whom he feared to leave behind him at Rome, and who were all marked for
death in the course of his wanderings. In his train he took Natus,
his singing coach; Cluvius, a man with a monstrous voice, who should
bawl out his titles; and a thousand trained youths who had learned to
applaud in unison whenever their master sang or played in public.
So deftly had they been taught that each had his own role to play.
Some did no more than give forth a low deep hum of speechless
appreciation. Some clapped with enthusiasm. Some, rising from
approbation into absolute frenzy, shrieked, stamped, and beat sticks
upon the benches. Some--and they were the most effective--had learned
from an Alexandrian a long droning musical note which they all uttered
together, so that it boomed over the assembly. With the aid of these
mercenary admirers, Nero had every hope, in spite of his indifferent
voice and clumsy execution, to return to Rome, bearing with him the
chaplets for song offered for free competition by the Greek cities.
As his great gilded galley with two tiers of oars passed down the
Mediterranean, the Emperor sat in his cabin all day, his teacher by his
side, rehearsing from morning to night those compositions which he had
selected, whilst every few hours a Nubian slave massaged the Imperial
throat with oil and balsam, that it might be ready for the great ordeal
which lay before it in the land of poetry and song. His food, his
drink, and his exercise were prescribed for him as for an athlete who
trains for a contest, and the twanging of his lyre, with the strident
notes of his voice, resounded continually from the Imperial quarters.

Now it chanced that there lived in those days a Grecian goatherd named
Policles, who tended and partly owned a great flock which grazed upon
the long flanks of the hills near Heroea, which is five miles north of
the river Alpheus, and no great distance from the famous Olympia.
This person was noted all over the countryside as a man of strange gifts