Sporus
A Short Story
Based on fact as recorded in the Annals of Ancient Rome
By Maryanne Peters

My mother told me that my father was an important man. When I grew to older I learned that unmarried mothers often claim this to excuse their shame. But when I was born in Rome during the reign of Claudius Caesar, that seemed a place and time without shame, anywhere. And in truth my mother was but a freed slave, so as the child of a freed slave, I had little reputation to be damaged.

If my father was from within the imperial family that might explain my resemblance to the empress Poppaea Sabina that brought me to the attention of the emperor himself. It was said, that what he did to me, was designed to end a line of claim to power through my father, whoever he might be. But Emperor Nero would know it, and he never told me that. But it is true that many died at his direction to eliminate competition for the highest office in the land.

I hope that I am not related to Sabina, as I consider her to be a monster. It is well known that she bewitched the Emperor and persuaded him not only to divorce his wife Octavia in order to marry her, but also to kill his own mother Agrippina, who opposed the marriage.

It may be sweet justice that Sabina died at Nero’s own hand in the 11th year of his reign. He kicked her to death when she was heavily pregnant with his child, killing them both. It was something that haunted him, and certainly affected me.

He knew of me as a youth in Court, and he asked that I be brought before him. When he saw me he wept. He told me that I was pretty, which is not what a young man wants to hear. But my fate was sealed. I reminded him of his wife. I was to become his creature. I was not only castrated but completely emasculated. Then I was prepared to be his bride.

My hair was longish, in the style of youths at that time. As a man entered commercial or political life he was expected to keep his hair short, but I was well short of that maturity. I was mature enough to be sexually active with local girls, but the knife put an end to all of that. I was 16 years old.

A skilled hairdresser was brought into prepare me for the wedding. Hair cut from a woman’s head was woven into my own and what I had of a beard was torn from my face. My face was painted in the style of the day, with my eyelashes and eyebrows darkened with soot and oil, and my lips reddened with exotic cream. My entire body was bladed clear of hair and dirt, and softened with fragrant oils.

Nero wanted me to be a woman. He called me Sabina as if I was his late wife, but he knew that I was Sporus. He told others that I was.

He had some fine ladies associated with the palace coach me in feminine voice and graces. Once I had overcome the shock of the injury done to me, I felt that I needed to comply. I then knew that the Emperor Nero was reputed to be a man completely capable of murder, particular of those close to him. I had no wish to be among the dead.

The wedding was huge ceremony as befits an emperor. The entire senate was in attendance, together with the leaders of notable families. I was presented as the woman who would be his wife, but most of those present knew that I was not a woman. Still, nobody said anything. Just like me, they all wanted to survive.

I wore a long gown and a rose coloured veil. My body was shaped with tightly-laced garments so I appeared to have the shape of a woman. Nero said that I was beautiful, but others said it too. I may not have believed it at the time, but I came to know that it was true.

After our wedding the Emperor had arranged a honeymoon holiday in Greece, so we went to the Coast and boarded the Imperial ship for the voyage.

That night I had my first sexual encounter with the Emperor, who (strangely for him) had decided not to indulge himself until after the ceremony. But he did indulge himself on his wedding night.

The ladies had kindly prepared me for this moment. I had been schooled on how best to empty my bowel and wash myself, so that my anus might be smoother to enter, and sweeter smelling than a vagina. I was prepared that night, and on every night after that when I was called upon.

That first night I surprised myself by having an orgasm before he did. From the place where my penis once stood I even discharged some clear fluid. I called out when it happened, in a voice that was not female. Nero would have disapproved had he not them orgasmed himself. After that I learned to make sounds more like a woman, and to add to his pleasure with the movement of my body. For I lived at the pleasure of the Emperor, so his pleasure was my focus.

But within a short time, I came to enjoy being a woman, and I told the Emperor this. Although I never would have thought it, as I had enjoyed sex with women, I came to desire his attentions, and the feeling of him inside me.

I thought that as a woman I could satisfy him, but Nero was a man who thirsted for sensual delights. He was fascinated by the pleasure I took from being entered, and so after our honeymoon he resolved to receive a man as well. Not just one man -he became “wife’ to two separate young men.

