Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

It was as if the rampant destructiveness of the fire had infected the looters with an insane desire to cause as much damage as possible. Or was this the envy of the poor for the rich, allowed by chaos to manifest itself unchecked? Titus was appalled at the hatefulness of those who had done such a thing to his home. He had never realized that he lived among such people. He thought of the angry mob that had gathered outside the Senate House when the fate of Pedanius’s slaves was decided. Were those the sort of people who had done this? Perhaps men like Gaius Cassius Longinus were right to be so suspicious and disdainful of the Roman rabble.

Titus entered the slave quarters. These small rooms, furnished with simple pallets for sleeping, were largely unmolested; there was little of value in them to be stolen or damaged. From the next room he heard a faint scuffling sound. It occurred to him that the thieves or some other vagrants might have taken refuge in this part of the house. He was about to call for the bodyguards to join him when a familiar face peered around the corner.

It was Hilarion.

The young slave looked at first fearful, then relieved, then ashamed. He ran to Titus and dropped to his knees.

“Forgive me, Master! The day after you left, men broke into the house. We had no way to stop them. There were too many. They killed the bodyguards. They would have killed me, too, if I hadn’t managed to hide myself. Please, Master, don’t punish me!”

“Hilarion! Of course I won’t punish you. But why didn’t you come to the country estate and bring me the news?”

“You told me to stay here, Master. And it was a good thing I did, because that night the neighbour’s house caught fire. I ran and found some vigiles, and they managed to stop the flames from spreading to this house. There was always the chance the fire might come back, so I couldn’t leave. Oh, Master, I’ve been so frightened here, all alone, especially at night. There’s been so much violence – people killed, boys and women raped, horrible crimes!”

Titus pulled the slave to his feet. “You did very well, Hilarion. Thank the gods you’re still alive!”

They managed to find a bit of food in the pantry. Titus sat with Lucius and Hilarion in the garden. The sight of the broken Venus made him lose his appetite.

Titus stood. “I’m going for a walk. Alone.”

“But, father, surely you should take one of the bodyguards with you,” said Lucius.

“No, they’ll stay here with you and Hilarion. I am a Roman senator, a patrician, and a blood relation of the Divine Augustus. I will not be so intimidated that I cannot take a walk around my city without armed men to protect me!” Titus strode to the vestibule and left the house.

He wandered through the city, awed by the scale of the destruction. In once-familiar areas he became hopelessly lost; streets had been filled with rubble and landmarks had vanished. On a slope of the Esquiline he came upon a troop of vigiles working to put out one of the remaining fires. The vigiles were covered with mud and soot and looked utterly exhausted, yet still they laboured. What a foul slander, that anyone should have accused such men of arson and looting!

As twilight began to fall, there was a terrible beauty in the way the blanket of clouds reflected the sombre glow of the still-smouldering city, as if the sky were a vast, mottled bruise above the wounded earth. Roma was like a beautiful woman who had been terribly scarred. She was still recognizable, however damaged, and still beloved. Titus would never abandon her.

Above him on the Esquiline a slender tower rose like a finger pointing to the sky. The tower was located in the Gardens of Maecenas, one of the imperial properties where Nero sometimes resided; the gardens appeared to have escaped the devastation. It was the hour of twilight, and all was still. From the tower, Titus heard the music of a lyre and a man singing. The voice was thin and reedy, but strangely poignant.

The song was about the burning of Troy – Troy, most glorious of the ancient cities, more beautiful than Memphis or Tyre, which the Greeks had conquered by deceit and burned to the ground; Troy, from which the warrior Aeneas had fled to Italy and founded the Roman race. Troy had burned; now Roma burned. The song seemed to come from a half-forgotten dream. The melody, slowly strummed upon the lyre, cast an eerie spell.

Titus suddenly realized that it was the voice of Nero he heard. Stepping back and gazing up, Titus saw a figure in purple and gold standing at the parapet of the tower, strumming a lyre and gazing at the city. The young emperor had returned to Roma and found the smoldering ruins of Troy.

Nero reached the end of a verse. The music stopped. There must have been others with him on the parapet, for the silence was followed by quiet applause and voices urging him to sing another verse. Nero obliged. Titus listened, enthralled, but one of the vigiles, his face black with soot, put his hands on his hips and spat on the ground.

