Текст книги "Empire"

Автор книги: Steven Saylor

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And yet, Sporus herself had not been innocent in the long chain of horrors leading to this moment. If her confession was true, she had been responsible to some degree for the death of Lucius’s father. And Lucius’s father had not been innocent, either. As a senator and an augur, Titus Pinarius had been complicit in the acts that had led so many to clamour for the death of Nero.

The events of the previous day were as appalling as anything Lucius had ever witnessed. Yet, as far as he could see, the chain of crimes and atrocities that had led to this day had no beginning and would have no end.

He realized that he was clutching the fascinum. He held it so that it caught the sunlight. The gold glittered so brightly that it hurt Lucius’s eyes to look at it.

Did the god Fascinus exist? Had he ever existed?

Lucius’s glimmer of doubt was followed by a quiver of superstitious fear. The protection of Fascinus might be the only reason why Lucius was still alive, and not hanging on a cross like Asiaticus.

Lucius was alive, but towards what end? What was the point of living in such a world?

He returned to the road and walked back to the city.

AD 79

“Your father was a very religious man,” said Epaphroditus. “Indeed, I never knew a man more pious in his respect for his ancestors, or more devout in his belief in the revelation of divine will. Of course, like his own father, Titus became an augur at a very early age, younger than you are now, I imagine. How old are you, Lucius?”

“Thirty-two.” Lucius Pinarius sipped wine from his cup. Epaphroditus always served very fine wine, and the shady garden terrace of his house on the Esquiline Hill had a splendid view of the city. It was a cloudless day in the month of Augustus. The heat was relieved by an occasional breeze from the west.

Having kept his fortune intact throughout the tumult that followed the death of Nero, Epaphroditus had retired from the imperial service, happy to recede into anonymity in the relatively quiet decade of Vespasian’s reign. Lucius, too, had done little these past ten years, at least in the eyes of society; he had not even married and started a family, and while he possessed numerous properties and business interests, he had no proper career. His mother lived with one of his sisters, all three of whom were married and running their own households. Living alone, Lucius avoided politics and public service and pursued simple pleasures like sitting in his friend’s hillside garden, enjoying good wine and taking in the view.

“Thirty-two!” exclaimed Epaphroditus. “Where do the years go? Well, it seems you have reached an age at which you might consider following in the footsteps of your father and grandfather.”

“Become an augur, you mean?”

“For a start. Nowadays the augurate is usually a reward from the emperor to men who have given long years of service to the state, but there are always exceptions, especially for those with hereditary ties to the priesthood. I know that you never established any relationship with the late Vespasian, but now that his son Titus has succeeded him, it’s a new day in Roma. The men around Titus are closer to your own age. If you were to seek the emperor’s favour-”

Lucius shook his head. “I used to watch my father perform auguries. I never felt drawn to the art.”

This was not the first time they had discussed augury. Why did Epaphroditus keep bringing up the subject? Probably because Lucius would not speak his true thoughts aloud.

Lucius’s feeling about his father were very mixed. The more Lucius learned about Nero, the more he wondered at his father’s unshakable loyalty to the man. As a freedman, Epaphroditus’s service had been compulsory, but what had drawn Titus Pinarius to Nero? Was it merely the opportunity for advancement and wealth? Had he not been appalled when his own brother was put to death by Nero?

Kaeso, the uncle Lucius had never known, was another source of consternation. How had a Pinarius, a relative of Augustus and the descendant of one of the city’s most ancient families, become a Christian? Lucius wished he had been given the chance to talk to his uncle Kaeso, instead of being kept away from him. Had his father made a genuine effort to understand Kaeso, or to bring him back to the worship of the gods? Since both men were dead, Lucius would never know the truth of their relationship.

Lucius took pride in his family’s ancient heritage but felt deeply puzzled by the preceding generation. He would never say a word against his father, especially to Epaphroditus, but the idea of following in his father’s footsteps did not appeal to Lucius.

