Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

Titus felt privileged to be in such illustrious company, but he also found it rather stressful, since he had difficulty keeping up with the conversation, which revolved largely around the three men’s literary projects and was full of puns and allusions and double entendres, many of which Titus couldn’t decipher. Lucan, he gathered, was about to publish the next volume of his epic poem about the civil war between Caesar and Pompeius, a work full of violent action and scenes of epic grandeur. Seneca, who had been reading the work in progress, thought that his nephew sided perhaps too much with Pompeius and the Republican cause against the Divine Julius, a point of view sure to stir controversy.

Petronius was working on something very different, a long work in which his narrator recounted a series of erotic misadventures and comical disasters, all related, to heighten the irony, in the most elegant and rarefied prose. Knowing how Nero relied on Petronius for advice on all matters to do with good taste, Titus asked him if he was responsible for staging the spectacles they were about to witness.

Petronius narrowed his eyes. “I contributed very little. Caesar devised most of the entertainments. The emperor threw himself into this project as he enters into all his endeavours, with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm. But what about you, Seneca – what are you working on these days, when you’re not out mining gold to build the emperor’s new house?”

Seneca smiled. “I’ve finally finished the play about Pasiphae.” He noted the blank look on Lucius’s face. “Do you know the tale, young Pinarius?”

“I’m afraid not,” admitted Lucius. Titus winced. His son’s education reflected on himself.

“Pasiphae was the wife of King Minos of Crete,” said Seneca. “She was cursed by Neptune to crave intercourse with a bull.”

“What woman has not?” said Petronius. Chrysanthe blushed, Lucius giggled nervously, and Titus himself was startled by the comment, but the others seemed to find it quite amusing.

“Just so,” conceded Seneca with a wry smile, “but Pasiphae did something about it. She ordered the inventor Daedalus to construct an effigy of a heifer so realistic that even a bull would find it convincing, then she concealed herself inside the mock heifer and seduced the bull into gratifying her. Nine months later, Pasiphae gave birth to a child with a bull’s head – the minotaur.”

“Who but Seneca would bring such material to the stage?” said Petronius. It was impossible to tell whether his tone was respectful or sardonic. “Has the emperor read it yet?”

“The emperor is always my first reader, and invariably the most astute. I’m happy to say that Caesar seemed quite fascinated by the tragedy of Pasiphae. Ah, here he is now!”

They rose to their feet as Nero entered the box with Poppaea beside him. People in the crowd saw him enter, and a thrill ran up and down the stands. But the response was mixed. Just as earlier Titus had heard shouts of “Hail Caesar!” in the streets, so many in the crowd now shouted accolades, but there was a low grumbling as well, and scattered hisses.

Nero escorted Poppaea to her seat, then stepped forward and raised his hands. With his fair hair and purple-and-gold robes, he was visible and instantly recognizable to everyone in the circus. The crowd fell silent. For a moment, it appeared that Nero might address the crowd. Indeed, Nero had wanted to deliver the opening speech, but Seneca had persuaded him not to do so: there were simply too many problems that might arise when an emperor directly addressed such a large and unpredictable gathering.

Instead, Nero gestured to a public crier, who stepped forward. With his powerful, trained voice, the man was able to make himself heard from end to end of the circus. While he spoke, Titus could see that Nero moved his lips along with the crier, like a proud author in the theatre mouthing lines spoken by an actor.

“Senators and people of Roma, you are here today at Caesar’s invitation. Welcome! But if you have come expecting a mere entertainment, you may be surprised at what you are about to witness. Today you will not see charioteers race. You will not see gladiators fight to the death. You will not see wild animals hunted. You will not see captives of war made to reenact a famous battle for your amusement. You will not see actors perform a comedy or a drama. What you will see is an act of justice, carried out under the open sky so that all the gods and the people of Roma may witness the proceedings.

“The criminals you will see punished today are guilty of arson and murder. They have conspired against the Roman state. They have plotted the destruction of the Roman people. Even those not directly guilty of setting fires must be punished. Their notorious hatred of the gods, of mankind, and of life itself makes them a menace to us all.

