Pythagoras (freedman)

Little is known about Pythagoras' background except that he was a freedman who accompanied Nero and was called "one of that filthy herd" (uni ex illo contaminatorum grege).

In the year 64, during the Saturnalia, Tigellinus offered a series of banquets to Nero, after a few days of which Nero performed a marriage to Pythagoras:[5]

... he stooped to marry himself to one of that filthy herd, by name Pythagoras, with all the forms of regular wedlock. The bridal veil was put over the emperor; people saw the witnesses of the ceremony, the wedding dower, the couch and the nuptial torches; everything in a word was plainly visible, which, even when a woman weds darkness hides.

Suetonius tells the story of Nero's being the bride to a freedman named "Doryphorus". Both Tacitus and Dio Cassius mention only "Pythagoras". According to Champlin, it is improbable that a second such scandalous wedding occurred without being noted, and the simplest solution is that Suetonius mistook the name.[6] Doryphorus, one of the wealthiest and most powerful of Nero's freedmen, died in the year 62 before the banquets of Tigellinus,[6] where Nero, covered with skins of wild animals, was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women bound to stakes, after which he was dispatched by his freedman "Doryphorus".[7] As "doryphoros" means "spear bearer"[8] (Δορυφόρος) like the statue, it may be that the latinized word had just capitalized the Greek word.[9]

• Suetonius. Nero. 29
• Champlin, Edward (2005). Nero. Harvard University Press. p. 346. ISBN 978-0-674-01822-8.

• History of same-sex unions
• Homosexuality in ancient Rome
• Sporus