In stature he was a little below the common height; his skin was foul and
					spotted; his hair inclined to yellow; his features were agreeable rather than
					handsome; his eyes grey and dull, his neck was thick, his belly prominent, his
					legs very slender, his constitution sound. For, though excessively luxurious in
					his mode of living, he had, in the course of fourteen years, only three fits of
					sickness; which were so slight, that he neither forbore the use of wine, nor
					made any alteration in his usual diet. In his dress, and the care of his person
					he was so careless, that he had his hair cut in rings, one above another; and
					when in Achaia , he let it grow long
					behind; and he generally appeared in public in the loose dress which he used at
					table, with a handkerchief about his neck, and without either a girdle or
					shoes. He was instructed, when a boy, in the rudiments of almost all the liberal
					sciences; but his mother diverted him from the study of philosophy, as unsuited
					to one destined to be an emperor; and his preceptor, Seneca , discouraged him from reading the
					ancient orators, that he might longer secure his devotion to himself. Therefore,
					having a turn for poetry, he composed verses both with pleasure and ease; nor
					did he, as some think, publish those of other writers as his own. Several little
					pocketbooks and loose sheets have come into my possession, which contain some
					well-known verses in his own hand, and written in such a manner, that it was
					very evident, from the blotting and interlining, that they had not been
					transcribed from a copy, nor dictated by another, but were written by the
					composer of them. He had likewise great taste for drawing and painting, as well as for moulding
					statues in plaster. But, ab've all things, he most eagerly 'oveted popularity,
					beinighe rival of every man who obtained the applause of the people for anything
					he did. It was the general belief, that, after the crowns he won by his
					performances on the stage, he would the next lustrum have taken his place among
					the wrestlers at the Olympic games. For he was continually practising that art;
					nor did he witness the gymnastic games in any part of Greece otherwise than sitting upon the ground
					in the stadium, as the umpires do. And if a pair of wrestlers happened to break
					the bounds, he would with his own hands drag them back into the centre of the
					circle. Because he was thought to equal Apollo in music, and the sun in
					chariot-driving, he resolved also to imitate the achievements of Hercules. And
					they say that a lion was got ready for him to kill, either with a club, or with
					a close hug, in view of the people in the amphitheatre; which he was to perform
					naked. Towards the end of his life, he publicly vowed, that if his power in the state
					was securely re-established, he would, in the spectacles which he intended to
					exhibit in honour of his success, include a performance upon organs, See c. xli. as well as upon flutes and bagpipes,
					and, on the last day of the games, would act in the play, and take the part of
					Turnus, as we find it in Virgil. And there are some who say, that he put to
					death the player Paris as a dangerous
					rival. He had an insatiable desire to immortalize his name, and acquire a reputation
					which should last through all succeeding ages; but it was capriciously directed.
					He therefore took from several things and places their former appellations, and
					gave them new names derived from his own. He called the month of April,
					Neroneus, and designed changing the name of Rome into that of Neropolis.