2019-06-22

Sporus

Amazingly enough, these captions aren’t just vaguely “based on a true story”, instead, they are lifted more or less verbatim from the histories of Dion Cassius and Suetonius. Even the more bizarre details aren’t my invention.

Rejoice, since the glorious emperor Nero decided to take you as his wive.
He ordered me, Calvia Crispinilla, to make sure that everything that relates to you is done to his satisfaction, so I have complete and total authority over you.
First, I’ll have you castrated. If I’d let you keep your balls, you might start to grow a beard, and we can’t have that.
You see, your face is the spitting image of the emperor’s previous wive Poppea, who died under tragic circumstances (the emperor kicked her to death while she was pregnant).
But luckily, her divine beauty has been reborn in you. That’s why your name is no longer “Sporus”, but “Poppea”, and you will wear dresses like a woman and pleasure the emperor like a woman.
Nero has offered a fortune to the physician who can turn you into a woman. Until one of them succeeds, he’ll have to contend himself with the orifices nature gave you.
Some minor changes: Nymphidius Sabinus deposed Nero and wants to become emperor himself.
But don’t worry, you pretty thing, he wants to marry you and make you his empress, like Nero did.
Okay, so Nymphidius Sabinus is dead, but Otho, a former husband of Poppea, agrees that you look exactly like her, he’s the new emperor, and he’s happy to keep you as his consort.
The new emperor (the third one this year, and no end in sight), a guy named Aulus Vitellius, surprisingly doesn’t want you as his wife.
Instead, he wants you to appear in a public show “The Rape of Proserpina”, about how Hades stole the beautiful virgin Persephone and made her his wife.
You’ll perform as the raped virgin.
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1 comment:

  1. UnknownSunday, July 28, 2019 at 9:44:00 PM GMT+2

    The truth is almost always stranger than fiction, and this story is no exception. What a delightfully terrifying and emasculating chain of events.

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