He was seventeen years of age at the death of that prince,[151] and as
soon as that event was made public, he went out to the cohort on guard
between the hours of six and seven; for the omens were so disastrous,
that no earlier time of the day was judged proper. On the steps before
the palace gate, he was unanimously saluted by the soldiers as their
emperor, and then carried in a litter to the camp; thence, after
making a short speech to the troops, into the senate-house, where he
continued until the evening; of all the immense honors which were
heaped upon him, refusing none but the title of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY,
on account of his youth.
He began his reign with an ostentation of dutiful regard to the memory
of Claudius, whom he buried with the utmost pomp and magnificence,
pronouncing the funeral oration himself, and then had him enrolled
among the gods. He paid likewise the highest honors to the memory of
his father Domitius. He left the management of affairs, both public
and private, to his mother. The word which he gave the first day of
his reign to the tribune on guard was, "The Best of Mothers," and
afterward he frequently appeared with her in the streets of Rome in
her litter. He settled a colony at Antium,[152] in which he placed
the veteran soldiers belonging to the guards; and obliged several of
the richest centurions of the first rank to transfer their residence
to that place; where he likewise made a noble harbor at a prodigious
expense.
To establish still further his character, he declared, "that he
designed to govern according to the model of Augustus"; and omitted no
opportunity of showing his generosity, clemency, and complaisance. The
more burdensome taxes he either entirely took off, or diminished. The
rewards appointed for informers by the Papian law, he reduced to a
fourth part, and distributed to the people four hundred sesterces a
man. To the noblest of the senators who were much reduced in their
circumstances, he granted annual allowances, in some cases as much as
five hundred thousand sesterces; and to the praetorian cohorts a
monthly allowance of corn gratis. When called upon to subscribe the
sentence, according to custom, of a criminal condemned to die, "I
wish," said he, "I had never learned to read and write." He
continually saluted people of the several orders by name, without a
prompter. When the senate returned him their thanks for his good
government, he replied to them, "It will be time enough to do so when
I shall have deserved it." He admitted the common people to see him
perform his exercises in the Campus Martius. He frequently declaimed
in public, and recited verses of his own composing, not only at home,
but in the theater; so much to the joy of all the people, that public
prayers were appointed to be put up to the gods upon that account; and
the verses which had been publicly read, were, after being written in
gold letters, consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus.
He presented the people with a great number and variety of spectacles,
as the Juvenal and Circensian games, stage-plays, and an exhibition of
gladiators. In the Juvenal, he even admitted senators and aged matrons
to perform parts. In the Circensian games, he assigned the equestrian
order seats apart from the rest of the people, and had races performed
by chariots drawn each by four camels. In the games which he
instituted for the eternal duration of the empire, and therefore
ordered to be called _Maximi_, many of the senatorian and equestrian
order, of both sexes, performed. A distinguished Roman knight
descended on the stage by a rope, mounted on an elephant. A Roman
play, likewise, composed by Afranius, was brought upon the stage. It
was entitled, "The Fire"; and in it the performers were allowed to
carry off, and to keep to themselves, the furniture of the house,
which as the plot of the play required, was burned down in the
theater. Every day during the solemnity, many thousand articles of all
descriptions were thrown among the people to scramble for; such as
fowls of different kinds, tickets for corn, clothes, gold, silver,
gems, pearls, pictures, slaves, beasts of burden, wild beasts that had
been tamed; at last, ships, lots of houses, and lands, Were offered as
prizes in a lottery.
These games he beheld from the front of the proscenium. In the show
of gladiators, which he exhibited in a wooden amphitheater, built
within a year in the district of the Campus Martius, he ordered that
none should be slain, not even the condemned criminals employed in the
combats. He secured four hundred senators, and six hundred Roman
knights, among whom were some of unbroken fortunes and unblemished
reputation, to act as gladiators. From the same orders, he engaged
persons to encounter wild beasts, and for various other services in
the theater. He presented the public with the representation of a
naval fight, upon sea-water, with huge fishes swimming in it; as also
with the Pyrrhic dance, performed by certain youths, to each of whom,
after the performance was over, he granted the freedom of Rome. During
this diversion, a bull covered Pasiphae, concealed within a wooden
statue of a cow, as many of the spectators believed. Icarus, upon his
first attempt to fly, fell on the stage close to the emperor's
pavilion, and bespattered him with blood. For he very seldom presided
in the games, but used to view them reclining on a couch, at first
through some narrow apertures, but afterward with the _Podium_ quite
open. He was the first who instituted, in imitation of the Greeks, a
trial of skill in the three several exercises of music, wrestling, and
horse-racing, to be performed at Rome every five years, and which he
called Neronia. Upon the dedication of his bath[153] and gymnasium, he
furnished the senate and the equestrian order with oil. He appointed
as judges of the trial men of consular rank, chosen by lot, who eat
with the praetors. At this time he went down into the orchestra among
the senators, and received the crown for the best performance in Latin
prose and verse for which several persons of the greatest merit
contended, but they unanimously yielded to him. The crown for the best
performer on the harp; being likewise awarded to him by the judges, he
devoutly saluted it, and ordered it to be carried to the statue of
Augustus. In the gymnastic exercises, which he presented in the Septa,
while they were preparing the great sacrifice of an ox, he shaved his
beard for the first time, and putting it up in a casket of gold
studded with pearls of great price, consecrated it to Jupiter
Capitolinus. He invited the Vestal Virgins to see the wrestlers
perform, because, at Olympia, the priestesses of Ceres are allowed the
privilege of witnessing that exhibition....
Twice only he undertook any foreign expeditions, one to Alexandria,
and the other to Achaia; but he abandoned the prosecution of the
former on the very day fixt for his departure, by being deterred both
by ill omens, and the hazard of the voyage. For while he was making
the circuit of the temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta,
when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he
was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could
not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut
through the Isthmus;[154] and, having made a speech encouraging his
pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by sound of
trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade, and carried off a
basketful of earth upon his shoulders. He made preparations for an
expedition to the Pass of the Caspian mountains, forming a new legion
out of his late levies in Italy, of men all six feet high, which he
called the phalanx of Alexander the Great. These transactions, in part
unexceptionable, and in part highly commendable, I have brought into
one view, in order to separate them from the scandalous and criminal
part of his conduct.