“This fire is the most terrible thing to happen to Roma since the Gauls sacked the city,” the man muttered, “and what does the emperor do? He sings a pretty song. Can’t hit a note, can he?”

Titus had no idea what the man was talking about. To him, the song was unspeakably beautiful, strange and mysterious, unbearably sad yet filled with hope. It did not matter that Nero was not a great singer; he had the soul of a great poet. What a contrast Nero presented to Kaeso, who had stared at the flames and grinned like an idiot. Nero responded with a lament that would wring tears from a god.

Gazing up, listening raptly to each word of Nero’s song, transported by each note, Titus clutched the fascinum in his hand, glad to have it back in his possession at last. At that moment he felt that all his ancestors were watching him, just as all the gods were surely watching Nero.

AD 65

With his wife and son beside him, Titus Pinarius stood before the wax effigies of his ancestors in the vestibule of his house. As he looked from face-to-face and recited each of their names to honour them, Chrysanthe lit small candles and Lucius set one candle in each niche. Were his son’s hands shaking? They were all nervous and excited about the day’s upcoming events.

Titus was thankful that he had taken the wax effigies when he fled the city; unlike the objects the looters had stolen or destroyed, the masks of the ancestors were truly irreplaceable. Returning them to their niches had been the first step in restoring the house to its former glory. Titus had not yet found a skilled artisan to repair the floor mosaics – such artisans were in tremendous demand – but the wall paintings had been meticulously cleaned, the broken statue of Venus had been reassembled and patched and painted so that one could hardly tell it had been damaged, and many of the stolen or destroyed furnishings had been replaced. He had even found an antique folding chair almost identical to the one Cato had owned. In the months since the fire, thanks to a great deal of hard work and at considerable expense, Titus’s household had gradually returned to normal. Many people in Roma had not been so fortunate.

Titus had looked after the images of his ancestors, and they had looked after him; of that he had no doubt. That was one of the reasons he honoured them on this special day, when the emperor was about to pay him and his family a great honour.

Titus wore his senatorial toga with a purple stripe. His son also wore a toga, a garment he was still not used to. His wife was in her finest stola, a gown of beautifully embroidered ocher linen. Her hair was arranged in the style made fashionable by the emperor’s strikingly beautiful young wife, Poppaea Sabina, with multitudes of ringlets framing her face.

The ceremony was concluded. They retired to the garden to await the day’s events. Nothing in the garden was as beautiful as Chrysanthe, thought Lucius, feeling proud, as he often did, of the choice he had made for a bride so many years ago. Nor was anything in the garden as fragrant as Chrysanthe. “You smell of rose petals and milk,” he whispered in her ear.

She smiled. “Credit the emperor’s wife. Poppaea has made it fashionable for the best women in Roma to bathe in milk.”

“And will you become a Jewess, like the empress?” asked Titus, teasing her. It was widely known that Poppaea had shown favour to the Jews in Roma and had regularly received their scholars and holy men. Some claimed she had secretly converted to the religion.

“No more than you have become a Christian,” said his wife, teasing him back. She gestured to the fascinum, which Titus was wearing to mark the special occasion. Titus did not find this jest particularly funny. It seemed to him that Kaeso must have altered the amulet in some way to make it look even more like a cross. Nevertheless, Titus wore the fascinum openly and proudly, refusing to hide it inside his toga.

There was a knock at the door, followed by a flurry of excitement in the house. Even the slaves were excited, and with good cause. It was not every day that the emperor himself came calling.

Hilarion rushed into the garden. “They’re here, Master!”

“Are they coming in?”

“I think not, Master. The man at the door says you’re to come out and join them.”

“Then we mustn’t keep them waiting.” Titus took his wife by the hand and allowed his son to lead the way.

The retinue in the street was even larger than Titus had expected. There were secretaries and scribes, a troop of Praetorians, several senators in togas, and even a colourful group of actors and acrobats. In the middle of the retinue, carried by some of the brawniest slaves Titus had ever seen, was a large litter set on gilded poles and decorated to look like a giant swan. A hand adorned by many rings pulled back a purple curtain. Smiling broadly, Nero made a gesture of welcome. Sitting next to him was the beautiful Poppaea, her blonde hair done up in an elaborate fashion that Titus had never seen before.