I confess that I was jealous. Initially I thought it was an insult to me efforts, but later I became glad that his sexual activities were not confined to me alone. All that I needed to do was to be his wife, and to display beauty and grace in his presence, and hunger and passion in his bed. Both things became easier with time.

I took much time over my appearance. I grew my hair longer and kept it clean by washing it regularly with lye water and rose petals. I could spread it across the pillow or dangle it in his face while we engaged in coitus, and then I had hairdressers to curl and arrange it when in public.

Once he understood that I enjoyed being his wife he offered honours and money to people who could transform me further into a woman. One man was able to find a brew that I drank daily and which had the effect of giving me breasts. The substance tasted foul, but was effective. I ended up with real breasts and an enlarged bottom, and soft womanly flesh all over my body. I found that my body, and in particular my nipples, had become so sensitive that rubbing them would give pleasure, just as a woman could feel.

Nero suggested I could have a vagina also, but that would involve cutting me again, and I was not ready for that. I would rather have the Emperor’s penis in my back passage than in an open wound between my legs. Still the Emperor offered great honours and large sums of money to anyone who could transform me into a true woman, with a womb so that I could bear him a child.

Nero introduced me to all as his wife. If I had thought that it was some cruel game at the beginning, I came to realise that he truly loved me.

Stranger still, I had come to love Nero. He was the one who had taken my manhood, and by rights I should have hated him. But I came to see just how much he cared for me, and when were physically intimate he was gentle and concerned for my joy as well as his own. When a person loves you, and makes love to you like that, it becomes hard not to love him back.

I knew that he was a bad man – some say that he was a monster – but I was with him when he fled Rome during the fires. There were only five of us, so I was important to him. He was becoming desperate and depressed, despite all my efforts to keep him in good cheer, but it still surprised me when he took his own life. He was a deeply flawed person. He had little courage for a fight, but I still would have expected him to have taken down more of his enemies than he did.

I prided myself that I had the courage to run with him. But the truth is that he was my husband and I had sworn to stay with him unto death. I kept that promise and nobody could ever deny it. We had been married for three years.

I wept for him. But unlike him, I was determined to survive.

I would have expected that Nero’s successors would have quickly disposed of me as the emperor’s folly, but I had the good fortune to be taken before the praetorian prefect Nymphidus Sabinus. If I was of noble birth it would be through his family, so perhaps there was some truth to it. But more importantly I had always understood that Sabinus was fascinated be me. I was guilty too, of flirting with him out of the sight of the emperor. It was dangerous, but I did this with men who were interested in me, simply to hone my feminine skills. I knew that I was pretty, but I also knew that the fact that I had once been male evoked extreme curiosity.

That flirtation was an investment that paid back. Sabinus granted me limited protection, but then I led him to my bed. I gave him an experience that he could never forget. Perhaps it was because of my life as a male I know better than women how to please a man. After a short while as his mistress he proposed that I marry him. I did. The ceremony was not so grand as my first wedding, but just as pleasing. I wore a beautiful gown and had my hair put up in an ornate style.

So now I was the widow of the emperor married to the man who had secured his downfall. This is because it was Sabinus and his friend Otho (later Emperor Otho) who had plotted against Nero and driven him from Rome. Sabinus believed that he was the illegitimate son of the Emperor Caligula and he was using this to claim the right to rule through direct link to the first Caesars. His claimed paternity seemed unlikely given what is widely known about that emperor – perhaps the most vicious and perverted ruler ever known.

If there was any link to the line of succession it was by marriage – his marriage to Nero’s widow - me. If that was it, then I was happy to play the role in order to survive. But just as it was with Nero, Sabinus fell in love with me.

Regardless of my skills in bed, I often wonder if it was my beauty or my character that won me the love of both husbands, and to what extent my prior existence as a man played a part. I like to think that as a person who had once been a man, I understood men better. Men want pleasure and ease with a woman. Without the monthly cycle, my personality was consistent. Men want a woman that other men are interested in, but can never have. I was beautiful, and desirable, and captivating, but always faithful to my husbands. Maybe just a little flirtation with others.

But the claims that Sabinus made through his lineage and his marriage, were not enough to displace Galba as emperor. One day my second husband did not return home, and I received news that he had been killed by a rival faction supporting another candidate to replace Galba as emperor.

