One of his predecessors, Nero (who never put any bounds,
nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no
pastime more agreeable than to run about the streets all night in a
disguise, and abuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and
sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This
was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day
was to sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon
the public stage; he was prouder of the garlands that were given to
his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes,
than all his forefathers were of their triumphs over nations. He
did not at his death complain that so mighty an emperor, and the
last of all the Caesarian race of deities, should be brought to so
shameful and miserable an end, but only cried out, "Alas! what pity
it is that so excellent a musician should perish in this manner!"
His uncle Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice; that was
the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the madnesses of
Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of
Tiberius. Would one think that Augustus himself, the highest and
most fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent
parts of nature, should be so hard put to it sometimes for want of
recreations, as to be found playing at nuts and bounding-stones with
little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he took delight in,
for their prating and their wantonness?
Was it for this, that Rome's best blood he spilt,
With so much falsehood, so much guilt?
Was it for this that his ambition strove
To equal Caesar first, and after Jove?
Greatness is barren sure of solid joys;
Her merchandise, I fear, is all in toys;
She could not else sure so uncivil be,
To treat his universal majesty,
His new created Deity,
With nuts and bounding-stones and boys.
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