“Granted, Lucius, you may feel no particular affinity for augury, but consider the benefits. The priesthood would give you a vocation, a focus for your talents, a connection with others of your class-”

“Fortunately, I need none of those things.” Lucius flashed a wry smile. “The last time I sat here in your garden, Epaphroditus, you put forth very similar arguments, only then the subject was family and marriage. You said I should finally take a wife and make some sons – to enjoy the tax exemptions, if for no other reason. But I have no worries about money; my father left me a very wealthy man. Yes, I could fritter away my time in the so-called service of the state, either as a priest or a magistrate – but why should I bother? And I could marry a fine patrician girl and produce some fine patrician sons – but again, why bother? The state is the emperor; the emperor is the state. The rest of us are like grains of sand on a beach: interchangeable, indistinguishable, inconsequential. A Roman citizen has no importance whatsoever, no matter how much some of us would like to pretend otherwise.”

Epaphroditus drew a sharp breath. He looked around the garden to make sure there were no slaves to overhear. “Lucius, you must be more careful about what you say, even to me. That kind of talk is not only defeatist, but dangerously close to sedition.”

Lucius shrugged. “You prove my point. If a citizen has no more freedom of speech than a slave, why serve the state?”

“How old did you say you were, Lucius? Thirty-two?” Epaphroditus shook his head. “A dangerous age for a man – old enough to feel that he should be in charge of his destiny and to chafe against the constraints of living under an absolute ruler, but perhaps not yet old enough to discern the fine line that a man must tread if he’s to survive the whims of Fortune.”

“By which you mean the whims of the imperial family?”

“Roma could have fallen into worse hands than those of the Flavians.”

Epaphroditus expressed the prevailing consensus. Vespasian had been a competent and level-headed ruler, his reign made smoother by a vast infusion of wealth provided by the sack of Jerusalem, which had filled the Roman treasury with gold; the enslavement of the Jewish insurgents had provided thousands of slaves to build Roma’s roads and grand new monuments. Nero and his immediate successors had failed largely because they ran out of money. Vespasian had never had to worry about that.

Increasingly confident as his reign progressed, Vespasian gradually abandoned the fiction, steadfastly maintained by the dynasty of Augustus, that the emperor and Senate were equal partners, with the emperor merely the first among citizens. By the time of his death from natural causes, there was no doubt that Vespasian was absolute ruler of the state. He became so confident of his popularity that he put a stop to the practice, begun by Claudius, of searching every person admitted to the imperial presence for weapons. He also abandoned Claudius’s practice of staffing the bureaucracy with imperial freedman, making state service a professional career open to citizens of merit, or at least ambition.

In the last ten years there had been a radical shift in the way people thought about the “good old days” of the long-ago Republic. Where once people sentimentalized the Republic and senators spoke wistfully of its return, it was more common now for people to refer to the era of Caesar and Pompeius as the “bad old days,” when unbridled competition between ruthless warlords resulted in bloody civil war. The Year of Four Emperors that followed Nero had been a throwback to the end of the Republic, a reminder of the chaos that could reign when there was no clear successor to command the legions and run the empire. How much better it was to bow to an emperor whose legitimacy was beyond question and to enjoy the stability of a ruling dynasty.

If Vespasian had a vice, it was greed. The emperor and his favourites had shamelessly exploited their positions to accrue enormous wealth, treating the Roman state as a moneymaking scheme for insiders. Vespasian famously put a tax on the city’s latrinae, claiming a share of the money made by the sale of urine to fullers, who used it to clean wool. Thus the saying, “Even when you piss, the emperor takes a percentage.”

A year after Vespasian’s death, people still wondered at his dying words: “Oh, damn! I think I’m becoming a god.” The Senate duly voted to honour him in death as the Divine Vespasian.

His elder son, Titus, succeeded him. He had served under Vespasian in Judaea, taking part in the plunder of Jerusalem and the enslavement of the Jews. Titus had been an active partner in his father’s reign – his father’s henchman, some called him, since as prefect of the Praetorian Guards he ruthlessly protected his father’s interests. But as emperor, Titus had so far displayed an even milder temperament than his father’s. With the transition of power, the new dynasty was firmly established, making it clear that Roma was destined to be ruled by hereditary kings, even if no one called them that.

Epaphroditus returned to the subject of Lucius’s future. “If you have no inclination for augury or state service, perhaps it’s not too late for you to consider a military career. I don’t know anyone more skillful with a bow and arrow. Last year at your Etrurian estate I saw you bring down a charging boar with a spear. Not every man can do such a thing; that took nerves as well as skill. I suspect you could handle yourself quite well on a battlefield.”

