click to read pdf file - The Preterist Archive

HERO IN GREECE 539
to observe the slightest rules, and perspiring with anxiety if
he made the smallest mistake. Besides this, he debased himself
with all the pettiest intrigues of tenth-rate theatrical
life. He defamed his competitors, or bribed them not to do
their best, or cajoled them to cede the victory to him. When
an Epirot, with a fine voice, refused to cede the prize unless
Nero paid him ten talents, he was pushed against a column
by Nero's clique and stabbed to death. It required the power
of the Emperor to secure the rewards of the comedian.
Without believing, or even alluding to, the deeds recorded
of him by Dion Cassius, it is clear that his plunderings, and
crimes, and secret orgies continued unabated. From the
Thespians he stole the Cupid of Praxiteles in Pentelic marble
;
from the Pisatans of Olympia the statue of Ulysses
among: o the Greek chiefs drawing lots to answer the
*-*
challenge o
of Hector. Eich men were proscribed in consequence of
secret delations, which often sprang from the greed of the detestable
Calvia Crispinilla, who was now the keeper of the
wardrobe of Sporus. They were struck down, unheard, and
their possessions were divided. Home had been left under
the government of two ex-slaves, Helius and Polycletus, who
were so rapacious that the people complained of being under
two Neros instead of one.
Amid such crimes little was thought of the fate of Paris.
The poor pantomime, whose beauty, grace, and skill had been
the delight of Borne, had excited the jealousy of Nero because
he could not teach him how to dance. Paris,
turus, had been no better than a slave, and we cannot blame
him too severely if,
in such an age and such surroundings,
lie
had been stained by the vices in the midst of which he lived,
and his nature, not originally ignoble, had been
'
subdued
To what it
wrought in, like the dyer's hand.'
like Ali-
But his death, like that of Eoscius, ' eclipsed the gaiety of
nations,' and gave one warning more had it been needed
to Aliturus, that the friendship of tyrants means death.
But the worst of these Grecian enormities many of
which cannot be narrated involved the acme of treachery
and ingratitude.
No man had shed a purer lustre over the
ace of Nero than the brave and honest Corbulo. His life