of speechless appreciation. Some clapped
with enthusiasm. Some, rising from approbation into absolute frenzy,
shrieked, stamped, and beat sticks upon the benches. Some--and they
were the most effective--had learned from an Alexandrian a long droning
musical note which they all uttered together, so that it boomed over the
assembly. With the aid of these mercenary admirers, Nero had every hope,
in spite of his indifferent voice and clumsy execution, to return
to Rome, bearing with him the chaplets for song offered for free
competition by the Greek cities. As his great gilded galley with two
tiers of oars passed down the Mediterranean, the Emperor sat in his
cabin all day, his teacher by his side, rehearsing from morning to
night those compositions which he had selected, whilst every few hours
a Nubian slave massaged the Imperial throat with oil and balsam, that it
might be ready for the great ordeal which lay before it in the land of
poetry and song. His food, his drink, and his exercise were prescribed
for him as for an athlete who trains for a contest, and the twanging of
his lyre, with the strident notes of his voice, resounded continually
from the Imperial quarters.

Now it chanced that there lived in those days a Grecian goatherd named
Policles, who tended and partly owned a great flock which grazed upon
the long flanks of the hills near Heroea, which is five miles north of
the river Alpheus, and no great distance from the famous Olympia. This
person was noted all over the countryside as a man of strange gifts and
singular character. He was a poet who had twice been crowned for his
verses, and he was a musician to whom the use and sound of an instrument
were so natural that one would more easily meet him without his staff
than his harp. Even in his lonely vigils on the winter hills he would
bear it always slung over his shoulder, and would pass the long hours
by its aid, so that it had come to be part of his very self. He was
beautiful also, swarthy and eager, with a head like Adonis, and in
strength there was no one who could compete with him. But all was
ruined by his disposition, which was so masterful that he would brook
no opposition nor contradiction. For this reason he was continually at
enmity with all his neighbours, and in his fits of temper he would spend
months at a time in his stone hut among the mountains, hearing nothing
from the world, and living only for his music and his goats.

One spring morning