Portable steps were produced. Chrysanthe entered the litter first, followed by Titus and Lucius. They settled amid plush cushions across from the emperor and his wife. Titus felt Chrysanthe tremble and he took her hand. Poppaea smiled at this gesture of intimacy and likewise took one of Nero’s bejewelled hands in hers.

“We’re not pressed for time. I thought we might take a little tour of the city on the way to our destination,” said Nero.

“Certainly,” said Titus. “There’s so much construction going on, all over Roma, I can’t keep up with it.” Actually, Titus was well aware of almost every building project in the city, but the tour would be a treat for Chrysanthe and Lucius, and he was enormously flattered by the emperor’s offer to spend time with his family.

Nero smiled. “My great-great-grandfather famously said that he found Roma a city of bricks and left her clad in marble. I found a city of scorched marble but shall leave her covered in gold.”

As they were carried aloft through the city, Nero proudly pointed out the rapid progress that had been made on reconstructing various temples and public structures. The rebuilding of the Circus Maximus was one of the largest projects; it would be some time before it was ready to reopen, but Nero had plans to make it more splendid and beautiful than before. There were also curiosities to be seen. Up on the Palatine, the ancient Hut of Romulus had been spared by the fire, and though most of the oldest parts of the imperial residence had been burned, the laurel trees flanking the original entrance had survived and remain intact.

“Surely that’s an omen, father,” declared Lucius, overcoming his shyness in front of the imperial couple, especially Poppaea, whose beauty could have intimidated any man.

“It certainly is,” said Titus. “Those trees appear to be indestructible, immune to both fire and lightning. I believe those two laurel trees will survive as long as there are descendants of the Divine Augustus.”

This comment was clearly appreciated by the imperial couple, who gave each other a loving glance. Poppaea, though not showing it yet, was rumoured to be pregnant. Her first child with Nero, a daughter, had died in infancy; Nero had been grief-stricken. Now there was again hope for a new generation directly descended from the Divine Augustus, and an heir for the emperor, who was not yet thirty.

“So many beautiful old houses were lost,” said Nero, pressing his fingertips together while he gazed at the passing view. “But the fire displaced not just the wealthy who lived on the Palatine, but a great many other people as well. I’m told many of those citizens lived in appalling squalor, stacked atop one another with hardly enough room to turn around. Well, we shall build shiny new tenements for them, better than those rat-traps they lived in before. That will take time, of course. For now, sadly, many of the homeless are still in temporary shelters on the Field of Mars and at my own gardens across the Tiber. To give the citizens work, I’ve hired a veritable army of bricklayers and day labourers for construction projects all over the city. To feed their families, I’ve repeatedly lowered the price of grain. And to make sure such a catastrophe never occurs again, I’ve introduced new building codes that the experts assure me will reduce the danger of fire – buildings set farther apart, limitations on their height, requirements to keep firefighting implements such as picks and buckets on the premises, that sort of thing. Oh, look there,” he said, pointing to an aqueduct covered with scaffolding. “We’re also repairing and extending the aqueducts that were damaged. There must be cisterns and fountains to ensure an adequate water supply to fight any fire that may occur in the future.”

“Caesar’s swift and steady response to the crisis has been an inspiration to us all,” said Titus.

“Ah, now we’re passing through the very heart of what will become the new imperial complex,” said Nero, grinning with excitement. “This entire side of the Palatine has been cleared and claimed for the new imperial apartments. And down there, in that cleared area that used to be crammed with hideous old buildings, there will be a rather large lake, entirely enclosed within the imperial complex. Won’t that be charming? A private lake in the heart of the city, surrounded by vineyards and gardens and a little forest stocked with wild deer, so that Poppaea and I may retreat for a stroll in the countryside, or even go hunting, without ever stepping outside the imperial palace, much less the city walls. Of course, the lake will have a practical purpose as well. It will serve as a reservoir, a source of water in the event of fire.”

The creation of the artificial lake was well under way. Hundreds of workers were raking and shovelling great piles of excavated earth, shaping them into the rolling hills that would become the man-made woodland surrounding the lake.

