What new thing could be devised to dispel his weariness? He passionately longed for some tremendous sensation to dissipate his lassitude. If the hours had passed with leaden pace when he first tasted the sweets of autocracy, how unutterably weary had they now become!
‘Tigellinus, cannot you invent for me some new excitement?’ he asked. ‘I shall commit suicide from sheer fatigue. Tiberius went to Capri, but a rock like that would not suit me. I cannot live in the vulgar respectability of an Augustus or a Claudius.’
‘Shall I give you another feast like that at the Lake of Agrippa?’
‘That was all very well,’ said Nero, ‘but things grow tedious by repetition. Petronius used to be suggestive, but even he has long ago exhausted his inventiveness.’
‘I never knew why you gave up going to Greece,’ said the Præfect.
‘I thought it better to put it off till my voice was still more perfect. But what am I to do now? I am dying for a new experience. Of what use is life except to concentrate its essence into thrilling sensations?’
‘Was it not a new sensation, Cæsar, when the elephant walked on the tight rope with the knight Julius Drusus on his back?’
‘It amused me for once,’ said Nero. ‘It would be stale a second time.’
‘Well, then, when you had the “Conflagration” of Afranius put on the stage, and let the actors pillage the burning house?’
‘Aye,’ said Nero, ‘that was worth seeing. It gave me a hint or two for my poem on the “Taking of Troy.” What might not art gain, and how might not my poem be enriched, if I had an actual scene to draw from!’