Lucius shook his head. “I learned to use weapons because I own land in the countryside, and hunting amuses me. It also puts meat on my table. But why should I wish to kill my fellow mortals?”

“To defend Roma.”

Lucius laughed. “No one serves in the military to defend Roma: Roma is not under attack. Men join the legions to head for the outskirts of the empire and look for fresh lands to plunder. It’s all about looting, isn’t it? All the successful emperors looted something and brought the booty back to Roma.”

“For glory, then?”

“If one finds it glorious to kill strangers and rape their women and then brag about it. If I wanted to loot, I could become a magistrate and collect taxes. That would be far less dangerous for me, and would kill my victims much more slowly; one wants to keep them alive so they can keep paying taxes.”

Epaphroditus shook his head. “Our emperor collects taxes to make the state function, for the benefit of us all. Consider the grand public projects-”

“Like that monstrosity that’s ruined the view?”

Lucius referred to the massive structure that now dominated the skyline of the city from all directions, but especially as seen from Epaphroditus’s garden. The architects called it an amphitheatre – two semicircular theatres put together to form a complete circle. It was by far the largest and tallest building in Roma.

In the days of the first emperors, the valley between the Caelian, Esquiline, and Palatine hills had filled up with tenements. After the Great Fire, Nero razed the charred tenements and made the area into his private hunting meadow in the heart of the Golden House, complete with a large man-made lake. Determined to get rid of the Golden House bit by bit, Vespasian started by filling in the lake and clearing the meadow. On the huge, flat site that resulted, using money looted from Jerusalem to purchase materials and 12,000 Jewish slaves captured in the war for labour, Vespasian began constructing an immense, elaborately decorated amphitheatre. The Divine Augustus had first expressed the idea of building such a structure in the middle of the city for the presentation of gladiator combats, hunting exhibitions, and other spectacles; Vespasian would make Augustus’s dream a reality. Construction went on throughout Vespasian’s reign, but he did not live to see it finished. It was left to Titus to complete the structure.

From Epaphroditus’s garden, the enormous scale of the Flavian Amphitheatre was somewhat deceptive, due to its proximity to the giant statue of Nero: seeing the huge amphitheatre next to the Colossus played tricks with the viewer’s grasp of perspective. The towering statue was no longer enclosed by a courtyard; Vespasian had demolished the grand entrance of the Golden House but left the statue intact. For a while the Colossus had been surrounded by scaffolds, and from Epaphroditus’s garden one could hear the sound of artisans wielding hammers and chisels and crowbars. When the scaffolding came down, the face of the Colossus no longer resembled that of Nero; henceforth it would simply be the sun god, Sol.

“Monstrosity?” said Epaphroditus. “I think the Flavian Amphitheatre is not only an amazing feat of engineering, but also quite beautiful to look at. I’ll admit I was dubious when the foundation was laid and one began to realize just how big it would be. But once it began to take shape, and the decorations and architectural details were filled in, I thought to myself: I shall never tire of looking at that. It’s been a joy, sitting here in the garden day by day, season after season, watching the thing go up. I haven’t even minded the noise, though I suppose there’ll be even more noise once the thing opens in a year or so. Imagine the roar of fifty thousand spectators! It’s quite impressive on the inside, as well. One of the architects is an old friend of mine and let me have a look. You feel as if you’re in a gigantic bowl, with all those rows upon rows of seats rising around you. There’s never been anything like it.”

Lucius was not convinced. “How will so many people get in and out without waiting for hours on end? And once they’re inside, how will they avoid being crushed to death?”

“The engineers have planned for that. The place has eighty entrances – vomitoria, they’re called – and each has a number; people will enter and exit by the vomitorium specified on their ticket. The stairways, corridors, and landings are architectural marvels in themselves. Since it was built on the site of Nero’s lake, the area was already plumbed, so there’s no lack of running water. The place has over a hundred drinking fountains, and the two largest latrinae I’ve ever seen.”

“Marvellous! Fifty thousand Romans can all take a piss at the same time.”

Epaphroditus ignored him. “The arena is immense, able to accommodate whole armies of gladiators. Or navies; using the plumbing that maintained Nero’s artificial lake, the arena can be flooded and drained at will. The challenge will be staging spectacles large enough to fill the space.”