“Because of the fire, many of you are still without proper homes. Because of the fire, many of you lost your most cherished possessions. Because of the fire, many of you lost loved ones, whose cries of anguish still ring in your ears. Our city – the most beloved by the gods of all cities on earth – has been devastated. The gods themselves weep at the destruction of Roma and the suffering of the Roman people.

“Thanks to the vigilance of your emperor, the arsonists who perpetrated this misery have been apprehended. They call themselves Christians. The name comes from Christus, the founder of their sect, a criminal who suffered the extreme penalty at the hands of Pontius Pilatus, one of our procurators in Judaea during the reign of Tiberius. Thanks to Pilatus, the insidious superstition propagated by this Christus was checked – but only for a short while, because it quickly broke out again, not only in Judaea, the first source of this evil, but in many places across the empire, even here in Roma. Lurking among us, the followers of Christus have plotted our destruction.

“Thanks to Caesar’s vigilance, the Christians were apprehended. Under interrogation, they revealed their accomplices and confessed their crime. More than confessed it, they proclaimed it, without remorse. The Christians are proud of what they did. They are gratified by your suffering!”

The crowd erupted in boos and jeers.

Initially, Titus had been dubious when the mass arrest of Christians began; they struck him as an ineffectual group of lay-abouts. But when he remembered the jubilant reactions of the Christians watching the flames, it was not hard to imagine that some of them had deliberately started the fire. Such a crime was almost unthinkable, but the fanaticism of all the Jewish sects was well known, and the unyielding atheism of the Christians and their loathing of all things Roman was particularly virulent. That their abhorrence of the gods had led them to such a monstrous crime was shocking, but perhaps not surprising.

The jeering of the crowd continued until Nero himself gestured for silence. The crier continued.

“But what punishment, you may ask, could possibly fit so terrible a crime? For offenses so hideous, so foul, so wicked, what retribution can possibly be adequate? That is what we are here to see.

“Senators and people of Roma, this is a holy day. We call on the gods to pay witness to what happens in this place. What we do, we do in honour of the gods, and in gratitude for the favour they have shown us.”

The crier stepped back. Lucan stepped forward. From the folds of his trabea he produced a beautiful ivory lituus. While the young poet took the auspices, Titus felt a twinge of envy, wishing he had been chosen for the honour. But as high as Titus had risen in the emperor’s favour, he knew he could not compete with Lucan, with whom Nero felt a special intimacy because they were so close in age and shared such a deep love of poetry.

The auspices were favourable. The emperor pulled a white mantle over his head to assume his role as Pontifex Maximus, stepped forward, and raised his hand. Every head in the circus was bowed as Nero uttered the invocation to Jupiter, Best and Greatest of the Gods.

The spectacle commenced.

At gladiator games and other public events, the punishment of criminals was often part of the programme, but usually only a very small part, worked into the proceedings by making the condemned fight against gladiators or act as bait for wild animals. On this occasion, the punishment of criminals, because there were so many of them, and because their crime was so great, would make up the entire programme. The stagers, with Nero guiding them, had faced great challenges both logistical and artistic. How could so many criminals of all ages be made to suffer and die in ways that were not only sure and efficient but also meaningful and satisfying to those who were watching?

From a cell beneath the newly erected stands a large number of men, women, and children were driven to the racetrack. They were dressed in rags. Most looked confused and frightened, but some had the same serene, glassy-eyed stare as Titus had seen on the faces of the Christians watching the fire. They seemed oblivious of what was about to happen, or perhaps they even looked forward to it.

“So many!” muttered Chrysanthe, leaning forward.

“Oh, this is only a small portion of the arsonists,” said Nero. “There are many more to come. The punishments will go on for quite some time.”

“How could we have had so many of them among us?” wondered Lucan. “What drew these terrible people to Roma in the first place, and how did they seduce decent Romans to join their ranks?”

“All things hideous and shameful from every part of the world eventually find their way to Roma, and inevitably attract a following,” said Petronius. “As a flame attracts insects, as a whirlpool attracts flotsam, so Roma attracts the vermin and filth of the world.”

“Yet, a flame is beautiful,” said Nero, “once the charred insects are brushed aside. And a whirlpool is beautiful, once the flotsam is flushed away. Just so, Roma will be beautiful again, once it has been purified of these vile criminals.” He gazed raptly at the arena below.

