Sporus came up, offering an old moth-eaten cloak. The wardrobe had been plundered, only the refuse had been abandoned.
A voice was heard pealing through the empty corridors: “Horses! horses at the door!”
“Who calls so loud? Silence him. He will betray us!” said Nero. “Hah! It is Epaphroditus.”
At the entrance, chained to a cumbrous log, was the Greek, Epaphroditus, formerly a pampered favorite. But two days previously he had ventured to correct a false quantity in some verses by his master, and Nero, in a burst of resentment and mortified vanity, had ordered him to be fastened to a beam as doorkeeper to the Servilian Palace.
“The horses are here,” shouted the freedman. “May it please my lord to mount. Sporus and the slaves can run afoot.”
Nero unwound the kerchief from his hand and wrapped it about his throat, drew the broad-brimmed hat over his head, enveloped himself in the blanket cloak, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The chained Greek at once cried out: “Master! my chain has become entangled and is so knotted that I cannot stir. I have been thus since noon, and none have regarded me. I pray thee, let me go.”
“Thou fool! cease hallooing!” retorted Nero angrily. “Dost think I carry about with me the key of thy shackles?” Then to those who followed, “Smite him on the mouth and silence him, or he will call attention to me.”
“The gods smite thee!” yelled the scribe, striving to reach an upright posture, but falling again, owing to the tangle in the links. “May they blight thee as they have stricken Livia’s laurel!”[3]
Mounted on an old gray horse, Nero rode to the Ælian Bridge, where stands now that of St. Angelo, crossed it and began to traverse the Campus Martius.