The Conspiracy

by John Hersey

  A delicate relationship between Lucan and Seneca. The conceited poet thinks himself superior to the philosopher. The philosopher, though famous for his “modesty,” must find this attitude insufferable. Yet it is clear that Lucan, who is unstable, depends heavily on the old man’s steadiness and equanimity. At the same time these very qualities in Seneca—of evenness, fidelity, staunchness—are to Lucan tiresome and boring. The tie here, despite the friction, is very strong. Seneca never had a son, and Lucan’s mild father has always kept his distance from a son who knew how to hurt him. Without Lucan, Seneca would be sad; without Seneca, Lucan would through folly and headlong impulsiveness destroy himself.

  Through a sensitive series of interventions by discreet persons we procured the following most important commentary on the Pharsalia, delivered to a close friend by the poet Caesius Bassus, who was at the Piso dinner and remains on good but not intimate terms—in other words, terms of mutual envy—with Lucan:

  “The change in tone of the poem is notorious. One way of putting this is that the epic has three heroes: Caesar, Pompey, and Cato; and as the poem goes forward Cato, the Republican, emerges as the figure Lucan really loves and admires. His praises of Pompey one can write off as stemming from the traditional allegiance of Cordobans to Pompey. But the feeling for Cato is another matter—and if you look at that feeling closely and think about what has happened in Lucan’s relationship with the present Caesar, you will find very dark thoughts indeed lurking in the poem. I would cite, for example, Cato’s speech in the desert, in the last book before the one Lucan is now writing. Stripped to its bones, the speech says that the crossing of the desert is to be the test of his soldiers’ ‘Virtue’; only by suffering and then fighting can true patriots recover liberty for Rome; the choice is death or freedom, and those who choose the easy way, avoiding hardship and danger, deserve to live a suffocating life under a tyrant. This is strong stuff, my dear friend. And there are other things—the speech of Vulteius on suicide: Death is the brave man’s only choice when his liberty is taken from him. And—in strictest confidence—I went to a banquet last month at which Lucan read a new passage, containing an attack on Alexander that was like an assault in a dream. Do you know how figures in a dream wear evanescent masks which fade, or can be torn away by hard thought, revealing other, ‘truer’ faces? Strip off the Alexander mask in that passage, and you find the face of Julius Caesar. Strip off the mask of Julius Caesar, then, and you find—but, my dear friend, one cannot speak of such things….”

  This year, shortly before the fire, a contest of poets was announced. Himself was enrolled early on the roster of competitors, which mostly consisted of submissive young poets and poetasters who wanted nothing more than the honor of reading from the same stage as Himself. Enters Lucan, proclaiming with his usual assurance that he will read the finest poem he has ever written. The contest. The judges award the prize to Lucan. (The three judges, as you know, presently reside on three different distant rocky islands.)

  Two weeks later, Lucan has the effrontery to announce a solo public reading, at which the final piece is to be the poem that beat the Emperor. Himself is present as Lucan begins. Suddenly, while Lucan is reciting, Himself orders in a loud voice an immediate meeting of the Senate, and gets up and leaves, taking with him more than half the audience.

  For five days Lucan circulates in the city, denouncing the convening of the Senate, the only purpose of which, says Lucan, was to throw cold water on his performance.

  On the sixth day, the Emperor hands down the following order: “To the Censors. From Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, Emperor. M. Annaeus Lucanus is henceforth and forever proscribed from poetical or literary production or publication, and is forbidden to plead causes or cases or to participate in readings, forensic contests, competitions, games, or public occasions of any sort whatsoever.”

  Lucan is bound by this order to silence as to recital, but this does not stop him from much ill-mannered behavior. His rage breaks out in public baths, at receptions, in the streets. He is both out of control and under control, because he uses, in his wild outbursts, the most subtle innuendo and indirection—not a word that is overtly libelous or actionable.

  Summary and assessment:

  After the death of Persius, Lucan remained uncontestably the foremost poet of Rome. It is my considered conclusion, Tigellinus, that Lucan’s warped mind has led him to believe that being Rome’s best poet is more important than being Rome’s Emperor. (Remember Agrippina’s insight.) If this conclusion is correct, he is more pitiable than dangerous. Still, we must keep a close watch on him. There seems to be no question that he has harbored more and more republican ideas, though of the most ingenuous and soft-headed sort—less products of thought and conviction than of his contumacious personality. Nothing criminal or actionably subversive in his record as yet. His weaknesses are his vanity and his quarrelsome temper. Sexual approaches will be futile. Can possibly be trapped into provocative rudeness of an actionable sort. May be vulnerable from the direction of his ambitious wife. Something mysterious and possibly exploitable in his relationship with Epicharis. Cut the thread that ties him to Seneca and you will have set him adrift. We can handle this man.

