naturally of the best, and probably became not at all a bad amateur.
His monstrous self-conceit did the rest. Besides singing to the harp,
he was prepared to perform upon the flute and the bagpipes, and to
give a dance afterwards. All this, of course, was undignified and
ridiculous, but it was scarcely tyranny. Doubtless there was
sufficient suffering among the audience, but that cruelty was hardly
deliberate. In the Roman noble, whose ideal of behaviour included
dignity and gravity, these public appearances perhaps often aroused
more indignation and scorn than did his sensual vices. The same
contempt was often evoked by other proceedings of a similar nature.
His insatiable fondness for horse-racing, or rather chariot-racing,
induced him to appear also as a charioteer. First he practised in his
extensive private park or gardens, which were situated across the
Tiber on the ground now approximately occupied by St. Peter's and the
Vatican. When he appeared at the Olympic games driving a team of ten
horses, he was thrown out of the car, and had to be lifted into it
again. Though he was eventually compelled to abandon the race, he was,
of course, crowned victor all the same. He dabbled also in painting
and modelling.

We must not dwell too long upon his eccentricities. One might describe
how in his earlier years he often put on mufti and roamed the streets
at night with a few choice Mohawks, broke into shops, and insulted
respectable citizens, throwing them into the drains if they resisted;
how, being unrecognized, he once received a sound thrashing from a
person of the senatorial order, and was thereafter attended on such
occasions by police following at a distance. One might describe his
dicing at £3 or £4 a pip, or his banquets, at one of which he paid as
much as £30,000 for roses from Alexandria. After the great
conflagration which swept over a large part of Rome in this very year