It was that, no doubt, which awoke him.  A city like Rome, one that had over a million inhabitants, could make a terrific noise, and when that noise was applause, the recipient found it heady.  Nero got drunk on popularity, and heredity aiding where the prince had been emerged the cad, a poseur that bored, a beast that disgusted, a caricature of the impossible in a crimson frame.

“What an artist the world is to lose!” he exclaimed as he died; and artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same contempt the musician, acrobat and actor.  It was the artist that played the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the artist that entertained the vulgar.

As an artist Nero might have been a card.  Fancy the attraction—­an emperor before the footlights; but fancy the boredom also.  The joy at the announcement of his first appearance was so great that thanks were offered to the gods; and the verses he was to sing, graven in gold, were dedicated to the Capitoline Jove.  The joy was brief.  The exits of the theatre were closed.  It was treason to attempt to leave.  People pretended to be dead in order to be carried out, and well they might.  The star was a fat man with a husky tenorino voice, who sang drunk and half-naked to a protecting claque of ten thousand hands.

But it was in the circus that Nero was at his best; there, no matter though he were last in the race, it was to him the palm was awarded, or rather it was he that awarded the palm to himself, and then quite magnificently shouted, “Nero, Caesar, victor in the race, gives his crown to the People of Rome!”

On the stage he had no rivals, and by chance did one appear, he was invited to die.  In that respect he was artistically susceptible.  When he turned acrobat, the statues of former victors were tossed in the latrinae.  Yet, as competitors were needed, and moreover as he, singly, could fill neither a stage nor a track, it was the nobility of Rome that he ordered to appear with him.  For that the nobility never forgave him.  On the other hand, the proletariat loved him the better.  What greater salve could it have than the sight of the conquerors of the world entertaining the conquered, lords amusing their lackeys?

Greece meanwhile sent him crowns and prayers; crowns for anticipated victories, prayers that he would come and win them.  Homage so delicate was not to be disdained.  Nero set forth, an army at his heels; a legion of claquers, a phalanx of musicians, cohorts of comedians, and with these for retinue, through sacred groves that Homer knew, through intervales which Hesiod sang, through a year of festivals he wandered, always victorious.  It was he who conquered at Olympia; it was he who conquered at Corinth.  No one could withstand him.  Alone in history he won in every game, and with eighteen hundred crowns as trophies of war he repeated Caesar’s triumph.  In a robe immaterial as a moonbeam, the Olympian wreath on his curls, the Isthmian laurel in his hand, his army behind him, the clown that was emperor entered Rome.  Victims were immolated as he passed, the Via Sacra was strewn with saffron, the day was rent with acclaiming shouts.  Throughout the empire sacrifices were ordered.  Old people that lived in the country fancied him, Philostratus says, the conqueror of new nations, and sacrificed with delight.