Nero had returned to Rome, and drew still closer his bond of intimacy with Otho. Otho was his evil genius. In vain did Agrippina attempt to keep her son in the paths of outward conformity with the requirements of his position. In vain did Seneca and Burrus remind him of the responsibilities of an Emperor of Rome. Otho became his model, and Otho represented to one half of the Roman population the ideal which they themselves most desired and admired. All the voluptuous æstheticism, all the diseased craving in Nero’s mind for the bizarre, the monstrous, and the impossible; all the ‘_opéra bouffe_’ elements of his character, with its perverted instincts as of a tenth-rate artist, were strengthened and stimulated by his intercourse with Otho. As a matter of course, the command of unlimited treasures followed the possession of an unchallenged autocracy. Though there was a theoretical distinction between the public exchequer and the privy purse, there was no real limit between the two. This ‘deified gamin’ had complete command of the resources of Italy and the provinces. Cost was never allowed to stand in the way of his grotesque extravagance. A boy was the lord of the world--_a bad boy_--who delighted in such monkey-tricks as taking his stand secretly on the summit of the proscenium in the theatre, setting the actors and pantomimes by the ears, and flinging missiles at people’s heads. Shortly after his return to Rome he gave a banquet, and the chief new feature of the entertainment was that the head of each guest had been sprinkled with precious perfumes. Otho determined that he would not be outdone. He was laden with debts; but what did that matter when he might look forward some day to exhausting some rich province with rapine? He asked Nero to sup with him, and determined that he would set the fashion to imperial magnificence. The banqueters were nine in number: Otho and Nero; Petronius, as the ‘arbiter of elegance’; Tigellinus, as the most pliable of parasites; the actor Paris, because of his wit, grace, and beauty; Vatinius, as the most unspeakable of buffoons; Clodius Pollio, an ex-prætor, Pedanius Secundus, the Præfect of the city, and Octavius Sagitta, a tribune of the people, whom Nero liked for their dissolute manners.