Picking up on Lesley's post, it does seem that Nero, at least, was prey to great anxiety about his performances, as Suetonius details (Life of Nero,23-24):
XXIII. He afterwards appeared at the celebration of all public games
in Greece: for such as fell in different years, he brought within the
compass of one, and some he ordered to be celebrated a second time in
the same year. At Olympia, likewise, contrary to custom, he appointed a
public performance in music: and that he might meet with no interruption
in this employment, when he was informed by his freedman Helius, that
affairs at Rome required his presence, he wrote to him in these words:
"Though now all your hopes and wishes are for my speedy return, yet you
ought rather to advise and hope that I may come back with a character
worthy of Nero." During the time of his musical performance, nobody was
allowed to stir out of the theatre upon any account, however necessary;
insomuch, that it is said some women with child were delivered there.
Many of the spectators being quite wearied with hearing and applauding
him, because the town gates were shut, slipped privately over the walls;
or counterfeiting themselves dead, were carried out for their funeral.
With what extreme anxiety he engaged in these contests, with what keen
desire to bear away the prize, and with how much awe of the judges, is
scarcely to be believed. As if his adversaries had been on a level with
himself, he would watch them narrowly, defame them privately, and
sometimes, upon meeting them, rail at them in very scurrilous language;
or bribe them, if they were better performers than himself. He always
addressed the judges with the most profound reverence before he began,
telling them, "he had done all things that were necessary, by way of
preparation, but that the issue of the approaching trial was in the hand
of fortune; and that they, as wise and skilful men, ought to exclude
from their judgment things merely accidental." Upon their encouraging
him to have a good heart, he went off with more assurance, but not
entirely free from anxiety; interpreting the silence and modesty of some
of them into sourness and ill-nature, and saying that he was suspicious
of them.
XXIV. In these contests, he adhered so strictly to the rules, (354)
that he never durst spit, nor wipe the sweat from his forehead in any
other way than with his sleeve. Having, in the performance of a tragedy,
dropped his sceptre, and not quickly recovering it, he was in a great
fright, lest he should be set aside for the miscarriage, and could not
regain his assurance, until an actor who stood by swore he was certain
it had not been observed in the midst of the acclamations and
exultations of the people. When the prize was adjudged to him, he always
proclaimed it himself; and even entered the lists with the heralds.
That no memory or the least monument might remain of any other victor in
the sacred Grecian games, he ordered all their statues and pictures to
be pulled down, dragged away with hooks, and thrown into the common
sewers. He drove the chariot with various numbers of horses, and at the
Olympic games with no fewer than ten; though, in a poem of his, he had
reflected upon Mithridates for that innovation. Being thrown out of his
chariot, he was again replaced, but could not retain his seat, and was
obliged to give up, before he reached the goal, but was crowned
notwithstanding. On his departure, he declared the whole province a free
country, and conferred upon the judges in the several games the freedom
of Rome, with large sums of money. All these favours he proclaimed
himself with his own voice, from the middle of the Stadium, during the
solemnity of the Isthmian games.
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