Note 36 — Chapter II · ON PEDICATION

And also Pythagoras. “One would have thought that nothing was left for him in the way of debauchery, and that he had reached the limits of depravity, if he had not a few days later chosen out of this infamous herd a certain Pythagoras, whom he took for his husband with all the solemnity of a marriage. The flammeum was put on the Emperor’s head, the auspices were consulted, neither dowry nor nuptial torches were forgotten; all was done openly, even those things, which, if done with a woman, are hidden by the night.” (Tacitus, Annals, XV., 37). The man called Pythagoras by Tacitus, appears to be the same to whom Suetonius (Nero, ch. 29), gives the name of Doryphorus, either on account of his services, or by mistake. “He took for husband the freedman Doryphorus in the same way in which Sporus had taken him himself for husband, and he counterfeited the cries and sobbings of virgins when losing their maidenhead.” Plate XXXVIII of the above quoted work shows an illustration of this anecdote.