“Along here, on this side of the lake, there will be a vast pavilion with a covered walkway a mile long,” said Nero. “The rooms will be very spacious and finished with the best of everything – imported marbles, fine statuary, ivory screens, and the most sumptuous fabrics. You must see the sketches the designers have made for me. The ceilings will be decorated with gleaming gems and mother-of-pearl, so that at night, by lamplight, it will seem that the starry sky itself has descended to gaze with envy at such splendid rooms. And gold – there must be a great deal of gold everywhere. We shall cover the whole facade with tiles of golden glass, so that it dazzles the eye. The only colour that truly pleases me is purple, and the only metal is gold. How I love the weight of it, and the mellow colour, like sunlight on water. Like that lovely little golden amulet you’re always wearing, Senator Pinarius.”

Titus touched the fascinum and smiled. “A gift from my ancestors.”

“Yes, I know. Curious-looking thing,” said Nero. He flashed a quizzical smile, then returned his attention to the construction work going on around them. “When the time comes, there shall be a grand ceremony to mark the day that Poppaea and the baby and I move in. I think I shall call it the Golden House. What do you say to that, Senator Pinarius?”

“A splendid name for a splendid house.”

“The only house fit for a person such as myself to live in,” mused Nero. “Ah, we’ve come to the site of the grand courtyard. This will be the main entrance for visitors who come from the Forum. The Sacred Way will terminate at a stairway that ascends to the door of the Golden House. There’ll be other entrances, of course, including Augustus’s old entry on the Palatine, flanked by those ancient laurel trees, but that will be a sort of back door. The grand courtyard is going to be enormous, surrounded by a portico with hundreds of marble columns. You can’t really appreciate the enormity of it now, cluttered as it is with all these workmen’s shacks. The centerpiece will be that colossal bronze statue going up in the middle, depicting myself. We haven’t yet decided in what guise I should appear. Poppaea thinks I should pose as Hercules, but Zenodorus, the sculptor, thinks I should be Sol, wearing a crown of sunbeams. When it’s finished, the statue will be over a hundred and twenty feet tall – the largest statue since the Colossus that once stood at Rhodes. And unlike that statue, this one will be covered in gold. Can you imagine the splendour of it on a sunny day? People will be able to see it from miles away, and the closer they come, the more dazzled they’ll be. On a sunny day, it will be positively blinding.”

“Truly, Caesar, the new Colossus will be a stupendous monument,” said Titus, amazed anew not just at the extent of Nero’s imagination but at the enormity of his expenditures. A great deal of private property had been seized by the state to allow for the massive expansion of the imperial palace, and a great many temple treasuries from all over the empire had been appropriated to pay for construction and to provide decorations.

In this ambitious enterprise, Titus had played an invaluable role. Auspices had to be taken to seek divine approval for many of Nero’s actions, and religious ceremonies had to be conducted to propitiate the gods whose treasuries were depleted. Titus had faithfully served as Nero’s augur, just as he had once performed the same duties for Claudius. He had volunteered to do so and had performed eagerly and with unswerving loyalty. Since the night he had been transfixed by Nero’s song about the burning of Troy, Titus has become one of the emperor’s most fervent adherents.

The emperor was thankful for his loyal service. The invitation to Titus and his family to accompany the emperor and his wife in the imperial litter was one of Nero’s ways of thanking him.

“I am grateful, as always, to play any part, however small, in Caesar’s grand enterprises,” said Titus.

“Unfortunately, Senator Pinarius, not everyone seems to feel as you do,” said Poppaea. She had been quiet throughout the tour and had even been looking a bit bored; no doubt she had heard Nero speak the same words many times before. Titus, who had met her on several occasions but had never spoken to her privately, was not quite sure what to make of Poppaea, who always seemed distant and self-absorbed and tended to speak in riddles. Nero was not her first husband; previously she had been married to Nero’s friend Otho. Rumour had it that the three young people had become so intimate that they formed, as one wag put it, “a three-headed love monster.” But ultimately Nero wanted Poppaea all to himself. He forced Otho to divorce her, appointed Otho governor of Lusitania to get him out of Roma, and made Poppaea his wife.