Next to him, Poppaea also sat forward in eager anticipation. While it might be true that she had played hostess to Jewish scholars and wise men, she detested the Christians, as Jewish heretics if nothing else.

Lucan looked sidelong at Titus. “My uncle tells me that you had a brother who called himself a Christian.”

Titus stiffened. It was inevitable that the subject would come up, and he was prepared for it. “I have no brother,” he said stiffly. Self-consciously, he touched the fascinum that nestled amid the folds of his toga.

From storage rooms under the stands, an army of stagehands produced a multitude of crosses and laid them on the sand. The Christians were made to circle the racetrack, driven with scourges, then were seized and thrown on the crosses. While they screamed in terror, their hands and feet were nailed in place. Then the crosses were set upright into holes that had been dug ahead of time

Suddenly the circus was filled with a forest of crucifixes. The crowd jeered at the Christians. Spectators with strong arms and good aim competed to pelt them with stones and other objects. Some in the stands had brought eggs especially for this purpose.

“These crucifixions are in imitation of the dead god they profess to worship, who likewise ended up on a cross,” explained Nero in a hushed voice. “While this batch hangs from the crosses, they will witness what happens to their accomplices.”

More Christians were driven into the arena. Their arms were bound and they were wrapped in bloody animal skins, but their heads were uncovered so that their faces could be seen and their screams heard. At the two far ends of the circus, packs of vicious dogs were released. The animals sniffed the air. Within moments, they began racing towards the Christians.

The dogs had a long way to go. The Christians staggered first one way, then the other, trapped between the packs bounding towards them from both sides. The crowd went wild. People jumped to their feet with excitement, anticipating the moment the hounds would reach their prey. Nero smiled. This was exactly the reaction he had hoped for.

The dogs attacked without hesitation and tore their victims to pieces. The barking and screaming and the sight of so much blood and gore excited the crowd to an even higher pitch. Some of the Christians provided considerable sport as they squealed and whimpered for mercy and darted this way and that, trying to elude the dogs. Those among the Christians who died with a degree of dignity, muttering prayers or even singing songs, ignited the fury of the crowd. Such behaviour made a mockery of justice; how dare such criminals continue to taunt their victims even as they were punished?

More Christians were driven onto the racetrack. More hounds were released. Each death was as bloody as the last, but the crowd began to grow restless, bored by the repetition. Nero had anticipated this. At his signal, a new phase of the spectacle began. To revive the spectators’ interest, various familiar stories were re-enacted, using the Christians as props.

For the story of Icarus, boys with wings attached to their arms were driven to the top of a portable tower and made to jump off. One after another they plummeted to earth and lay twitching on the sand. Those who survived were carried to the top of the tower and thrown off again.

To illustrate the story of Laocoon and his sons, tanks filled with deadly eels were wheeled onto the sand and groups of fathers and sons were thrown into the water, where they died screaming and thrashing.

For Titus, the most striking of the tableaux was the tale of Pasiphae, perhaps because Seneca had just related it. A naked Christian girl was first paraded around the track while the crowd jeered and shouted obscenities, then she was forced inside a wooden effigy of a heifer. By some trickery, the animal trainers induced a white bull to mount the effigy. The device was constructed to amplify the girl’s cries rather than muffle them; her bloodcurdling screams could be heard from one end of the circus to the other. The crowd was transfixed. Eventually her screams stopped.

When the bull was finished, the trainers led it away. A few moments later, from a concealed compartment in the bottom of the effigy, a naked boy wearing a calf’s head jumped out and performed a lively dance.

“The minotaur!” people cried. “She’s given birth to the minotaur!”

The crowd went wild with applause and cheering. Nero beamed with pride.

Such tableaux, one after another, took place all up and down the length of the circus.

Eventually, for a climax, men with torches appeared, and all the Christians who lay lifeless or near to death on the sand and all the wooden props were set afire, though the crucifixes were left untouched. The sight of the flames was alarming, as was the stench of the smoke. Some in the audience, reliving the trauma of the conflagration, wept with grief. Others laughed uncontrollably. There were gasps and shrieks from the crowd, but also cheering and applause. The Christians were convicted arsonists, and the legally prescribed punishment for arson was death by fire.

