Nero did not want war, least of all civil war, which for all Julians with their bitter memories is the worst thing that can happen to an Emperor. Yet he did nothing to suppress the revolt, for he wished to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. He answered his critics by saying ironically that perhaps it would be best if he met alone the legions approaching Rome in a triumphal march and won them over to his side by singing to them. To me this showed that he might have had plans entirely of his own. It was not just empty talk that in his youth he would have preferred to have studied in Rhodes rather than take up politics. He had always longed toward the East and had never managed to get farther than Achaia.
Nero knew more about Parthia than the usual military information concerning grazing lands, roads, springs, fords, mountain passes and fortified points. He also liked to talk about the Parthians’ distinctive civilization, although we laughed at him since to Romans the Parthians are and always will be barbarians until the day Rome civilizes them.
After Nero’s death, I thought that perhaps his talk about holding a concert in Ecbatana had not been entirely a joke. I have discovered that cittern-playing and singing are now the height of fashion in the aristocratic circles of Parthia. In that case, they are behind the times. Here in Rome, as the worst consequence of the conquest of Jerusalem, we have a constant jingling and jangling of Eastern musical instruments. Sistrii and tambourines, or whatever they are called.
Young people’s new-fangled music makes an aging man like me quite ill. Sometimes I remember the cittern-plucking of Nero’s time as a vanished golden age, although I am not musical, as I am always being told by you and your mother.
But it is just as incomprehensible to me that you have to have a slave behind you while you are studying, waving a sistrum or banging two copper saucepan lids against each other while a hoarse singer wails Egyptian street ballads. I should go mad if I had to listen to such things all the time. Yet you seriously maintain that otherwise you cannot concentrate on your studies and your mother is on your side, as usual, and tells me that I do not understand anything. No doubt you would grow a beard too, if fifteen-year-olds could.
Nero remained inactive, hurt by the lies and public insults he had had to endure. Galba’s troops marched victoriously and, thanks to Nero, untested in battle toward Rome. Then the day before Minerva day arrived. Tigellinus, to save his own skin, placed the Praetorians at the Senate’s disposal. First the Senate was summoned in secret to an extraordinary meeting at dawn. Not all the members who were in Rome received a summons, but only the trustworthy ones and naturally not Nero, although he had had the right to attend since he was as much a senator as the others and of higher rank than they. Tigellinus saw to it that the Praetorian guards and the German life guards were withdrawn from the Golden Palace at the changing of guard during the night.
Both the Consuls whom Nero had illegally dismissed took the chair and the Senate decided unanimously to appoint Galba, a bald and debauched old man who favored athletic lovers, as their new Emperor. Equally unanimously, the Senate declared Nero an enemy of the State and condemned him to death, in the way of their forefathers, by scourging. In this respect the Senate acknowledged that Nero was a senator with full rights, for a senator can be judged only by his equals. Everyone took it for granted that Nero would commit suicide to escape such inhuman punishment. Tigellinus was, of course, one of the most eager voters.
Nero awoke at midnight in the bedroom of his abandoned Golden Palace with his faithful “wife” Sporus in the other bed. Only a few slaves and freedmen were left in his service, and although he sent messages to his friends, not one of them sent him a reply, not to mention their support. To experience fully the ingratitude of the world, Nero set out on foot into the city with a few faithful followers, to knock vainly on the doors of some of the houses he had once lavishly presented to his friends. But the doors remained closed and not a word was heard from behind them in reply. For safety’s sake, the inhabitants had even bound the jaws of their dogs.
When Nero returned to the Golden Palace and his bedroom, he saw that it had already been robbed of its silken bedclothes and other valuable articles. He mounted and rode off barefooted, his head covered and he himself dressed in nothing but a tunic and a slave mantle, to a farm owned by one of his freedmen, which according to this man’s own story he had offered Nero as a hiding place. This villa lies by the via Salaria, at the side of the road near the fourth milestone. You will remember that Seneca spent the last day of his life in his house near the fourth milestone and that Cephas turned back to Rome by the fourth milestone on the via Appia.
Nero was accompanied by four men, Sporus, the freedman, surprisingly Ephaphroditus, and a man whom the Senate executed after he had been all too talkative in the forum. Acte was already at the villa, waiting for Nero. I thought the scene had been carefully set and was performed well. Nero was one of the finest actors of his time and set great store on staging, so that at the theater he was always remarking on a malplaced pillar or faulty lighting which emphasized a minor character while he was singing.
While he was on his way, there was an earthquake and lightning struck the road in front of Nero and his horse shied at the smell of a corpse and rose on its hind legs. Nero had covered his head, but when the horse reared the hood fell back and revealed his face. An ancient retired Praetorian happened to recognize him and greeted him as the Emperor. This increased Nero’s haste, for he feared his plan would be exposed too soon. This is all according to the testimonies of the freedman and Epaphroditus. Sporus later vanished without a trace and Otho never found him, although he would have gready liked to test his talents in bed. Otho also proposed to Statilia, relying on Nero’s experienced taste in these matters.
I do not wish to repeat everything these two men had to tell of Nero’s agony of mind, his terror and suffering; of how Nero drank by scooping water from a pool with his hands and plucked the thorns from his slave mantle after creeping through the bushes to the villa. Un-blinkingly they reported everything, to the considerable joy of the Senate and the historians. Nero had planned everything so carefully beforehand that he had even left behind a written speech in which he asked forgiveness for the crimes he had committed for political reasons and begged the Senate to spare his life and appoint him procurator in some modest Eastern province, for in his view he had served the Senate and the people of Rome well. In this way Nero created the impression of acting under the threat of death and being in the grip of blind terror. But these two eyewitneses could not have succeeded in convincing any reasonable listener. The only ones to be convinced were those who had done all they could to drive Nero to suicide and who therefore thought that their hopes had been fulfilled.
Nero remembered to leave posterity a magnificent retort as his last words: “What an artist the world is to lose in me.” These words I gladly emphasize, for not until much later did I realize what a master of the art of living and of the arts, yes, what a true friend of mankind Rome lost in Nero, however troublesome it was at times to be with him because of his capriciousness and conceit. But no one should hold unlimited power in his hands for seventeen years; remember that, my son, if you ever become impatient over your father’s sluggishness.