As a matter of survival I approached my husband’s friend and co-conspirator, Otho, for protection. He gave it. When he became emperor I was a protected widow, both of his past emperor and of his friend.

Otho was married, but I became his mistress. This was the second emperor to enter my bed. Me, a man become woman, and son of a slave.

After some years of consuming the foul-tasting liquor daily, I had acquired truly female curves. I was a voluptuous young woman (I was still quite young), and a woman who was skilled in satisfying a man. Otho knew that, and I made sure that our first encounter did not disappoint him. But Otho came to care for me and respect me, as well. He was not love like Nero and Sabinus. I barely think him capable of that. But after sex we could talk as I lay next to him and he played with my hair. Uniquely, I had experience of all the problems he was facing. I was knowledgeable, supportive, and discrete.

So Otho never fell in love with me. But I think that his respect for me was greater than even Sabinus.

Unfortunately, Otho went the same way as my second husband, and as most of the Caesars before Nero – he died at the hands of his successor, one Vitellius. And this is where my luck would appear to have run out.

Vitellius was a pig of a man. He was large and fat, his only physical activity being eating. He had several banquets each day, often featuring rare and expensive food. While eating he enjoyed exotic entertainment, and I was called upon to contribute. He would compel me to sing, which I could do, with the ability to reach high notes close to that of a natural woman, as well as low notes that no woman could achieve. He would have me dance as a woman and then throw me a sword and tell me to fight for my life with a guardsman, as I had learned swordplay as a youth and kept it up for exercise. He was not interested in sex with me. He saw me as a boy in disguise.

After I had defeated one of his bodyguards in swordplay, he told me that I was such a treat that all Rome must see me perform at the Coliseum. He could have me appear as an amazon warrior, and pit me against some gladiator, of similar size to start with. Or, if I would not fight he said that he would re-enact the rape of Proserpina. Either way, I knew then that I was doomed to die at the hands of this pig. The question is how to avoid it.

I still had friends at Court, and it was planned that I should fake my death by suicide. I would throw myself into the Tiber in front of witnesses. My body (one procured for the purpose, her vagina sewn together and dressed in clothes of my station) would be discovered downstream much later in rotted condition.

The idea was that I would cut my hair and return to manhood. The Sporus who became Sabina would be gone forever. The problem was that I had a woman’s body and It could not easily changed. And my body was attractive to men. And I had become attracted to them. But most of all, I had grown used to life as a woman, and in particular a married woman. I knew that I could never return to life as a man, and I did not want to.

History records that I committed suicide as my husband the Emperor Nero had done, in June of that same year – the year that became known as “the Year of Four Emperors”. My friends came forward to testify that they had seen me jump. They buried the body with care and a small amount of ceremony. After all, I had been the wife or mistress, of two emperors.

I was Sporus, the boy castrated by Nero Caesar to become his wife. Supposedly dead in only my 22nd year. But I was not dead. I survived.

In fact, I married again and went on to be widowed a third and then a fourth time. By good fortune for me, and for every citizen of Rome, the new emperor was Vespasian. His reign lasted for 10 peaceful years, during which I was the wife of Marcus Teritus, and stepmother to his three children. Vespasian and my dear Marcus died in same year, and during the reign of Titus and Domitian I was married to Maximus Galba, whose wealth gave security for me and my children.

I am older now, but the Emperor Trajan is our Caesar, and Rome is at the height of its wealth and power. He is wise and moral, and it seems that the days of fear and sorrow are behind us. I have high hopes for my grandchildren, as it is them I live for now.

But after the death of Maximus, I have a regular visitor in Gaius Tacitus, the senator and writer of histories. He is younger than I by only a few years, but he is a robust and active man and lover of the outdoors. His wife Julia, having recently died he seeks female company that I can provide, and also to hear my stories of older times, as he was in the provinces for the worst of them. I could tell him details of the life at Court that few knew, in particular of “the Year of Four Emperors”. He is curious as to how I could possibly know so much, but everything that I have told him he understands to be true. I have not yet told him my secret, that I am Sporus, the boy turned woman, widow of the Emperor Nero, but perhaps I should?

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2018

Author's Note:
This is one of my stories based on strange-but-true historical facts. Everybody named in this story is a historical figure.