As the scattered flames died down and night began to fall, sturdy poles twice the height of a man were erected in the spaces between the crucifixes. The poles had been soaked in pitch, as was evident from their strong smell. Obviously, another spectacle involving fire was about to be presented. The crowd reacted with cries of mingled dread and fascination. To the top of each pitch-soaked pole a kind of iron basket was affixed, large enough to hold a human body.

Thus far, Titus had watched the spectacle with grim detachment. The auspices had been unequivocally favourable for this event – Titus had watched closely as Lucan performed the augury – and that was a clear indication that the gods were pleased. Watching the gruesome punishments of the arsonists gave Titus no pleasure, but it was his sombre duty as a citizen and as a friend of the emperor to witness the event.

Titus felt the need to empty his bladder. The moment seemed opportune, as there appeared to be an interlude before the next event, so he rose and excused himself. Looking over his shoulder, Nero told him where to find the nearest latrina and then giggled, as if at some secret joke. Titus left the imperial box, glad that the spectacle had put the emperor in such a buoyant mood.

The latrina was in a small building some distance from the stands. A few other men were inside, talking about the spectacle as they went about their business. They were in general agreement that, while some of the punishments had been too repetitious, others had been quite remarkable. There was an enthusiastic consensus that the rape of Pasiphae had been by far the most impressive of the tableaux.

“Not something you see every day!” quipped one man.

“Unless you’re a god, like Neptune, and can make such things happen with a wave of your trident.”

“Or unless you’re Nero!”

Titus headed back to the stands. The sky had grown darker. The stars were coming out. Torches had been placed here and there to light the grounds. As he neared the stands, a pair of Praetorians abruptly blocked his way.

“What’s that?” said one of them. The man was big and brutish but had perfect teeth, which glinted in the torchlight. He pointed at the fascinum at Titus’s breast. “Isn’t that a cross, like some of those Christians wear?”

“What I wear around my neck is none of your business,” said Titus curtly. He tried to step past the two men, but they barred his way.

“You’ll come with us,” said the Praetorian with perfect teeth.

“I most certainly will not. Can you not see that I wear a senator’s toga? I’m returning to the imperial box.”

“Sure you are! A Christian, in the emperor’s box!”

Each of them grabbed an arm and together they led him, despite his efforts to resist, to a small room under the newly built wooden stands. A third Praetorian, apparently their superior, sat at a table piled high with scrolls.

“Problem?” he asked.

“An escaped Christian, sir,” said the Praetorian with perfect teeth.

“This is ridiculous!” snapped Titus.

“What’s your name, Christian?” said the officer

“My name is Pinarius. Senator Titus Pinarius.”

The officer consulted a list. “Ah, yes, we do indeed have a Pinarius among those scheduled to be punished in the circus today. A male citizen, age forty-seven. This must be him.”

Titus clenched his jaw. All day he had avoided thinking about his brother, telling himself he had no brother. “That would be Kaeso Pinarius, not Titus-”

“ Now I recognize you!” said the officer. “You were one of the first arsonists we arrested. You certainly look different now! How did you manage to clean yourself up like that, and escape from the cell? And where in Hades did you get that toga? I’ll bet you murdered a senator to get your hands on that!”

“This is absurd,” said Titus. “I am a senator, an augur, and a friend of the emperor.”

The Praetorians laughed.

Titus felt a sinking sensation. The situation was getting out of hand. He told himself to remain calm.

“Let me explain something,” he said, speaking though gritted teeth. “I have a brother… a twin brother… who is a Christian-”

The Praetorians only laughed harder.

“An identical twin?” shouted the Praetorian with perfect teeth. “That’s rich!”

“With your imagination, you should be writing comedies for the stage, not setting fires,” said the officer, who abruptly ceased laughing and looked grim. “Such a preposterous story only confirms what I suspected. What do you fellows think? How do we treat a lying, murdering Christian?”

The Praetorians roughly shoved Titus back and forth between them, yanked at his toga until they pulled it off him, then ripped his undertunic until it hung in tatters and he was left wearing nothing but his loincloth. When one of them reached for the fascinum Titus tried to fight back, but he felt like a child flailing at giants. The Praetorian with perfect teeth struck him hard across the face, jarring his teeth and leaving him dazed and unsteady and with the taste of blood in his mouth.