Lucius and Epaphroditus sat in silence for a while, watching the slaves and artisans scurry like insects inside the massive network of scaffolding that surrounded the amphitheatre. More construction was going on at a vast bathing complex not far from the amphitheatre, and on a huge triumphal arch that would serve as a ceremonial gateway between the amphitheatre and the Forum. The gigantic stone plaques being installed on the arch could be seen even from Epaphroditus’s garden; the images celebrated the victory of Vespasian and Titus over the rebellious Jews and the sack of Jerusalem. The Jewish slaves working on the arch wore ragged loincloths and glistened with sweat.

The sun had moved, and with it the patch of shade. Lucius moved his chair and Epaphroditus nodded to the serving girl, who brought more wine. The breeze had died. The day was growing quite hot.

“These antisocial ideas, Lucius – where do they come from?” Epaphroditus shook his head. “I worry that someone in our little circle of friends has been a bad influence on you. But which one? The Stoic, the poet, or the sophist?”

Lucius smiled. “You certainly can’t blame Epictetus. How could a Stoic ever be a bad influence? I can’t say the same about Martial or Dio. Ah, but here they all are, arriving together.”

A slave showed the three newcomers into the garden. Chairs were rearranged to take advantage of the shade. More cups and more wine were brought.

Epictetus was no longer a slave. Epaphroditus had freed him some years ago, and the two had become close friends. His limp had grown more pronounced; he never went anywhere now without a crutch to lean on. In all the years he had known him, Lucius had never once heard the man complain about his infirmity. Epictetus was a living example of the Stoic philosophy he embraced, which placed great value on the dignity of the self and a graceful acquiescence to those things over which the self had no control. In the years since his manumission, he had gained a considerable reputation as a teacher. Epictetus looked the part: his long beard was flecked with the first touches of grey and he wore the customary garment of philosophers, the Greek cloak called a himation.

Dio of Prusa also wore a beard and a himation. He was a Greek sophist, a writer who popularized philosophical ideas with clever essays and discourses. At forty, he was a few years older than Epictetus.

The third visitor, about the same age as Dio, was also a writer, though of a very different sort. The Spanish-born Martial was a poet. Among the most fervent admirers of his work was the new emperor. Martial was clean-shaven and immaculately groomed, and dressed formally in a toga, as befitted a poet paying a visit to an important patron of the arts.

After they each had a cup of wine and exchanged casual conversation about the weather – could anyone recall a month of Augustus so hot? – Epaphroditus got to his feet and stood before the object that he had invited them to see. A new statue had been installed in the garden, occupying a spot at the very centre, with the Flavian Amphitheatre as a backdrop. The statue was covered by a large sheet of canvas.

“First,” said Epaphroditus, “let me say that obtaining this statue was not easy. The new amphitheatre has claimed the best available work of every sculptor from the Pillars of Hercules to Lake Maotis. Count all those niches and archways in the amphitheatre facade, and imagine a statue in every available spot – that’s a great many statues. But this is the one I wanted, and I got it. I won’t tell you how much I paid for it, but when you see it, I think you’ll agree it was worth whatever I paid, and more.”

“Please, keep us in suspense no longer!” Martial laughed. “Let us see this masterpiece in marble.”

Epaphroditus nodded to two slaves waiting nearby. They pulled the billowing canvas up and away from the statue.

“Extraordinary!” whispered Epictetus.

“Splendid!” said Martial.

“Do you recognize the subject?” asked Epaphroditus.

“It’s Melancomas, of course,” said Dio. “Was it done from life?”

“Yes. Melancomas modeled for the sculptor just a few months before he died. This is the original, not a copy. The hands that molded this marble were guided by eyes that beheld Melancomas in the flesh. The statue and the man himself occupied the same room in the same moment. The painting was also done from life, so the delicate colours of the flesh and the hair are as accurate as possible. What you see before you may be the most true-to-life image of Melancomas that exists. You can understand why I was so excited to obtain this piece.”

During his brief but remarkable career, the Greek boxer Melancomas had become the most famous athlete in the world. The life-size statue depicted a naked youth with his broad shoulders thrown back, his brawny chest lifted, and one muscular leg firmly planted before the other. His shapely arms were extended before him. Wavy blond tresses framed his strikingly handsome face, which expressed serene concentration as he used one hand to wind a leather strap around the other. The statue was so realistically rendered and coloured that it seemed almost to breathe. Epaphroditus had chosen to install it not on a pedestal but at ground level, so that instead of looming above them, Melancomas seemed to be standing among them. The effect was uncanny.

