by Ken Parejko
“A deal,” Titus said, and rested his hand for a moment on my shoulder. “Glad to see you again. Good men are hard to find in this hell-hole any more.”
“I noticed.”
I did find Lucius and we took Titus up and moved to the Flavian house on the Quirinal, where Titus and his younger brother Domitian kept me in comfort and regaled me with stories of their father’s struggles swimming against the political currents towards an honorable career. But in just took two weeks in the capitol the disaster and the cynicism of its citizens were once again too much for me. I thanked my hosts for their hospitality. Lucius and I rode back up through the Campus Martius, at last cleared of the crucified Christi. Once again Nero had overdone it. Hoping the public would blame them for the fire, instead his cruelty was so extreme people felt sorry for the them and their preachers harvested thousands of new converts.
We left the city behind. As we headed up the slope of the via Flaminia into the clean, pleasant countryside I felt my lungs clear and breathing became easier. In the coming months the city would rebuild itself, though many of its resources were diverted to Nero’s new Golden House, lavish beyond reason, its walls paneled in gold and embedded with precious stones and hung with paintings stolen for private and public galleries alike. The palace’s dining room, I was told, had a remarkable rotating ceiling. The palace was being built in the middle of a huge grounds landscaped with gardens and lakes so the emperor could pretend he was living in a country villa. At the very center of the grounds workmen erected a big sculpture of Nero as Sun-god.
But even before the Golden House and its sprawling grounds were finished another kind of disaster struck the city, fueled by Nero’s paranoia. In a matter of days many of the most important names and families of the empire, reaching back generations, were wiped out.
The murder of his mother, his addiction to cruelty, his artistic delusions, the near-bankrupting of the country after the fire and financing his grand monument to himself, all led naturally to plots to rid the country of his madness. One centered around Gaius Calpurnius Piso, whose villa Nero had stayed at the night he'd had his mother murdered.
As the plot grew the circle of the conspiracy expanded and, as happens, leaks developed. The most serious, which started small but ended up bringing the plot to Nero’s attention, took place in Misenum. There a woman named Epicharis was stirring the sailors up to revolt. She tried to bring over to her side an officer named Volusius Proculus, who'd been alongside Anicetus when Agrippina was murdered. Proculus passed on what he heard to the praefect of the Praetorians, Tigellinus. Tigellinus, one of the emperor's many bed-mates, informed Nero of the plot. Epicharis, arrested and horribly tortured, would not name the co-conspirators. But another of the conspirators broke under torture, and dozens then hundreds were arrested and executed.
The plot had spread through the class of senators, equites, even senior officers of the Praetorians. The standard of justice was now guilt by association: if you were a conspirator's friend or relation you were guilty. Tigellinus and Nero’s wife Poppaea used the opportunity to clear from within reach of the emperor all competitors to their own power. The plan had been to assassinate Nero at Piso's villa but it was Piso’s blood, rather than the emperor’s, which stained the senator's floor. The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, too honest for his own good, was forced into exile. The poet Lucan, whose republican tendencies had caused him to be banned from public recitals, was implicated. This brought Lucan’s uncle Seneca, the tutor and once close friend of Nero, under suspicion. Though never suspected of taking part in the plot he was accused of knowing about it and not turning informant. Seneca like many others chose suicide rather than public execution.
Nero's wife Poppaea was suffering through a difficult pregnancy. One morning when the emperor stumbled in from a night's carousing he awakened her and she complained. For this he kicked her and their unborn child to death.
Like a drowning man Nero grasped for any lines thrown his way. In Carthage a man by the name of Caesillius Bassus dreamt of a great cave in which the Phoenician Dido had buried a huge treasure, with piles of gold ingots reaching beyond count. He sailed to the capitol where his story of infinite gold gained him admission into Nero’s audience. Only now he told the story as though it wasn't a dream at all, but that he'd found the cave and its incredible treasure. A cave piled high with gold where, he bragged, for every ingot you haul away the earth produces two more. Nero was ecstatic. At this lowest point in his career Fortune had stepped in to save him. He ordered half a navy to sail for Carthage while he waited in Rome for the ingots to pour in. Speeches were composed by his most fawning orators: Nature, in recognition of the emperor’s genius, has offered us a new and miraculous harvest, no longer only of grape, olives or grain, but of pure gold.
