Pythagoras was a freedman of the Roman emperor Nero, whom he married in a public ceremony in which the emperor took the role of bride.[1][2][3][4][5]
Life
Little is known about Pythagoras' background except that he was a freedman who accompanied Nero.
Marriage to Nero
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.
Doryphorus
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 imperial 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]
