"He tried to turn the boy Sporus into a woman by castration, wed him in the usual manner, including bridal veil and dowry, took him off to the Palace attended by a vast crowd, and proceeded to treat him as his wife. That led to a joke still going the rounds, to the effect that the world would have been a better place if Nero’s father Domitius had married that sort of wife."

- Suetonius