Nero borrowed widely, saying he would repay, many times over as soon as his ships came in. His extravagance was contagious. Banquets and parties went over the top, as though there would be no tomorrow. In only a few weeks family wealth which had taken generations to build was wasted away.
Meanwhile back in Carthage Bassus scoured the countryside, directing Nero’s men to explore the deep recesses of cold and slimy caves, to dig first here, then there, then everywhere. Thousands of itinerant men hurried to Carthage to dig in every cave they could find, for a treasure which was only a dream.
When the treasure could not be found, Bassus expressed his astonishment. The people, preferring not to be reminded of their own gullibility, turned on him. Angry crowds milled around his home. His suicide ended his life and his dream, but not the hang-over in Rome.
I kept up with news of these sordid events from my eyrie on the Lake. It was a good time to be far from the center of power. My notes about the natural history of the countryside grew to the thousands, though having mined the local landscape and my friends of its richest ore, the piles now grew more slowly, and as they did I grew restless. One morning my mother handed me a letter from the capitol, from Tiberius Julius Lupus, like me an equite and a close friend of Vespasian’s. Lupus was being posted to a position in Alexandria. Vespasian, he wrote, had asked him to inform me of an opening in the governor’s office in Antioch, Syria where Lucinius Mucianus, the province's governor, was looking for a reliable fiscal procurator. Lupus appealed to my civic responsibility. Good middle-level administrators where hard to come by. I’d gained a reputation; the country needed me.
Over the next few days I turned the offer over and over in my mind. Life on the Lake had been good. I’d kept myself out of the political intrigues of the capitol. I was rested and primed for an adventure, and by all reports Antioch was a lovely city. A whole new venue, with exotic plants and animals and landscape, was just what I needed.
I accepted. My parents were pleased, not to have me out of the house, but that their only son, who they’d once pictured as a successful attorney might find his stride somewhere in the machinery of the empire’s bureaucracy.
I left my stacks of scribbled notes in my room and convinced my mother not to bother them. Lucius and I traveled light. We spent three nights in Rome at the Flavian’s. Vespasian was once again up in Reate. Titus and Domitian were both out of the city. Lucius reconnected with the community of Christi which he’d missed while up at the Lake. At Ostia we boarded a ship carrying wine to Puteoli on the Bay of Naples. From there we transferred and sailed eastward through Syracuse, Athens, and finally Antioch. The trip took almost a month. Ours was one of the last ships sailing before winter, when few if any dared try the stormy Mediterranean. The seas were rough, and I suffered. Walking off the ship at Antioch’s ancient harbor I was no longer sure I’d made the right decision. But behind me the Mediterranean made a convincing argument for not looking back.
Chapter 11
Antioch, Syria
Spring, 67 C.E.
Vespasian’s next offer, delivered to my office in Antioch just as I was to heading to a meeting, came from out of the blue.
I opened the seal. My dear
Pliny, his letter began. “I haven’t time for pleasantries. I’m in Athens, putting together an Army, on Nero’s orders. Don’t kill yourself laughing...I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.”
Mucianus hailed me from his room. I had to set the letter aside.
Mucianus, myself, and a half-dozen lesser officials were wrestling with a pesky black market in silk which side-stepped the silk tax. I considered it beyond our ability to solve. During the meeting I found it hard to focus, wondering what news Vespasian’s letter brought.
Eventually, during our march from Antioch to Judea, Vespasian filled me in on the details which led up to his letter. The gaffe which sent him hurrying from Rome back to Reate I already knew about, of how Nero saw himself as a great artiste and used meetings with his staff to recite tedious self-congratulatory verses. As he droned on, daydreams flourished behind phony smiles, now and then interrupted by unanimous applause in admiration of his genius. Criticism was deadly, even disinterest dangerous. To Vespasian, who hated pretense, nothing could be more tortuous.