Her remark probably referred to the increasingly widespread rumours of a conspiracy against the emperor. Despite Nero’s energetic response to the crisis and his optimistic plans for the future, a simmering discontent reached across all classes. The fire had been followed by a pestilence that had killed tens of thousands of people, especially among the homeless poor, and the loss of so many religious and historical treasures had thoroughly demoralized the populace. Nero’s vast building projects were intended to replace those lost treasures, but among the wealthy there was a fear that his profligate spending would precipitate a financial crisis. Hostile senators were said to be plotting against him, and among the common citizens, vile rumours claimed that Nero himself had deliberately started the fire so that he could claim vast tracts of ruined real estate for the imperial house and rebuild the city to suit himself.

Unfortunately, and with obvious regret, Nero had found it necessary to banish a number of senators whom he suspected of disloyalty. Among these had been Gaius Cassius Longinus, the senator who had made an impassioned speech to crucify the slaves of Pedanius. Nero had ordered him to remove from his ancestral effigies the wax mask of the Cassius who had assassinated the Divine Julius – a perfectly reasonable request, Titus thought. The senator had refused. Cassius’s exile to Sardinia had caused an outcry among his colleagues, who argued that pity should be shown to a jurist of such renown, especially since he was now completely blind.

Next to him, Titus heard Chrysanthe groan, and then he saw the reason. On a scorched wall, all that remained of a destroyed building, a message had been scrawled in black paint:

Strong and valiant,

He killed his mother

And set my house on fire!

More and more frequently in recent days, Titus had seen such ugly graffiti on walls and in latrinae all over the city. Fortunately, a group of men was in the process of painting over this message and adding their own. Titus craned his neck to see what they were writing, but as the litter moved on all he could make out were the words Christians and burn.

“My loyal freedmen, hard at work,” said Nero, pulling at the rings on his fingers. “I don’t even have to ask them. They go about the city and clean up such slander wherever they see it.”

“Gossip is a terrible thing,” muttered Poppaea.

“It certainly is,” agreed Chrysanthe, nodding sympathetically.

“But on this day, all those nasty rumours will be put to rest, and the true culprits will be brought to justice,” said Nero, regaining his good humour. “The people will see that their emperor is dedicated to protecting Roma and destroying those who harm her. I shall give them a show they will never forget!”

They proceeded towards their destination, the imperial gardens on the far side of the Tiber, where Caligula had built a large racetrack for his private amusement at the foot of the Vatican Hill. Nero used the track frequently, for he loved to race chariots, and Seneca had convinced him that it was unsuitable for the emperor to race in public. Since the Circus Maximus was not yet rebuilt, Nero had decided to open the Circus Vaticanus to the public; it was one of the few spaces large enough to accommodate the spectacular entertainments he had devised for the punishment of the condemned arsonists.

As the litter bearers carried them across an undeveloped area of the Field of Mars, Titus saw the sea of makeshift shelters where much of the populace was living. These dwellings were little more than lean-tos built from scrap lumber, or makeshift tents stitched together from bits of cloth. On this day, no one stayed inside the shelters. Excited by the impending spectacle, everyone in Roma seemed to be heading in a great mass towards the imperial gardens across the Tiber.

As the litter passed through the crowd, with the Praetorians clearing the way, people flocked to have a look at the emperor and his wife. There were cheers and shouts of “Hail, Caesar!” and “Hail the beautiful Poppaea!” But some in the crowd shrugged and turned away, or gave the imperial couple hostile looks, or even muttered curses. Poppaea frowned and whispered in Nero’s ear. He called to the one of the Praetorians to tighten the cordon around the litter, then unhooked the chains holding back the drapes so that they could proceed in relative privacy; the gauzy drapes allowed Nero and his guests to see out but appeared opaque from the outside.

A new bridge crossed the Tiber, allowing direct access from the Field of Mars to the Vatican meadows. At Nero’s orders, the bridge had been built with amazing speed for the purpose of allowing the homeless of Roma to cross easily from the city to the shelters provided for them on the far side. On this day, the new bridge served as a means for the multitudes of Roma to attend the spectacle in the Circus Vaticanus. Already such a crowd had gathered that the bridge and the area before it were packed with people, but the Praetorians quickly cleared a path for the litter to pass through and cross the river.

