[Sidenote:—­14—­] At the Olympic games he fell from the chariot he was driving and came very near being crushed to death:  yet he was crowned victor.  In acknowledgment of this favor he gave to the Hellanodikai the twenty-five myriads which Galba later demanded back from them. [And to the Pythia he gave ten myriads for giving some responses to suit him:  this money Galba recovered.] Again, whether from vexation at Apollo for making some unpleasant predictions to him or because he was merely crazy, he took away from the god the territory of Cirrha and gave it to the soldiers.  In fact, he abolished the oracle, slaying men and throwing them into the rock fissure from which the divine afflatus arose.  He contended in every single city that boasted any contest, and in all cases requiring the services of a herald he employed for that purpose Cluvius Rufus, an ex-consul.  Athens and the Lacedaemonians were exceptions to this rule, being the only places that he did not visit at all.  He avoided the second because of the laws of Lycurgus, which stood in the way of his designs, and the former because of the story about the Furies.—­The proclamation ran:  “Nero Caesar wins this contest and crowns the Roman people and his world.”  Possessing according to his own statement a world, he went on singing and playing, making proclamations, and acting tragedies.

[Sidenote:—­15—­] His hatred for the senate was so fierce that he took particular pleasure in Vatinius, who kept always saying to him:  “I hate you, Caesar, for being of senatorial rank.”—­I have used the exact expression that he uttered.—­Both the senators and all others were constantly subjected to the closest scrutiny in their entrances, their exits, their attitudes, their gestures, their outcries.  The men that stuck constantly by Nero, listened attentively, made their applause distinct, were commended and honored:  the rest were both degraded and punished, so that some, when they could endure it no longer (for they were frequently expected to be on the qui vive from early morning until evening), would feign to swoon and would be carried out of the theatres as if dead.

[Sidenote:—­16—­] As an incidental labor connected with his sojourn in Greece he conceived a desire to dig a canal across the isthmus of the Peloponnesus, and he did begin the task.  Men shrank from it, however, because, when the first workers touched the earth, blood spouted from it, groans and bellowings were heard, and many phantoms appeared.  Nero himself thereupon grasped a mattock and by throwing up some of the soil fairly compelled the rest to imitate him.  For this work he sent for a large number of men from other nations as well.