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EMPEROR AND AESTHETE 109
that of a quaestor's clerk. That no nobler companion had
been sought for her would have been regarded as an insult
by any lady of haughty character; but Octavia preferred
the society of the honest matron to that of a thousand
Crispinillas.
Seneca and Burrus were invited for a brief visit only,
and as Nero liked to give a flavour of intellectuality to the
society which he gathered round him, Lucan was asked, as
the rising poet of the day and Silius
; Italicus, as a sort of
poet laureate and
; Persius, the young Etrurian
knight, who, though but twenty-one years old, was so warmly
eulogised by his tutor, Cornutus, that great things were
expected of him. None of his satires had yet seen the
light, but his head would hardly have been safe if Nero
could have read some of the lines locked up in his writingdesk.
With these had been also invited C. Plinius Secundus,
a wealthy knight, thirty-four years of age, in whose encyclopaedic
range of knowledge it was hoped that the guests might
find an endless fund of amusement and anecdote in their
more serious moments.
But while Nero liked to keep up the credit of dabbling in
to whom he looked for his
literary pursuits, the choice spirits real delight were very different from these graver personages.
The fashionable elegance of Otho and the luxurious cynicism
of Petronius were indispensable for his amusement. Tigellinus
was too intimate to be excluded ;
and with these came
Vatinius, the witty buffoon and cobbler of Beneventum, an
informer of the lowest class. This cobbler's chief recommendations
were personal deformity, an outrageous tongue,
and an abnormally prominent nose. He avenged himself on
society for the wrongs inflicted on him by nature. He rejoiced
in the immortality of having given his name to a drinking-cup
with a long nozzle, which has preserved his memory in the
verse of Juvenal and Martial.
Here Nero enjoyed life to his heart's content. The happy
accident that the villa really consisted of two edifices, separated
by the bridge across the glen, enabled him to keep his least
welcome guests in the Villa Castor, and his chosen companions
in the Villa Pollux.
In the grounds of the Villa Castor, Seneca and Burrus had
rooms in which they could transact with their secretaries their