A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

482 From Principate to Monarchy
Tacitus, Annals,
xi. 25.
Italian peoples after Latin,
This practice, too, will establish
itself, and what we are this day justifying by precedents
will be itself a precedent."
The emperor's speech was followed by a decree of
the
senate, and the ^dui were the first to obtain the right of
becoming senators at Rome.
His accomplishments
in music.
Suetonius,
Nero, 20.
A ncient
World, 446-8.
II.
Nero's Tastes
Among the liberal arts which he was taught in his youth
was music; and immediately after his advancement to
the imperial office, he sent for Turpnus, a harpist of the
highest reputation, who flourished at the time. After
sitting with him several days as he sang and played after
dinner till late at night, Nero began gradually to practice
on the instrument himself. ... He made his first public
appearance at Naples; and although the theatre quivered
with the sudden shock of an earthquake, he did not desist
The
"Golden
House."
Suetonius,
Nero, 31.
until he had finished the piece of music he had begun. . . .
At the same time he chose young men of the equestrian
rank and above five thousand robust young fellows of the
common people, to learn various kinds of applause . . .
which they were to practice in his honor whenever he
performed.
In nothing was he so prodigal as in his buildings.
completed his palace by extending it from the Palatine to
the Esquiline Hill. At first he called this addition simply
the Passage; but after it was burned down and rebuilt, he
named it the Golden House. Of the dimensions and furniture
it may suffice to give the following description. The
porch was so high that there stood in it a colossal statue of
Nero a hundred and twenty feet in height; and the space
included in it was so ample that it had triple porticos a
mile in length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with
He