In 1735, Alexander Pope wrote a satirical poem that mocked the courtier Lord Hervey, who had been accused of homosexuality a few years earlier.
According to Suetonius, Nero had one boy named Sporus castrated, and then had sex with him as though he were a woman.
The poem includes character sketches of "Atticus" (Joseph Addison) and "Sporus" (John Hervey).
Until the publication of the Memoirs Hervey was chiefly known as the object of savage satire on the part of Alexander Pope, in whose works he figured as Lord Fanny, Sporus, Adonis and Narcissus.