The Midnight Archives is a gold mine of tragic stories and dark fairytale retellings - but one of the creepiest is the real-life story of Sporus, Emperor Nero's teenage eunuch "wife!"
Sporus was likely an epithet given to him when his abuse started, considering it to be derived from the Greek word σπόρος (spóros), meaning "seed" or "semen", which may refer to his inability to have children following his castration. Against this popular view, David Woods points out that the name resembles the Latin word spurius of Sabine origin, meaning "illegitimate child"; hence Woods advances the thesis that Nero himself had called the boy Spurius, or that he believed the Greek name Sporus to be related to the Latin word. Little is known about this teenager's short life before he came to the Imperial court and got married to the Emperor to replace the wife he had killed (uxoricide). He may have been a prisoner of war from Greece.
He may have been a puer delicatus. These were sometimes castrated to preserve their youthful qualities (much like an operatic castrato). The puer delicatus generally was a child or teen slave chosen by his master for his beauty and sexual attractiveness.
Nero did a lot of creepy things (except playing the lyre while Rome burned, that's a myth) - assassinating his own mother, "giving birth" to a live frog, but the crowner was marrying a femboy eunuch. Previously he had killed his previous wife Poppea (from whom the French "poupée" for doll may come) by kicking her in the heavily pregnant belly, which made her abort. After which he thought "I need a new wife!" and he saw this cute teenager at his palace...
In 67 AD, he married Sporus, who was said to bear a remarkable resemblance to Poppaea. Nero had Sporus castrated, and during their marriage, Nero had Sporus appear in public as his wife, in drag and makeup, wearing the regalia that was customary for Roman empresses. He then took Sporus to Greece and back to Rome, making Calvia Crispinilla serve as "mistress of the wardrobe" to Sporus, ἐπιτροπεία τὴν περὶ ἐσθῆτα (epitropeía tḕn perì esthêta). Sporus played the role of Nero's wife. Among other forms of address, Sporus was termed "Lady", "Empress", and "Mistress". Suetonius quotes one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father Ahenobarbus had married someone more like the castrated boy.
Shortly before Nero's death, during the Calends festival, Sporus presented Nero with a ring bearing a gemstone depicting the Rape of Persephone, in which the ruler of the underworld (Hades) forces a young girl (his own niece) to become his bride. It was at the time considered one of the many bad omens of Nero's fall. This would not be the only time Sporus was cast as Persephone...
Sporus was one of the four companions on the emperor's last journey in June of 68 AD, along with Epaphroditus, Neophytus, and Phaon. It was Sporus, and not his wife Messalina, to whom Nero turned as he began the ritual lamentations before taking his own life. Nero's famous last words were: "What a great artist dies with me!"
AFTER NERO'S DEATH
Soon afterward, Sporus was taken to the care of the Praetorian prefect Nymphidius Sabinus, who had persuaded the Praetorian Guards to desert Nero. Nymphidius treated Sporus as a wife and called him "Poppaea". Nymphidius tried to make himself emperor but was killed by his own guardsmen. In 69 AD, Sporus became involved with Otho, the second of a rapid, violent succession of four emperors who vied for power during the chaos that followed Nero's death. Otho had once been married to Poppaea, until Nero had forced their divorce. Otho reigned for three months until his suicide after the Battle of Bedriacum. His victorious rival, Vitellius, the teen's next and last owner, intended to use Sporus as a victim in a public entertainment: a fatal "re-enactment" of the Rape of Persephone at a gladiator show, in which Vitellius would star as Hades and Sporus as Persephone. Sporus avoided this public humiliation by committing suicide.
"Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" is a quotation from Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" of January 1735.
It alludes to "breaking on the wheel", a form of torture in which victims had their long bones broken by an iron bar while tied to a Catherine wheel.The quotation is used to suggest someone is "employing superabundant effort in the accomplishment of a small matter" (compare "shooting a fly/mosquito with an elephant gun" in modern English).
The line appears in a section criticizing the courtier John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, who was close to Queen Caroline and was one of Pope's bitterest enemies. The section also refers to accusations of sodomy against Hervey. They were originally made in William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath's Proper reply to a late scurrilous libel of 1731, which had led to Hervey challenging Pulteney to a duel. Hervey's decade-long clandestine affair with Stephen Fox would eventually contribute to his downfall. Despite Pope's claims, Hervey should not be considered strictly gay, as he was known to be bisexual.
The line "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" forms line 308 of the "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" in which Alexander Pope responded to his physician's word of caution about making satirical attacks on powerful people by sending him a selection of such attacks. It appears in a section on the courtier John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, who was close to Queen Caroline and was one of Pope's bitterest enemies. The section opens as follows:
"Sporus", a male slave favoured by Emperor Nero, was castrated by the emperor, and subsequently married. Pope here refers to accusations made in Pulteney's Proper reply to a late scurrilous libel of 1731 which led to Hervey challenging Pulteney to a duel. Hervey's decade-long clandestine affair with Stephen Fox would eventually contribute to his downfall.
"What? that thing of silk" uses a metaphor of a silkworm spinning that Pope had already used in The Dunciad to refer to bad poets. "Ass's (donkey's) milk" was at that time a common tonic, and was part of a diet adopted by Hervey. Pale skin was preferred by the upper class in preindustrial societies, since most commoners (farmers, fishermen, etc.) worked outdoors and were sunburned."This painted child" comments on make-up such as rouge used by the handsome Hervey, and by Sporus himself.
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