Knights refused to believe that an Emperor would degrade himself to the level of a professional jester and thus knowingly make a fool of himself. The choice of program also made them look on the rumor as an ill-considered joke.
Fortunately Tigellinus and I had mutual advantages to be gained in this matter. Tigellinus ordered a cohort of Praetorians to keep order in the theater and applaud at certain times in the performance, carefully following Nero’s own professional applauders’ example. Several young knights who understood music and singing and would not make the mistake of applauding in the wrong places were appointed leaders of the groups. All the applauders had to practice humming with delight, clapping with cupped hands so that it echoed, making loud claps and sighing wistfully in appropriate places.
Rumors of a political demonstration brought a huge audience who otherwise would hardly have bothered to honor my office of Praetor with their presence. The crowd was so immense that several people were trampled underfoot at the entrances, and some of the older senators’ powerful slaves had to fight their way through to carry their masters to the Senate’s seats of honor. It was just like one of the best days at the races.
Nero himself was so nervous and tense that he was violendy sick before the performance and kept dosing his throat with drinks recommended by his tutor to strengthen his vocal cords. But I must admit he gave a brilliant performance once he was onstage. His powerful voice rang through the theater into a good twenty thousand pairs of ears. He was so engrossed in his cruel role that some of the more sensitive women fainted from emotion in the crush.
The humming, the sighs and clapping came in the right places. The usual audience joined willingly in the applause. But when Nero rushed onto the stage at the end with bloodstained hands, the sounds of loud catcalls, crowing and uproar came from the seats of senators and knights and not even the loudest applause could drown it. I thought my last moment had come when, with shaking knees, I staggered backstage to accompany the unmasked Nero on to inform the people that it had been the Emperor himself who had appeared before them. But to my great astonishment, Nero was weeping with joy as he stood there, drenched with sweat and his face distorted with fatigue.
“Did you notice how I got the crowd with me?” he said. “They catcalled and crowed at Orestes to bring the penalty for matricide down on his head. I don’t think such complete entering into the spirit by an audience has ever happened before.”
Wiping the sweat away and smiling triumphantly, Nero stepped forward to receive the applause, which swelled to thunderous proportions when I announced that it had been the Emperor in person performing in the play. The crowd shouted as one man that he should sing again.
I had the honor of taking Nero’s cittern to him. He sang willingly and accompanied himself to show his skill on the cittern until it grew so dark that one could no longer discern his face. Not until then did he reluctantly finish, but he had it announced that he would appear before the people in future, should they so wish it.
When I handed him the money order for one million sesterces, I told him I had arranged for a thank-offering to be made to his own genius, to his dead daughter and also, for safety’s sake, to Apollo.
“Though I think you’ve already surpassed Apollo and no longer need his support,” I added.
While he was still overflowing with joy, I made a passing request that he should quietly dissolve my marriage, on the grounds of irreconcilable incompatibility between Sabina and myself, who both wished for a divorce and had our parents’ approval of it.
Nero said with a laugh that he had long since realized that it was only from sheer depravity that I had for so long continued my strange marriage. He asked inquisitively if it were true that Sabina had sexual intercourse with the giant African apes, as it was said in the city, intimating that he himself would have no objection to watching such a performance in secret. I asked him to consult Sabina directly on the matter, since she and I were so hostile that we did not even wish to speak to one another. Nero asked that, divorce notwithstanding, I should allow Sabina to continue to perform in the amphitheater for the entertainment of the people. I received the divorce papers the following morning and did not even have to pay the usual fee for them.
My reputation became one of a bold and unscrupulous man, as Nero’s performance as Orestes aroused surprise and endless discussion. At this time, Nero’s enemies began to invent ugly stories about him founded on the same basis he himself had used when he had announced Octavia’s adultery: “The greater the lie, the more easily it will be believed,” he had said.
This was a truth which turned back on himself, for the more shameless the invention about Nero, the more willing the people were to believe it. True accounts of his many good deeds aroused little interest.
Not that Rome’s rulers had not lied to the people before. The god Julius was forced to establish a daily written proclamation to counteract his lack of esteem, not to mention the god Augustus whose handsome burial inscription fails to mention innumerable crimes.
By staking my life to acquire a divorce, I nevertheless landed myself in a dilemma. The divorce offered relief in that I was free of Sabina’s domination. But naturally I could not even consider marrying Claudia. In my own opinion, she exaggerated absurdly the significance of the bagatelle that we had happened to sleep together by chance attraction in the days of our youth.
I told her straight out that I did not consider that a man had to marry every woman who of her own free will fell into his arms. In that case, no sane relationship between human beings would be possible. In my opinion, what had happened was neither sinful nor degrading to her.
Not even Christ himself during his life on earth had wished to judge an adulteress, for he said that those who accused her were as guilty as she was. I had heard this said of him. But Claudia was angry and said that she knew the stories about Christ better than I did, having heard them from Cephas’ own mouth. She had fallen once and sinned with me, so she was sinful and felt even more sinful every time she saw me.
So I tried to avoid her as best I could, so that she would not be forced to see me too much. I devoted my time to new business deals to further my own position and calm my fears. One of my freedmen made me realize that the really great fortunes lay in the grain trade and the importation of cooking oil. Compared with these fundamental needs, silk from China, spices from India and other luxury goods for the rich nobility are mere trivialities. Thanks to my dealings in wild animals, I already had good trade connections with Africa and Iberia. Through my friendship with Fenius Rufus, I received a share in the grain trade, and my freedman himself traveled to Iberia to set up a buying office for olive oil.
In connection with these matters, I often visited Ostia and I saw that a whole new and beautifully built town had grown up there. I had long been irritated by Claudia’s accusations that I made criminal profits out of my tenements in Subura and on the circus side of Aventine. She considered that the tenants there lived in inhumanly crowded, dirty and unhealthy conditions. I realized that the poor Christians had been complaining to her to have the rents lowered.
If I had lowered the rents, the rush to my properties would have been even greater and all the other landlords would have angrily accused me of unfair undercutting. I could also see that the buildings were in wretched condition and to repair them would have meant great expenditure at a time when I needed all my ready money and had to apply for loans to finance my grain and oil enterprises. So I made a swift decision, sold a great many blocks of tenements all at once and instead bought several cheap empty sites on the outskirts of Ostia.
But Claudia reproached me bitterly and said that I had put the tenants in an even worse position than before. Their new landlords made no repairs but simply raised the rents to retrieve the huge sums they had paid me for the buildings. I told Claudia that she had not the slightest grasp of finance, but just wasted my money on charity which did not bring in anything, not even popularity. The Christians consider that it is natural to help the poor and they themselves thank only Christ for the help they receive.
Claudia on her part reproached me for wasting enormous sums of money on godless theater performances. She did not even differentiate between drama and animal displays in the amphitheater and she would not even listen to me when I tried to explain that it was my duty because of my rank of Praetor and my father’s position as senator. The favor of the public was necessary for a man in my position. The Christians are mostly slaves and rabble without citizenship.
I could not silence Claudia until I told her she was obviously not a genuine Claudian. Her father had been so passionately fond of displays in the amphitheater that he would not even go and take a meal while the wild animals tore the condemned to pieces, although respectable people usually went out for a meal at that time and left the amphitheater for a while. Nero, who was more humane, had early in his reign forbidden the throwing of the condemned to the animals and no longer allowed the professional gladiators to fight to the last drop of blood.