Melancomas had become famous for his unique fighting technique: he hardly touched his opponents, and on a few occasions won matches without landing a single blow. Using remarkable dexterity and stamina, he could duck punches and dance around his opponents until they fell from exhaustion. His bouts became legendary. Men came from great distances to see him compete. There had never been another boxer like him.

An equal claim to fame had been his extraordinary beauty. Some said that Melancomas’s face was the reason why so few blows were ever landed against him: seeing such perfection, no man had the heart to spoil it. Five years ago, when Titus, then thirty-three, presided at the Augustan Games in Neapolis, he took Melancomas for a lover. When the boxer died suddenly and unexpectedly, Titus had grieved, and so had many others.

“You wrote an elegy for Melancomas, did you not, Dio?” said Epaphroditus.

The sophist needed no further encouragement to quote from his work. He rose from his chair and stood before the statue. “‘When Melancomas was naked, nobody would look at anything else; the human eye was drawn to his perfection as iron is drawn to the lodestone. When we count the vast number of his admirers, and when we consider that there have been many famous men and many beautiful men, but none was ever more famous for being beautiful, then we see that Melancomas was blessed with a beauty that we may truly call divine.’”

Dio inclined his head. The others rewarded him with applause. “I saw Melancomas myself on a few occasions,” he went on. “Truly, the statue does him justice. What a dazzling throwback he was; what a splendid anachronism!”

“Why do you say that?” said Lucius.

“Because nowadays, the ideal of male beauty has become so very confused. I blame the Persians and their influence. Just as they gave the world astrology, which has found its way into every corner of our culture, so they introduced to us an ideal of male beauty very different from that handed down to us by our ancestors.

“Melancomas embodies the old ideal. As long as there are young men like him, we are reminded of that perfection which the old Greeks quite literally put on a pedestal, capturing it in stone for the world, and for their descendants, to witness and aspire to. They believed that nothing in the world was more beautiful than the physical splendour of the masculine form, which found its most sublime embodiment in the young athlete: a runner’s legs and backside, arms fit to throw a discus, a lean and well-proportioned torso, a face that radiates calm intelligence and the potential for wisdom. Such a youth is a model for other youths to aspire to; he is a worthy protege to whom older men are drawn because he offers such great hope for the future.

“The ideal offered by the Persian is quite different. They find women more beautiful than men, and as a result they think the most beautiful young men are those who look most like girls. They find beauty in pliable eunuchs and boys with slender limbs and soft bottoms. More and more you see this taste for feminine beauty embraced by the Greeks and Romans. As a result, fewer and fewer young men aspire to the old ideal; instead of hardening their muscles with exercise, they pluck their eyebrows and put on cosmetics. So a specimen like Melancomas – a youth whose splendour can be compared to the most famous of the old statues – stands out all the more. He is the exception that proves the rule: our standard of male beauty now, sadly, is the Persian standard.”

“And to think, Titus actually had the fellow,” said Martial, gazing at the statue over the brim of his cup and pursing his lips. “No wonder my dear patron was so heartbroken when the young man died. Frankly, I’d settle for a boy one-tenth as pretty as Melancomas – if the boy would simply show up!”

“Have you been stood up again, Martial?” Lucius smiled. This was the poet’s perennial complaint.

“Yes, again! And this boy was so promising. Lygdus, his name was. He picked the place, he picked the time… and never appeared. I was abandoned, but not seduced – left to consort with my left hand yet again.”

The others laughed. No matter how abstruse or rarefied the arguments put forward by the philosophers, Martial could be always counted on to bring the conversation back down to earth.

“But can a boy be too beautiful?” asked Dio. “Can beauty pose a danger to its possessor, especially the Persian style of beauty?”

“What sort of danger?” said Martial.

“I’m thinking of writing a discourse on the question, using as my subject the eunuch whom Nero married. Sporus, he was called. His story fascinates me. You knew Sporus, didn’t you, Epaphroditus?”

“Yes,” said Epaphroditus quietly. “So did Lucius. Epictetus also knew her.” The three of them exchanged thoughtful glances.

