Nero had just heard the deification of Claudius torn to shreds with mortal sarcasm, but his own vanity was impervious to any wound, and he eagerly drank in the adulation which—with no more sincerity than that which had been addressed to his predecessor by the Senate and people of Rome—assured him of the honour of plenary divinity among the deities of heaven in whom, nevertheless, he scarcely even affected to believe.
He turned to Petronius and asked him to recite his poem on the Sack of Troy. Petronius did so, and the Emperor listened with eager interest. It was a subject which fascinated him.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘to see a city in flames—that would be worth living for! I have tried to write something on that subject myself.’
All present, of course, pressed him to favour them with his poem, and after a little feminine show of reluctance, and many protestations of mock modesty, he read them, in an affected voice, some verses which were marked in every phrase by the falsetto of the age. It was evident that they had been painfully elaborated. Indeed, as they looked at the note-book from which the Emperor read they saw that the labor limæ had been by no means wanting. The book, which afterwards fell into the hands of Suetonius, was scratched and scrawled over in every direction, and it showed that many a turn of expression had been altered twenty times before it became tinkling enough and fantastic enough to suit Nero’s taste. It was clear from the tone in which he read them that the most bizarre lines were exactly those that pleased him best, and they were therefore the ones which his flatterers selected for their loudest applause.
‘“Filled the grim horns with Mimallonean buzz”’—
repeated Lucan. ‘How energetic! how picturesque!’
‘He is laughing at you in his sleeve, Cæsar,’ whispered Tigellinus; ‘and he thinks his own most impromptu line far superior.’
Lucan did not overhear the remark, and he proceeded to quote and praise the three lines on the river Tigris, which
‘“Deserts the Persian realms he loved to lave,
And to non-seekers shows his sought-for wave.”