For Nero it is a great encouragement to make the journey to Achaea.

A few days since he told me, however, that he had doubts as to what the Roman people might say; that they might revolt out of love for him, and fear touching the distribution of grain and touching the games, which might fail them in case of his prolonged absence.
"We are going, however, to Beneventum to look at the cobbler magnificence which Vatinius will exhibit, and thence to Greece, under the protection of the divine brothers of Helen.

As to me, I have noted one thing, that when a man is among the mad he grows mad himself, and, what is more, finds a certain charm in mad pranks.

Greece and the journey in a thousand ships; a kind of triumphal advance of Bacchus among nymphs and bacchantes crowned with myrtle, vine, and honeysuckle; there will be women in tiger skins harnessed to chariots; flowers, thyrses, garlands, shouts of 'Evoe!' music, poetry, and applauding Hellas.

All this is well; but we cherish besides more daring projects.
We wish to create a species of Oriental Imperium,--an empire of palm-trees, sunshine, poetry, and reality turned into a dream, reality turned into the delight of life only.