excitement and the pleasure of the contest,--to see the
vast audience assembled before him, and held in charmed and
enraptured attention by his performance; and to listen to and enjoy
the triumphant grandeur of the applause which rolled and
reverberated in the great Roman amphitheaters on such occasions with
the sound of thunder. In a word it was the vanity of personal
display, rather than ambition for an honorable distinction, that
constituted the motive which actuated him.

He consequently disregarded the honorary awards which the Senate had
decreed him, and insisted on actually appearing on the stage. His
first performance was the reciting of a poem which he had composed.
The poem was received, of course, with unbounded applause. Afterward
he appeared on the stage in competition with the harpers and other
musical performers. The populace applauded his efforts with the
greatest enthusiasm, while the more respectable citizens were
silent, or spoke to each other in secret murmurs of discontent and
disapproval. There were a great many rules and restrictions which
the candidates in these contests were required to observe; and
though they were all proper enough for the class of men for whom
they were intended, were yet such that the emperor, in subjecting
himself to them, placed himself in a very low and degraded position,
so as to become an object of ridicule and contempt. For example,
after coming to the end of a performance on the harp, he would
advance to the front of the stage, and there, after the manner
customary among the players of that day, would kneel down in an
imploring attitude, with his hands raised, as if humbly soliciting a
favorable sentence from the audience, as his judges, and tremblingly
waiting their decision. This, considering that the suppliant
performer was the greatest potentate on earth, officially
responsible for the government of half the world, and the audience
before whom he was kneeling was mainly composed of the lowest rabble
of the city, seemed to every respectable Roman, absurd and
ridiculous to the last degree.

Nevertheless, the fame of these exploits performed by Nero as a
public actor, spread gradually throughout the empire, and the
subject attracted special attention in the cities of Greece, where
games and public spectacles of every kind were celebrated with the
greatest pomp and splendor. Several of these cities sent deputations
to Rome, with crowns and garlands for the emperor,