Sacred Victors are the victors in the four major games: Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean. Nero has privileged the Olympian and Pythian crowns over the two others, which are tacitly included with the other crowns. Augustus had added the Actia, held at Nicopolis to honor Apollo of Actium for the victory over Antony. By Nero’s time, there were Heraia, games of Hera, at Argos. Nero is described as gathering awards from any and every local contest (except Athens and Sparta), but to be Periodonikes (Victor in all the games) required victory in these six contests.
41 Demolishing the entrance arch of the Circus Maximus mimics the privilege Greek cities awarded to their victors of driving through their city’s fortifications. Nero’s cult of Apollo (on which compare Suet. Ner. 53) was turning into identification.
42 This recall of Augustus is not mentioned by Suetonius and may be a later invention.
43 The citharode Diodorus rides in the victor’s chariot as Roman generals might take their children with them.
44 “Eiselastic,” literally “drive-in.” The magistrates and council of a victorious charioteer’s city could vote to honor him by breaching the city walls for him to drive his chariot into the civic center.
45 Traditionally, the Three Fates—Lachesis, Atropos, and Clotho—controlled the thread of a mortal’s life: Lachesis drew out the woollen fibers to form the thread, but it was Clotho who ended the mortal’s life by breaking it off.
46 The Greek prince Nestor is reported in the Iliad to have lived for four generations of men, but even he was outdone by the Trojan Tithonus, who was given immortality at the request of his lover Aurora. But she failed to ask for immortal youth, and when old age made Tithonus ever more feeble, she put him away.
47 Apollo as god of prophecy encourages the Fates, foretelling the blessings of Nero’s reign.
48 Lucifer and Hesperus are two names for the same star, our Venus, whether as bringer of shade at evening or of daylight at dawn. The heavenly bodies and stars were the focus of contemporary astrology but were also traditional images for the new ruler or the glorious bridegroom in wedding poems.
49 Caesar’s victory over the Pompeian forces at Pharsalus in Thessaly (48 BC) decided the outcome of the civil war.
50 The remaining republican forces regrouped in Roman Africa, the former Punic kingdom of Carthage. They were defeated at Thapsus and evacuated Utica in 46 BC.
51 In 45 BC, Pompey’s son Gnaeus tried to rally the republicans but was defeated at Munda in Spain.
52 Lucius Antonius occupied Perugia and resisted siege by Octavian/Augustus in 41 BC, but this occurred after Octavian’s conquest of Mutina in 43.
53 Again out of chronological sequence: The promontory of Leucas stands for Actium, where Octavian triumphed over Antony and Cleopatra’s forces.
54 Sextus Pompey, in control of Sicily (hence the reference to Mt. Etna), enfranchised slaves to serve in his new navy but was defeated by Octavian and Agrippa at Naulochus in 36 BC.
55 “Phoebus” stands for the sun god who in the myth told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses was bound by his oath to let his son Phaethon drive his chariot; Phaethon lost control, with disastrous consequences.
56 Unlike Phaethon, Nero’s control of the chariot will be welcomed by all the gods, and Nature herself will give Nero a choice not, as in Virgil’s address to Octavian, between becoming a god of earth or sea or sky but of the position he will occupy after his apotheosis and katasterismos (transformation into a constellation).
57 Janus’s house of war is the Temple of Janus Quadrifrons in the Forum, whose gates were shut only when Rome was free of war and enjoyed victorious peace.
58 Apollo … caves of Cirrha: Bacchus … Nysa. The two gods of inspiration each have a cult site, Apollo’s being Cirrha near Delphi, mentioned in the first book of the Iliad, and Dionysus’s Nysa in the hinterland of Afghanistan.
