Then he tried yet further forms of magic and yet darker rites of propitiation to the infernal powers, in which it was whispered that human blood—the blood of murdered infants—formed part of the instruments of sorcery. But he could learn no secrets of the future; he could evoke no powers who could ward away that white menacing spectre which gleamed upon him if at any moment he found himself alone in the hours of night.
Nero became a haunted man. The whole earth seemed to him to be ‘made of glass’ to reveal his turpitude. He knew in his miserable heart that the very street boys of Rome—the ragged urchins of the slaves and gladiators—were aware of the crime which he had committed. Kind friends kept him informed, under pretence of officious indignation, that one night an infant had been found exposed in the Forum with a scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was written, ‘I expose you, lest you should murder your mother;’ and that, another night, a sack had been hung round the neck of his statue as though to threaten him with the old weird punishment of parricides. Once, when he was looking on at one of the rude plays known as Atellane, the actor Datus had to pronounce the line,
‘Good health to you, father; good health to you, mother;’
and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the quick Italian people never missed the significance, he managed to indicate Claudius dying of poison and Agrippina swimming for her life. The populace roared out its applause at an illusion so managed that it could hardly be resented; and once again, when coming to the line,
‘Death drags you by the foot.’
Datus indicated Nero’s hatred to the Senate by pointing significantly to Nero at the word ‘death’ and to the senatorial seats as he emphasized the word ‘you.’
But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. Could he not read with his own eyes the graffito scrawled upon every blank space of wall in Rome: ‘Nero, Orestes, Alcmæon, matricidæ’? He could not detect or punish these anonymous scrawlers, but he would have liked to punish men of rank, whom he well knew to have written stinging satires against him, branding him with every kind of infamy.
Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the terrors of his conscience—the intoxication of promiscuous applause and the self-abandonment to a sensuality which grew ever more shameless as the restraints of Agrippina’s authority and Seneca’s influence were removed.
Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his own banquets in citharœdic array. To the old Roman dignity such conduct seemed unspeakably degrading in the Emperor of the legions. Yet Nero divulged his shame to the world by having himself represented in statues and on coins in the dress of a harpist, his lips open as though in the act of song, his lyre half supported on a baldric embossed with gems, his tunic falling in variegated folds to his feet, and his arms covered by the chlamys, while with his delicate left hand he twanged the strings, and with his right struck them with the golden plectrum. The pains which he took to preserve his voice, which after all was dull and harsh, were almost incredible. Following the advice of every quack who chose to pass himself off as an expert, he used to walk about with his thick neck encircled in a puffy handkerchief, to sleep with a plate of lead on his chest, and to live for a month at a time on peas cooked in oil.
To give him more opportunities for display he instituted the Juvenalia to celebrate his arrival at full manhood, as marked by the shaving of his beard. His first beard was deposited in a box of gold, adorned with costly pearls, and he dedicated it to the Capitoline Jupiter. But even this event in his life was accompanied by a crime. Shortly before he laid aside his beard he paid a visit to his aunt Domitia, who was ill.