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VICTOR OVER THE PUBLIC SERVITUDE 319
one night an infant had been found exposed in the Forum
with a scrap of parchment round its neck, on which was
written, / ' expose you, lest
you should murder your mother '
;
and that, another night, a sack had been hung round the neck
of his statue as though to threaten him with the old weird
punishment of parricides. Once, when he was looking on at
one of the rude plays known as Atellane, the actor Datus had
to pronounce the line,
'
Good health to you, father ; good health to you, mother ,
'
and, with the swift inimitable gestures of which the quick Italian
people never missed the significance, he managed to indicate
Claudius dying of poison and Agrippina swimming for her
life. The populace roared out its applause at an illusion so
managed that it could hardly be resented and once
;
again, when
coming to the line,
'
Death drags you by the foot.'
Datus indicated Nero's hatred to the Senate by pointing significantly
to Nero at the word ' death ' and to the senatorial seats
as he emphasized the word '
you!
But Nero was liable to insults still more direct. Could he
not read with his own eyes the graffito scrawled upon every
'
blank space of wall in Rome :
Nero, Orestes, Alonceon, matricidce
' ? He could not detect or punish these anonymous
scrawlers, but he would have liked to punish men of rank,
whom he well knew to have written stinging satires against
him, branding him with every kind of infamy.
Two resources alone were adequate to dissipate the terrors
of his conscience the intoxication of promiscuous applause
and the self-abandonment to a sensuality which grew ever more
shameless as the restraints of Agrippina's authority and Seneca's
influence were removed.
Nero had long delighted to sing to the harp at his own banquets
in citharcedic array. To the old Eoman dignity such
conduct seemed unspeakably degrading in the Emperor of the
legions. Yet Nero divulged his shame to the world by having
himself represented in statues and on coins in the dress of a
harpist, his lips open as though in the act of song, his lyre half
supported on a baldric embossed with gems, his tunic falling
in variegated folds to his feet, and his arms covered by the