They grabbed him by the arms, pulled him out of the little room, and began taking him somewhere else. In the open space behind the stands, they passed two men in senatorial togas. Titus tried to raise his arms, but the Praetorians restrained him.

“Help me!” he shouted.

The senators glanced at him. One of them muttered, “Filthy arsonist!”

The Praetorians struck Titus across the face to silence him and shoved him to a gate. The gate opened and Titus was forced into a dimly lit enclosure. Above him he could hear the murmur of the crowd. All around him echoed the creaking of the wooden stands as people moved about overhead. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the cell was quite large and full of people, most of them in rags or wearing little more than he was. They were filthy and unkempt and stank of urine and sweat. He passed among them, staring at their faces. Some were trembling with fear and muttering prayers with their eyes tightly shut. Others were oddly calm, speaking to their companions in low, reassuring voices.

“In such a wicked world, death is a release to be longed for,” said a man with a long white beard. Titus had seen him once in Kaeso’s rooms. “Even a death under circumstances as horrible as this is better than life in such a world. Death will deliver us to a better place.”

A harried stage manager scurried by, followed by a group of Praetorians. “I am trying to maintain order here; I am trying to keep to the emperor’s schedule of events!” the man shouted. “Now, I need you fellows to divide the prisoners into groups-”

Titus ran toward the man. “Listen to me!” he said. “A mistake has been made. I shouldn’t be here-”

The man started back, as if a wild dog had jumped at him. Before Titus could say another word, one of the Praetorians raised a shield and used it to shove him back. By a flicker of torchlight Titus caught a glimpse of his reflection in the highly polished metal. He was shocked at what he saw.

Staring back at him was a nearly naked man with a crazed look in his eyes, his face bruised, his lips bleeding. How quickly his dignified, untouchable identity as a Roman senator had been stripped from him!

Titus looked this way and that, desperate to find someone to whom he could explain his situation.

Suddenly he was face-to-face with Kaeso.

He had never before seen his brother look so wretched. Like Titus, Kaeso wore only a loincloth. The body Titus saw before him was familiar but distorted, like a mockery of his own, covered with bruises and wounds and bloody patches. Kaeso had been beaten and tortured. From his gaunt appearance, he had been starved as well. There was nothing aloof about his manner, as was the case with some of the Christians; Kaeso looked utterly broken and unnerved. Titus saw a pitiful, frightened man.

As the arrest and interrogation of the Christians had proceeded and the day of their punishment approached, Titus had forced himself not to think about his brother. He had told himself so many times that he had no brother that he almost believed it. Now Kaeso stood before him, a shadow of the man he once had been, but still undeniably the son of Lucius Pinarius, Titus’s twin brother. Titus felt an unbearable sadness, remembering their boyhood together in Alexandria and the years before they became strangers to each other. How had they grown so far apart? How had Kaeso ended up among these mad death-worshippers?

“It’s alright, brother,” whispered Kaeso. “I forgive you.”

Titus’s sadness faded. He felt a quiver of anger. What had he done to require forgiveness? Why did Kaeso always have to be so smug and self-righteous?

He tried to think of something to say, but there was no time. Suddenly a line of Praetorians was between them, forcing Kaeso into one group and Titus into another. With the Praetorians barking orders at them, the people in Kaeso’s group were forced to put on tunics soaked in pitch, then their arms were tied behind them.

A door opened. From the arena came the roar of the crowd. The stage manager screamed at the prisoners to hurry into the arena. “Quickly, quickly, quickly!” Guards with spears herded them through the opening.

Titus suddenly realized that his meeting with Kaeso had not been accidental. The gods had given him a last chance to save himself. He stepped away from his group and tried to get the attention of the stage manager. “We’re twins! That’s my twin brother! Look at us! Do you see? There are two of us, but it’s my twin brother who’s the Christian, not I! I’m not supposed to be here!”

The stage manager gave him an exasperated look and rolled his eyes. One of the guards used the butt of his spear to knock Titus to the ground.

Kaeso managed to break away from the group and ran to Titus. Stinking of pitch, with his arms bound behind him, he dropped to his knees beside his brother.

“Give me the crucifix,” he whispered. “Please, Titus! It’s the only thing that can give me strength to face the end.”

Lying on his back, Titus clutched the fascinum at his chest and shook his head.

