his sovereignty to beg in the guise of a runaway slave, to be led like a blind man, to conceive, to bear children, to go mad [to drive a chariot], as he acted out time after time the story of Oedipus, and of Thyestes, of Heracles and Alemeon, and of Orestes?  The masks he wore were sometimes made to resemble the characters and sometimes had his own likeness.  The women’s masks were all fashioned to conform to the features of Sabina [in order that though dead she might still move in stately procession.  All the situations that common actors simulate in their acting he, too, would undertake to present, by speech, by action, by being acted upon,—­save only that] golden chains were used to bind him:  apparently it was not thought proper for a Roman emperor to be bound in iron shackles.

[Sidenote:—­10—­] All this behavior, nevertheless, the soldiers and all the rest saw, endured, and approved.  They entitled him Pythian Victor, Olympian Victor, National Victor, Absolute Victor, besides all the usual expressions, and of course added to these names the honorific designations belonging to his imperial office, so that every one of them had “Caesar” and “Augustus” as a tag.

He conceived a dislike for a certain man because while he was speaking the man frowned and was not overlavish of his praises; and so he drove him away and would not let him come into his presence.  He persisted in his refusal to grant him audience, and when the person asked:  “Where shall I go, then?” Phoebus, Nero’s freedman, replied:  “To the deuce!”

No one of the people ventured either to pity or to hate the wretched creature.  One of the soldiers, to be sure, on seeing him bound, grew indignant, ran up, and set him free.  Another in reply to a question:  “What is the emperor doing?” had to answer:  “He is in labor pains,” for Nero was then acting the part of Canace.  Not one of them conducted himself in a way at all worthy of a Roman.  Instead, because so much money fell to their share, they offered prayers that he might give many such performances and they in this way get still more.

[Sidenote:—­11—­] And if things had merely gone on like this, the affair, while being a source of shame and of ridicule alike, would still have been deemed free from danger.  But as a fact he devastated the whole of Greece precisely as if he had been despatched to some war and without regard to the fact that he had declared the country free, also slaying great numbers [of men, women and children.  At first he commanded the children and freedmen of those who were executed to leave him half their property at their death, and allowed the original victims to make wills in order to make it seem less likely that he had killed them for their money; and he invariably took all that was bequeathed to him, if not more.  In case any one left to him or to Tigillinus less than they were expecting, the wills were of no avail.—­Later he deprived persons of their entire property