Nero

MENECRATES The cutting of the Isthmus, Musonius, undertaken by your tyrant with his own hand, as they say, showed a Greek understanding.

MUSONIUS Know, Menecrates, that Nero had conceived even better designs; for he was going to remove, for those who sail the sea, the long circuits of the Peloponnese beyond Malea by a breach of the Isthmus only twenty stades wide. This would have benefited both the trade and the cities upon the sea and those in the interior; for the produce of home suffices even for these, if the coastal regions prosper.

MENECRATES Relate all this, then, Musonius, since we all wish to hear it, unless you intend to be busy with something else.

MUSONIUS I will go through it, since you wish it; for I do not know with what I could gratify more those who have come to so unpleasant a place of meditation for the sake of study. Now songs were leading Nero into Achaea, and the conviction, firmly held, that not even the Muses could sing more sweetly than he; and he wished to be crowned at the Olympic games too—the most athletic of the contests—by singing. For as to the Pythian games, he held that he had a greater share in them than Apollo, since not even Apollo, he thought, would set lyre and song against his own. As for the Isthmus, it was not among the things he had planned from afar; but, falling in with the nature of the place, he was seized with a longing for a great work, calling to mind the king of the Achaeans who once marched against Troy, how he cut off Euboea from Boeotia by the Euripus about Chalcis; and further Darius too, how the Bosporus was bridged by him against the Scythians; and the deeds of Xerxes, and perhaps those before these, he reckoned the greatest of great works. And besides, by joining all men in a short space to one another, he thought that Greece would be splendidly feasted with strangers from abroad; for tyrannical natures are drunken, yet they touch in a manner . . . and to hear this utterance. Coming forward from the stage, he sang a hymn to Amphitrite and Poseidon, and a short song to Melicertes and Leucothea; and when the governor of Greece had handed him a golden mattock, he rushed to the digging, amid applause and song, and struck the earth three times, I think, and having exhorted those entrusted with the command to lay to the work vigorously, he went up to Corinth, thinking he had surpassed all the deeds of Heracles. Now the men from the prisons wrought out the rocky and hard-to-work parts, and the army the earthy and level; and when we had been yoked to the Isthmus some twelve days, a report came down from Corinth, not yet clear, that Nero had changed his mind about the cutting. They said that the Egyptians, measuring the natures of the two seas, had found them not on a level, but, judging the one from Lechaeum to be higher, had feared for Aegina; for, so great a sea being poured over the island, even Aegina might be carried away beneath the waves. But from the cutting of the Isthmus not even Thales, the wisest and most natural of philosophers, could have turned Nero, for he longed to cut it more than to sing in public; rather it was the movement of the western nations and the consul who now lays hold of those parts—his name is Vindex—that drew Nero away from Greece and the Isthmus, after he had measured coldly; for I know the seas to be of equal level with the land and one with another. And they say that his affairs at Rome too are now slipping and giving way. This you yourselves heard yesterday from the tribune who sailed in.

MENECRATES But his voice, Musonius, on account of which he is mad for music and longs for the Olympic and Pythian crowns—how stands it with the tyrant? For of those who sailed to Lemnos some marvelled at it, others laughed.

MUSONIUS But that man, Menecrates, is neither marvellous in his utterance nor again ridiculous, for nature has tuned him blamelessly and in a middle way. He sounds hollow by nature and deep, his throat being sunken, and his airs, being so constructed, ring out somewhat with a booming; yet the pitches of his notes smooth this away, since he does not, indeed, trust in himself, but relies on the charm of his modulations and on an easily-led composition of melody and a well-ordered lyre-playing, and on knowing, at the right moment, how to walk and to stand and to shift his place and to make his nod agree with the airs—the only shameful thing being that a king should seem to take pains in these matters. But if he should imitate his betters, alas for the laughter! How many of the spectators break out, even though countless terrors hang over them, should anyone be seen laughing at him; for he bends forward more than is moderate, drawing in his breath, and stands on the tips of his feet, thrown back, like those on the wheel; and being red by nature, he grows redder still, his face flaming, while his breath is scanty and somehow not sufficient.

MENECRATES And those who contend against him, Musonius, how do they give way? For surely they yield by art.

MUSONIUS By art indeed, like those who let themselves be thrown in wrestling; but consider, Menecrates, the actor of tragedy, how he died at the Isthmus; for there are dangers about the arts too, if the artists overstrain them.

MENECRATES And what is this, Musonius? For I am quite ignorant of the story.

MUSONIUS Hear, then, a story strange indeed, yet done before the eyes of the Greeks. There being a law at the Isthmus that neither comedy nor tragedy should be performed in contest, Nero resolved that tragic actors should win, and there came forward to this contest several, but the Epirot, having the best voice, and being held in good repute for it and admired, played a part more splendid than usual and pretended to be in love with the crown and not to yield it before Nero had given him ten talents for the victory. But Nero grew savage and was beside himself; for indeed he was listening beneath the stage at this very contest, and when the Greeks shouted for the Epirot, he sent his secretary bidding the man yield to him; and as the other raised his voice still higher and contended in popular fashion, Nero sent in upon the platform his own actors, as though they had some business with the matter; and indeed, holding ivory tablets, double-leaved, and thrusting them forward like daggers, they set the Epirot up against the nearest column and broke his throat, striking him with the edges of the tablets.

MENECRATES And did he win the tragedy, Musonius, having wrought so foul a deed before the eyes of the Greeks?

MUSONIUS These are mere games to a youth who slew his mother; and if he killed a tragic actor by cutting out his voice, why should one wonder? For indeed he set out to block up even the Pythian cleft, from which the oracular voices breathed forth, that Apollo too might have no voice—and that though the Pythian god had enrolled him among the Orestes and the Alcmaeons, to whom matricide gave even a certain account of glory, since they avenged their fathers; but he, being able in no way to say whom he had avenged, thought himself insulted by the god, hearing things milder than the truth. But in the midst of our talk—what is this ship approaching? It seems to bring some good news; for they are crowned upon their heads, like a chorus of good omen, and one of them stretches out his hand from the prow, exhorting us to take courage and to rejoice, and he shouts—if I do not mishear—that Nero is gone.

MENECRATES He shouts indeed, Musonius, and more clearly the nearer he comes to land. Well done, O gods!

MUSONIUS But let us not pray over it; for over the dead, they say, one ought not.