“Titus, I beg you! Titus, I’m about to be burned alive! Please, brother, grant me this one small favour!”

Reluctantly, Titus removed the necklace and put it over Kaeso’s head. Even as he did so, he knew it was wrong to give it up. He reached desperately to grab the fascinum and take it back, but a guard pulled Kaeso to his feet and the fascinum eluded Titus’s grasp.

Kaeso was the last of his group to be herded onto the track. Titus scrambled to his feet. Through the opened door, he saw that the prisoners were being lifted up and placed in the iron baskets atop the pitch-soaked poles. Guards carrying torches ran onto the track and stationed themselves by the poles, ready to set the human torches alight.

As Titus watched, Kaeso was driven to the nearest of the poles; he was the last to be lifted into a basket. Titus caught a glimpse of something bright and glittering at his brother’s breast – the fascinum – then averted his eyes. He could not bear to watch.

He heard a low murmur run though the crowd, a rush of indrawn breath like wind passing though tall grass. This was followed by a cheer that started at one end of the circus, then gradually rose to a roar. From the stands above came the deafening noise of spectators stamping their feet in excitement.

Titus stepped to the doorway and peered outside. At the far end of the circus, a lone charioteer had driven onto the track. He was dressed in the leather racing outfit and helmet of the green faction favoured by the emperor. The charioteer was driving his white steeds at a slow canter as he waved to the crowd.

There were charioteers whose popularity rivalled that of the most famous gladiators, but what charioteer could be so high in the emperor’s esteem that Nero would select him to play this majestic, even godlike role? As the charioteer drove past each human torch, he raised his arm, pointed an accusing finger at the prisoner, and the torch burst into flames. The effect was uncanny, as if the charioteer had the power to cast thunderbolts.

As more torches were lit, the arena grew brighter, and Titus at last saw what the crowd in the stands had already perceived: the charioteer was Nero.

As the emperor continued his slow progress, he drew nearer and nearer to the doorway where Titus stood, and to the pole on which Kaeso had been hoisted. With a gesture from Nero, the torch next to Kaeso was set alight. Kaeso would be next.

Suddenly, Titus felt hands on him. The guards had seen that he was at the opening and were pulling him back. Summoning all his strength, Titus managed to break free. He ran onto the track.

He slipped on a slick, wet spot and tumbled forward. Scrambling to his feet, he touched something and screamed in revulsion. It was a mangled human ear. He staggered to his feet and looked at himself. Wherever his naked flesh had touched the ground he was covered in a gritty paste of sand and blood. He heard the guards shouting behind him and ran.

How different it was, to be here on the arena floor, rather than in the imperial box! He had watched the day’s proceedings from the stands with a mixture of grim determination and exalted privilege, comfortably remote from what was taking place in the arena below. Now he found himself in a bizarre landscape of towering crucifixes and human torches, surrounded by flames and carnage. The blood, urine, and faeces of dogs and humans littered the sand. Everywhere he looked he saw fingers and toes and other scraps of flesh left behind by the ravenous hounds. A nauseating stench filled his nostrils, and hot smoke burned his lungs. Above the roar of the crowd he heard the screams of those set alight, the crackling of burning bodies, and the moans of the crucified.

With the guards at his heels, Titus rushed headlong towards Nero. He reached the chariot and threw himself on the ground.

Basking in the approval of the crowd, his eyes glittering in the firelight, Nero registered no surprise at Titus’s sudden appearance. He grinned broadly, then threw back his head and laughed. He pulled at the reins to stop the horses and waved at the guards to draw back. He stepped from the chariot, strode to the spot where Titus lay gasping on the sand, and stooped over to pat him on the head.

“Never fear, Senator Pinarius,” he said. “Caesar will save you!”

Weeping with relief, Titus clutched Nero’s spindly legs. “Thank you! Thank you, Caesar!”

The spectators assumed this exchange was part of the entertainment. They applauded and roared with laughter at Nero’s satirical demonstration of clemency amid such overwhelming carnage.

“Nero is merciful! Merciful Nero!” someone shouted, and the crowd took up the chant: “Nero is merciful! Merciful Nero! Nero is merciful! Merciful Nero!” The chant mingled with the shrieking of the human torches.