“Good. Perhaps the three of you can give me further details to advance my argument. Everybody knows Nero castrated the youth and took him for a wife precisely because of the boy’s resemblance to the beautiful Poppaea. Nero dressed Sporus in Poppaea’s clothing, made hairdressers style his hair in the fashion of the day, and surrounded the boy with female attendants, just as if he were a woman. Otho was drawn to Sporus for the same reason, his resemblance to Poppaea. And then came Vitellius, who drove the poor eunuch to suicide out of a desire to exploit the boy’s beauty for his own depraved amusement. What a strange and finally tragic path the boy’s life took, all because of his resemblance to a beautiful woman. Had the boy been plain, or had he been beautiful in the manner of Melancomas, one imagines his life would have been very different.”

Lucius looked at Epictetus to see his reaction. The Stoic’s face was turned away from the others, as if something at the far corner of the garden had drawn his interest. When Epictetus turned back, his face showed no emotion.

Martial laughed. “Sporus was pretty but had an ugly end. Vitellius was ugly, and had an uglier end! Perhaps you should write a discourse comparing those two, Dio.”

Dio shook his head. “As a rule, I avoid discussing the lives of our emperors, even those who came to a bad end. My object is to deliver morals, not debate politics.”

“But haven’t you heard?” said Martial. “Our enlightened new emperor has declared free speech for all. No subject or person is off-limits, not even Titus himself. Allow me to quote my patron: ‘It is impossible for me to be insulted or abused in any way, since I do nothing that deserves censure, and falsehoods are beneath my notice. As for emperors dead and gone, they can avenge themselves if anyone should slander them, if in fact they are demigods and possess divine power.’”

“Did you write that speech for him?” asked Lucius.

“I most certainly did not,” said Martial. “Titus is quite capable of writing his own speeches. And what he says, he means. There’ll be no more payments to those who turn in others for seditious talk, as happened under his father. We all know Vespasian had an army of paid informers, and there are whole rooms in the imperial library filled with dossiers about perfectly innocuous citizens. I suspect there’s a file on every one of us here. But Titus has pledged to burn those documents, and to put the informers out of work. He’ll even punish the most notorious of them, who maliciously spread lies about innocent men.”

Lucius sighed. “The subject shifts to politics – at last!”

“I thought politics bored you,” said Martial.

“Yes, but only one thing bores me more: talk about pretty boys.” The others laughed. “No, hear me out,” said Lucius. “Every one of us here is a bachelor, true, but we are not all boy-lovers. I think I must suffer from the emperor Claudius’s complaint. My father, who knew him quite well, told me for a fact that cousin Claudius was aroused only by girls or women; he had no interest in boys or men. The beauty of Melancomas would have been lost on him. A discussion of male beauty, no matter how grandiose, would have bored him to tears.”

Martial laughed “As it b-b-bores you, Lucius? I think your cousin Claudius simply never met the right b-b-boy!”

“Our reigning emperor certainly doesn’t suffer from Claudius’s complaint,” observed Dio. “Titus buried his first wife, divorced the second, and, despite his reputed dalliance with the beautiful queen of the Jews – and with brawny Melancomas here – he seems to like eunuchs best of all. Is it true, Martial, that Titus keeps a whole stable of pretty eunuchs in the palace?”

“It’s true. Each is prettier than the other.”

“A fact which provides yet more evidence for my thesis regarding the triumph of Persian standards,” said Dio. “You’d think the emperor would seek another Melancomas. Instead, he surrounds himself with castrated boys.”

Lucius laughed and threw up his hands. “Do you see what’s happened? The conversation veered briefly to politics, then circled directly back to sex.”

“The subject is eunuchs, who have no sex,” said Martial.

“Enough!” declared their host. “To please Lucius Pinarius, we will talk about something else. Surely there must be some other topic worthy of discussion, in a world so enormous.”

“We could talk about the world itself,” suggested Lucius. “Did you know that the general Agricola has discovered that Britannia is an island? It’s true. The land mass to the uttermost north doesn’t go on forever, as people thought. It ends in a stormy, frigid sea.”

Dio laughed. “That information might be of some interest, if anyone had a reason to go to Britannia. I’d much prefer to travel south. Epictetus, you’ve hardly said a word. Didn’t you just come back from Campania?”