The Bellman.
sell-out zone
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Nero himself was a better than country fair fiddler
I'm not sure why Patrick Smith named his blog Tiberius and Gaius Speaking... but I can only assume that the references are to the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus and his successor Gaius Julius Casaer Germanicus. Gaius, of course, is more commonly known by the name Caligula.
Anyway, I bring it up because the most shocking passages in Seutonius are his descriptions of Tiberius Caesar's villa on the island of Capri, and this seems like a pretty good excuse to post an excerpt.
Stop reading now if you're squeamish.
Anyway, I bring it up because the most shocking passages in Seutonius are his descriptions of Tiberius Caesar's villa on the island of Capri, and this seems like a pretty good excuse to post an excerpt.
Stop reading now if you're squeamish.
On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri's woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this "the old goat's garden," punning on the island's name.
He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction. Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.