In the middle of an epic recitation, in spite of all his will-power, Vespasian drifted off to sleep only to wake a few moments later to an angry imperial glare. He was lucky to escape with his life. Close friends appealed to Nero and convinced him to demonstrate the depth of his divine generosity by merely banishing, not executing, the guilty general.
So only a few months after I'd met him on the Palatine and in spite of all the cache his friends and brother Sabinus yielded in the court, the great general, genius in the use of artillery, hero of the British campaign, servant of the people as senator and provincial governor, rode north to the quiet Sabine countryside where he settled into the everyday life of a middle-class businessman in the little town he knew so well. Once again he took up his career as a used-mule salesman, with a reputation of fair prices and honesty, a decidedly niche approach to that business.
To escape the reality of having emptied both the state treasury and his political capital, Nero decided to take his genius to audiences in Greece, the fatherland of all culture. He set out on a tour, where he was cheered and applauded by audiences whose jobs, and for all they knew the intimate and important connection between their heads and their bodies, depended on their response. Nero beamed and waved away official couriers from the capitol, who seemed incapable of bringing him anything but bad news. Why pay them any attention while audiences lavished him with flowers and gifts? Finally his closest advisers forced onto him the worst of the news, from far-off Judea, where Cestius Gallus’ army, sent to recapture the Roman fortresses in Jerusalem, Jericho and Machaerus was instead routed.
He turned to his aides. Tell me, he said, and quickly, who can I rely on to teach the Jews a lesson? They worked their way through a short list, in the end recommending Vespasian. But, Nero stammered back, didn’t I just banish him?
Someone found the courage to point out that the collapse of Judea would be just the excuse his enemies in the capitol needed to turn their hostility into open rebellion. Hung-over with a driving headache Nero only wanted to spend his time preparing for that evening’s performance in Athens’ largest theater, the high-point of his tour. Petulantly he ordered a courier to Reate to invite Vespasian to join him in Greece. Without Sabinus' assurance that the invitation was not as so many were a summons to execution, Vespasian, persona non gratis that he was, would likely have ignored it.
According to Vespasian he’d hurried to Athens only to arrive in the middle of a week of encore performances. He waited patiently outside the theater. The loud applause, shouted accolades, and huge bouquets flung onto the stage must have put Nero into an expansive mood. At the post-performance banquet Nero took Vespasian aside, complained how badly he’d missed his old friend’s company, and offered him command of an army already gathering in Syria. “You too,” Nero remarked, tipping back a goblet of wine, “are a genius. I, on the stage, you on the battlefield. It’ll be short work, putting the damned Jews in their place.”
Vespasian, grown tired of selling mules and seeing an opening towards political capitol, accepted.
Nero rose to seal the deal with an imperial hug.
“But with one condition,” Vespasian added.
Nero sat again, his eyes glaring.
“This is war, not theater. I want complete control in choosing my staff.”
“Yes, yes, now just leave me alone. Bring me a victory and you’ll have as glorious a triumph as Rome has ever seen, and I myself will crown you.”
Within hours Vespasian was putting his staff together. His first letter went to Titus, in Rome. He’d raised Titus in the best military tradition, and by all measures succeeded. Beyond father and son, the two were best friends. They would lead the Roman armies together, as equals.
Our staff meeting was, as I’d guessed, a waste of time. Other than employing spies to help us root out and punish the criminals who ran the black-market on silk, something we were already doing, there was little else we could do.
I returned to my office, picked up Vespasian’s letter, and read from where I’d left off.
I’ll get right down to the point, he wrote. You know about the disasters just to your south, in Judea. Titus and I are leading an army there. I’m inviting the best and brightest to join me. By the time you get this I’ll be somewhere between Athens and Antioch, where as it happens our forces are gathering.
Will you join us?
You won’t have to fight. Titus speaks very highly of you and says you two get along very well. He’d like you as an aide.
It had been twenty-five years since Vespasian and I met on the parade grounds at Ara Agrippinensis. At that time, in our few moments together, we’d each impressed the other. Twenty-five years ago we were men of great promise. Today, when most men our age had already made their mark, the description was still apt.
