bulletined his own name? What victory less deserves the name than that by
which one receives the olive, the laurel, the parsley, or the fir-tree
garland, and loses the political crown? And why should one bewail these
acts of his alone, seeing that he also by treading on the high-soled
buskins lowered himself from his eminence of power, and by hiding behind
the mask lost the dignity of his sovereignty to beg in the guise of a
runaway slave, to be led like a blind man, to conceive, to bear children,
to go mad [to drive a chariot], as he acted out time after time the story
of Oedipus, and of Thyestes, of Heracles and Alemeon, and of Orestes? The
masks he wore were sometimes made to resemble the characters and sometimes
had his own likeness. The women's masks were all fashioned to conform to
the features of Sabina [in order that though dead she might still move in
stately procession. All the situations that common actors simulate in
their acting he, too, would undertake to present, by speech, by action, by
being acted upon,--save only that] golden chains were used to bind him:
apparently it was not thought proper for a Roman emperor to be bound in
iron shackles.

[Sidenote:--10--] All this behavior, nevertheless, the soldiers and all
the rest saw, endured, and approved. They entitled him Pythian Victor,
Olympian Victor, National Victor, Absolute Victor, besides all the usual
expressions, and of course added to these names the honorific designations
belonging to his imperial office, so that every one of them had "Caesar"
and "Augustus" as a tag.

He conceived a dislike for a certain man because while he was speaking the
man frowned and was not overlavish of his praises; and so he drove him
away and would not let him come into his presence. He persisted in his
refusal to grant him audience, and when the person asked: "Where shall I
go, then?" Phoebus, Nero's freedman, replied: "To the deuce!"