y near being crushed to death: yet he was crowned
victor. In acknowledgment of this favor he gave to the Hellanodikai the
twenty-five myriads which Galba later demanded back from them. [And to the
Pythia he gave ten myriads for giving some responses to suit him: this
money Galba recovered.] Again, whether from vexation at Apollo for making
some unpleasant predictions to him or because he was merely crazy, he took
away from the god the territory of Cirrha and gave it to the soldiers. In
fact, he abolished the oracle, slaying men and throwing them into the rock
fissure from which the divine _afflatus_ arose. He contended in every
single city that boasted any contest, and in all cases requiring the
services of a herald he employed for that purpose Cluvius Rufus, an
ex-consul. Athens and the Lacedaemonians were exceptions to this rule,
being the only places that he did not visit at all. He avoided the second
because of the laws of Lycurgus, which stood in the way of his designs,
and the former because of the story about the Furies.--The proclamation
ran: "Nero Caesar wins this contest and crowns the Roman people and his
world." Possessing according to his own statement a world, he went on
singing and playing, making proclamations, and acting tragedies.

[Sidenote:--15--] His hatred for the senate was so fierce that he took
particular pleasure in Vatinius, who kept always saying to him: "I hate
you, Caesar, for being of senatorial rank."--I have used the exact
expression that he uttered.--Both the senators and all others were
constantly subjected to the closest scrutiny in their entrances, their
exits, their attitudes, their gestures, their outcries. The men that stuck
constantly by Nero, listened attentively, made their applause distinct,
were commended and honored: the rest were both degraded and punished, so
that some, when they could endure it no longer (for they were frequently
expected to be on the _qui vive_ from early morning until evening),
would feign to swoon and would be carried out of the theatres as if dead.

[Sidenote:--16--] As an incidental labor connected with his sojourn in
Greece he conceived a desire to dig a canal across the isthmus of the
Peloponnesus, and he did begin the task. Men shrank from it, however,
because, when the first workers touched the earth, blood spouted from it,
groans and bellowings were heard, and many phantoms appeared. Nero himself
thereupon grasped a mattock and by throwing up som