This was not going to be an easy decision. I’d settled in to Antioch, surprised how much I liked the city which as gateway to the east played a pivotal role in Syria's as well as our own economy. Proconsul in Antioch was a very desirable appointment. Varus, whose defeat in the dark forests of Germany had for a time so obsessed me, had been proconsul here, had worked out of the very offices Mucianus and I now inhabited.
Cicero didn’t exaggerate when he described the Syrian capitol as “a seat of brilliant scholarship and artistic refinement.” Antioch is a city of great natural and architectural beauty, best known for its colonnaded main street, designed by Herod when he was King of Judea. I enjoyed short walks in the cool evening air, or early morning before the sun’s heat arrived, along its long thoroughfare lined with busts and statues of gods and emperors. I indulged myself in the city’s baths and relaxed in its many gardens rich with exotic plants, where I would be reminded of my days with Antonius Castor. I wandered the city’s markets full of chattering orientals who’d come westward across the barren Ras-el Khanzir, markets where I could find a dizzying array of new foods -- new kinds of breads, luscious and piquant melons, delicious vegetable side-dishes, even grains which had not yet made their way to the Roman table. But it was the dates, in a score of varieties, from bland to incredibly honey-sweet and flavorful, which most please me, and the pistachios, figs, and other fruits I buy and enjoy without even knowing their names.
Though in Rome I’d grown tired of walking, here I could be found wandering the alleys and byways of this great Seleucian city on the Orontes, rightly considered along with Rome and Alexandria one of the most beautiful cities in all the world. Sometimes I wander out of the city’s gates into the surrounding countryside among a quilt-work of fields and gardens growing vegetables and grain, olive-groves and vineyards, a true desert oasis. I've found expansive groves of white mulberry, grown as fodder for silkworms. Though I've often railed against the diaphanous silk dresses worn by Rome’s wealthier women, which leave almost nothing to the imagination, that a fabric could be made from the product of an insect is fascinating.
One afternoon when little was happening
at the office I visited a silkworm farm. I’d planned to spend an hour but the complex process of raising the larvae of the moth from tiny eggs, through their various molts, their feeding and the collection of cocoons -- which I was astonished to hear were each made of some three miles of threads—was so fascinating that I lost all track of time.
But evening was coming on, and the evenings this far south were surprisingly short, darkness quickly following the sunset. I had to pull myself away from this odd insect-farming. I started back towards the city’s gate, and hadn’t gone far when I noticed a terebinth tree. Terebinths are the source of turpentine and a hard, black wood favored for carvings. The tree I stood beneath was blooming, and held a few tiny, nascent fruits. I recognized it as a female. I knew from Theophrastus that the male terebinth did not produce fruits. It was a moment to remark, standing here in the evening heat beneath the shade of a terebinth, a tree I’d read of but never imagined actually seeing.
Reluctantly I walked on, the hot evening air lying soft over the earth like a thin, gossamer dress. Ahead of me the sun slid rapidly down into a glorious orange haze, from which strange and exotic birds, flitting up from the reeds and rushes along the river, cried out. There was a remarkable variety of bird-life. Big, lumbering herons and storks flew slowly up and down the river singly and in pairs. On the river’s many islands and at the river’s edge they stood, still as obelisks, taking into the gaze of their ancient eyes the tropical pleroma of life sprawled around them. Ducks and geese of a half-dozen kinds flew up and down the river, as though hurrying to keep some important appointment. The river’s rushes and shrubs were alive with finches, sparrows, parakeets, woodpeckers, grouse, and birds completely unknown to me.
As I stood marveling at the diversity of birds a young lamb appeared suddenly from under a bush, and as it baaed anxiously for its mother approached me warily, its nose working like a dog’s. I stood stock-still. The lamb’s nose touched my leg and, deciding that no, I was not its mother, it turned with a bound and hurried off unsteadily toward the river. Along the way it spied a white heron, stalking prey at the edge of the water. Lonely or in need of reassurance, it walked straight up to the heron, baaed quietly, and stretched its nose out to touch the bird’s side. The heron slowly turned its cool stare to the lamb, then landed a swift peck on the animal’s nose. The poor lamb bleated pitifully, did a kind of backwards somersault, and landed in the weeds at the water’s edge. It lay there a moment before righting itself and disappearing into the bushes.