Spread across the Vatican meadows was a veritable city of makeshift shelters; some people even appeared to be living in the trees. Beyond the meadows they came to the formal gardens that had been planted by Caligula. These were entered through an iron gate. The Praetorians pushed back the crowd so that Nero could pass. The gardens to either side of the wide gravel path were splendid, with beds of roses and other fragrant flowers and fine statues, including a particularly striking fountain in which the nude Diana stood ankle-deep in shimmering water while the unfortunate Actaeon, transformed into a rearing stag, was attacked by his hounds.

They arrived at the circus. The permanent viewing stands, built of travertine, were elegantly appointed but quite small. These had been supplemented by the erection of temporary wooden stands that completely encircled the track and could accommodate tens of thousands of spectators. The stands were already about half filled, and more people were arriving at every moment.

The litter came to a halt before the travertine structure adjoining the circus. Nero and his party stepped out. The emperor and Poppaea abruptly disappeared – Titus was not sure where they went – while Titus and his family were escorted directly to the imperial box. Titus was flushed with excitement. He could see that his wife and wide-eyed son were equally elated. Never before had the Pinarii been invited to be the personal guests of the emperor at a public entertainment. Not only would they view the proceedings side by side with the emperor, but they would be seen beside him, in his company, perceived to be among the most elite of the imperial circle. This was an important day for the Pinarii – not just for Titus and his immediate family, but for all who had borne the name Pinarius in the past or would bear it in the future.

The box was lined with purple draperies bordered with gold and surrounded by a cordon of Praetorians. Titus and his family were the first guests to arrive and were shown to couches at one corner of the box. A slave offered them a choice of wines and set out a tray of delicacies for them.

Directly before them, in the centre of the spine that bisected the oval racing track, loomed a towering Egyptian obelisk made from solid red granite. The obelisk had been brought to Roma by Caligula from the city of Heliopolis in Egypt. The four sides were strikingly plain, without hieroglyphs. A gilded ball was set atop the obelisk, balanced on the very tip. The obelisk was a landmark visible from many places in the city. Titus had previously seen it only from a distance and was awed by its height.

The Vestal virgins and members of various priesthoods had been seated in the front rows to the left of the imperial box. To the right of the box was a large section reserved for senators. Out in the arena, to warm up the crowd, musicians played while acrobats tumbled, walked on their hands, and formed human pyramids. Laughter and applause swept through the stands, but many people continued to talk and move about while waiting for the main event.

More guests arrived in the imperial box. Leading the party was Seneca. Since the death of Agrippina, he had become more powerful than ever, though Titus had heard rumours of growing discord between the emperor and his chief adviser; the strains of dealing with the aftermath of the fire were taking a toll on everyone. Arriving with Seneca was his wife, Paulina; now that he was in his sixties and she was nearly forty, the gap in their ages was not as striking as it once had been.

Also with Seneca was his handsome nephew. Lucan was two years younger than Nero and their shared love of poetry had made them close friends. Like Nero, Lucan had bloomed early. At the age of eleven he had created a sensation with his first poem, about the combat between Hector and Achilles, and at twenty-five he was the city’s most famous poet. On this occasion, he wore an augur’s trabea. Nero had seen fit to induct Lucan into the college well ahead of the prescribed age, just as previous emperors had done for Titus and his father.

Lucan was accompanied by his wife. Polla Argentaria was almost as famous as her husband, thanks to the verses he had written praising her. She was the daughter of a wealthy senator and, like Seneca’s wife, had received an unusually extensive education for a woman. Argentaria was said to be her husband’s muse and amanuensis, and perhaps even his collaborator, as she tirelessly helped him revise and perfect his verses.

Gaius Petronius was next to arrive. The emperor’s arbiter of elegance was not quite forty and had flecks of silver in his hair. Titus found it impossible to put his finger on what set the man apart from all others; Petronius wore a toga about which there was nothing extraordinary, and his grooming, while impeccable, was not in any way unusual. Still, the man cast a spell by his very presence. Perhaps it was the effortless grace with which he moved, or his inscrutable expression. Even when he was most serious, there were flashes of amusement in his pale grey eyes.