Explore "The Contest" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the year of our Lord 66, the Emperor Nero, being at that time in the / twenty-ninth year of his life and the thirteenth of his reign, set sail / for Greece with the strangest company and the most singular design that / any monarch has ever entertained. With ten galleys he went forth / from Puteoli, carrying with him great stores of painted scenery and / theatrical properties, together with a number of knights and senators, / whom he feared to leave behind him at Rome, and who were all marked for / death in the course of his wanderings. In his train he took Natus, his / singing coach; Cluvius, a man with a monstrous voice, who should bawl / out his titles; and a thousand trained youths who had learned to applaud / in unison whenever their master sang or played in public. So deftly had / they been taught that each had his own role to play. Some did no more / than give forth a low deep hum of speechless appreciation. Some clapped / with enthusiasm. Some, rising from approbation into absolute frenzy, / shrieked, stamped, and beat sticks upon the benches. Some -- and they / were the most effective -- had learned from an Alexandrian a long droning / musical note which they all uttered together, so that it boomed over the / assembly.
With the aid of these mercenary admirers, Nero had every hope, / in spite of his indifferent voice and clumsy execution, to return / to Rome, bearing with him the chaplets for song offered for free / competition by the Greek cities. As his great gilded galley with two / tiers of oars passed down the Mediterranean, the Emperor sat in his / cabin all day, his teacher by his side, rehearsing from morning to / night those compositions which he had selected, whilst every few hours / a Nubian slave massaged the Imperial throat with oil and balsam, that it / might be ready for the great ordeal which lay before it in the land of / poetry and song. His food, his drink, and his exercise were prescribed / for him as for an athlete who trains for a contest, and the twanging of / his lyre, with the strident notes of his voice, resounded continually / from the Imperial quarters.