XXVII. Little by little, however, as his vices grew stronger,
he dropped jesting and secrecy and with no attempt at disguise
openly broke out into worse crime. He prolonged his revels from
midday to midnight, often livening himself by a warm plunge, or,
if it were summer, into water cooled with snow. Sometimes too
he closed the inlets and banqueted in public in the great tank,
in the Campus Martius, or in the Circus Maximus, waited on by
harlots and dancing girls from all over the city. Whenever he
drifted down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf of Baiae,
booths were set up at intervals along the banks and shores, fitted
out for debauchery, while bartering matrons played the part of
innkeepers and from every hand solicited him to come ashore. He
also levied dinners on his friends, one of whom spent four million
sesterces for a banquet at which turbans were distributed, and
another a considerably larger sum for a rose dinner.
XXVIII. Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he
all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to
perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He
castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of
him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including
a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a
great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest
that someone made is still current, that it would have been well
for the world if Nero's father Domitius had had that kind of wife.
This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding
in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece,
and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing
him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations
with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemiess who
feared that such a relationship might give the reckless and insolent
woman too great infiuence, was notorious, especially after he
added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very
like Agripinina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode
in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with
her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.
XXIX. He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost
every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in
which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose
from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who
were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was
dispatched by his freed man Doryphorus; for he was even married
to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus,
going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden
being deflowered. I have heard from some men that it was his unshaken
conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any partof his body,
but that most of them concealed their vices and cleverly drew
a veil over them; and that therefore he pardoned all other faults
in those who confessed to him their lewdness.
Source.
From: Suetonius, Nero
This text is part of the Internet
History Sourcebooks Project. The Sourcebooks are collections of public domain and
copy-permitted texts related to all aspects of history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright.
Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No
permission is granted for commercial use.
© Paul Halsall, 1998, 2023
