Another visitor of a very different kind next arrived in the classic land. Nero had already displayed his taste for the fine arts by despatching an emissary to Greece with the object of collecting statues for the adornment of his palace and capital. Delphi, Olympia and Athens, where, in the phrase of a contemporary satirist, “it was easier to meet a god than a man,” furnished an ample booty, and the Thespians again lost, this time for ever, the statue of Eros. But Nero was not content with the sculpture of Greece; he yearned to display his manifold talents before a Greek audience, “the only one,” as he said, “worthy of himself and his accomplishments.” Accordingly, in 66, he crossed over to Kassopo in Corfù, and began his theatrical tour by singing before the altar of Zeus there. Such was the zeal of the Imperial pot-hunter, that he commanded all the national games to be celebrated in the same year, so that he might have the satisfaction of winning prizes at them all in the same tour. In order to exhibit his musical gifts, he ordered the insertion of a new item in the time-honoured programme at Olympia, where he built himself a house, and at Corinth broke the Isthmian rules by contending in both tragedy and comedy. As a charioteer he eclipsed all previous performances by driving ten horses abreast, upsetting his car and still receiving the prize from the venal judges; as a victor, he had the effrontery to proclaim his own victory, and the number of his wreaths might have done credit to a royal funeral. In return for their compliance, the Greeks were informed by the voice of the Emperor himself on the day of the Isthmian games that they were once more free from the jurisdiction of the Senate and exempt from the payment of taxes[10]. The name of freedom and the practical advantage of fiscal immunity appealed with force to the patriotic and commercial sides of the Greek character, and outweighed the extortions of the Emperor and his suite to such a degree that Nero became a popular hero, in whose honour medals were struck and statues erected. To signalise yet further his stay in Greece, he bade the long projected canal to be dug across the Isthmus. This time the work was actually begun, and a prominent philosopher, who had incurred the Imperial displeasure, was seen digging away with a gang of other convicts. Nero himself dug the first sod with a golden spade, and carried away the first spadefuls of earth in a basket on his shoulders. But the task, of which traces may still be seen, was soon abandoned, and the dangers which threatened his throne recalled the Emperor to Italy. But first he consulted the Oracle of Delphi, which fully maintained its ancient reputation for obscurity and accuracy, but was bidden henceforth to be dumb. The two most celebrated seats of Greek antiquity, Athens and Sparta, he left, however, unvisited—Sparta, because he disapproved of its institutions; Athens, because he, the matricide, feared the vengeance of