Feasting like Nero

When he wasn’t torturing Christians and poisoning his family, Nero liked to indulge in raucous feasts with erotic overtones. Inspired by Heston’s Feasts, 4Food spent a day in life of the greedy tyrant to see how he would get on, eating in the 21st century.

What’s so great about me is that I am not at all frightened of walking around a strange city on my own. I’m always doing it in Rome. Sometimes I put on a funny wig and a lady’s toga and go “Oooh, help me!” then, when someone comes over to help, I punch them in the stomach or poke my finger in their stupid eyes. Ha!

So I wasn’t at all terrified when I found myself in a doorway of a sex shop on a dirty road called Old Compton Street. Drawn to the mysterious music exploding from a doorway nearby, I followed the siren song to a wild cavern filled with semi-nude men. “By Jupiter’s orbs,” I gasped as one gyrating youth, with the body of Atlas himself, thrust a multicoloured beverage into my hand. “You look like you could do with something long and hard,” he leered into my naughty ear.

We danced like Bacchus, draining glass after glass of the wittily named ‘cocktails‘ until I was soaked through my toga with drink and sweat and as hungry as Tantalus. I caught the eye of a pretty young man with well pronounced muscles, patted him on the bot-bot and asked if he’d like to share dinner with the most powerful man in the world.

We left and joined a merry band of youths in a nearby Oriental dining room. I was delighted to learn that every one of them was an actor. Even the waiter. Because I am so generous, I treated my fellow performers to a moving rendition of ‘Orestes the Murderer of his Mother’, which was probably the best thing they had ever heard because there was a profound silence when I’d finished. Then I ordered 100 bottles of their finest wine to celebrate my genius.

“Where are the slaves?” I asked my Adonis, “I could murder some flamingo brains.” “You have to serve yourself,” my companion informed me, “it’s an all-you-can-eat Chinese.”

“I can eat more than all of you!” I cried with glee and used my swift hand to shovel rice and fried meats into my Roman mouth. My barbarian companions cheered me on, then, when they though I could eat no more, I produced my emetic-feather and after a quick vomit I was ready to go again.

For more on historic eating, see Heston’s Feasts

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