  October 5

  To TIGELLINUS from IPPOLITE, Imperial Household

  I am doing my best, but we are having the trouble I expected with Epicharis. We worked out with great care a prudent avenue to her, through Racilia, wife of the Senator Tuscus. He has a seaside place, which he and Racilia visit often, near Misenum, and they are friendly with Mela. Racilia, a woman till now irreproachably correct, modest, and virtuous, agreed to our surprise and delight (superb work by Tuscus’s sister-in-law Claudia Larcia) to the charade of prostitution; not only that, she has developed a kind of fever of mischievous anticipation of this prank, as she regards it. It was she who approached Epicharis, suggesting that they do this thing in each other’s company, for the sensation of it. I assume that you know that Epicharis has a local reputation as a somewhat showy doer of good works among poor freedmen and slaves. Racilia believes, however, that Epicharis is not exempt from the gnawing ambition so often seen in slave-born bastards and freedwomen, that she is hotly curious about high social life in Rome, and that she feels cut off from the excitements of the capital in this back-eddy with dull Mela. Racilia intuited that Epicharis was in her secret self greatly excited by an idea that on the surface seemed so out of character for her. Racilia apparently has not told her husband about this naughty game; she plans to deal Tuscus a bit of a surprise that evening. But it seems that Epicharis, though she controls Mela in every way, is inclined to discuss each decision of their lives with him. Racilia planned to keep after Epicharis, fanning the obscure and perverse ember of restlessness she thought she saw in her. But apparently Mela has put an end to this possibility. Epicharis has now suddenly cut off the relationship with Racilia; refuses to see her. I am inclined to doubt whether Mela will even honor your command to be present that night.

  I still think this is a futile and risky gamble to take, but because you have ordered it, will keep trying.

  To IPPOLITE, Imperial Household, from TIGELLINUS

  Mela will be present at the occasion at the lake. He would dare to refuse, but remember that he is the brother of Seneca and father of Lucan: curiosity will not let him stay away. You will see. Keep after her. Get her. Get her.

  To BALBILLUS, Astrologer, from TIGELLINUS

  Having had time to reflect, I consider your advice as to propitiation of the comet to have been sound. Excuse my rough language. A soldier’s tongue gets to be like a wood file. We will find a way to let some good blood, though it may take time. Will delay matter?

  October 6

  To TIGELLINUS from BALBILLUS, Astrologer

  You were wise to acknowledge your effrontery. It does not matter when the sacrifices are made. The delay should not be too great, however.

  Octo
ber 7

  To TIGELLINUS from IPPOLITE, Imperial Household

  I have found and enlisted some hunchbacks for the foot race by the lake. Would it not be amusing to mix in a few dwarfs? Their short bow legs running for a prize would be delicious.

  To IPPOLITE, Imperial Household, from TIGELLINUS

  Yes, good work, get a few dwarfs. Those with most monstrous heads. Tell them and the hunchbacks that their prize will be to take a beautiful Senator’s wife before an audience that will include the Senator.

  October 8

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  First fruit of our new surveillance of Lucan. We have developed an alert plant in the heart of his household, and this agent has found and copied a letter from Seneca to Lucan; the first paragraphs of a reply by Lucan; and what appears to be part of a letter to a woman—no salutation. It is not clear whether Lucan intended or intends to finish his answer to Seneca and send it; he may have thought better of it. I draw your urgent attention to the last paragraph of this drafted fragment of Lucan’s.

  “Seneca to Lucan, greetings:

  “It gives me joy, dear nephew, to hold in my hands a letter from you. I feel, when I do, that I am taking you by the shoulders and looking you in the face. This letter I have just received, however, also makes me thoughtful; the look that I see in your eyes, so to speak, is sad and even frenzied. I hasten to write.

  “What, you ask, is a writer’s responsibility?

  “The responsibility of a writer is to avoid frenzy. This applies whether he be a writer of philosophy, poetry, or tragedy. I can only speculate as to the cause of your ‘raw nerves.’ As you say, we have not always been in tune with each other. Besides, I am on the downward slope of life, you have scarcely begun the climb. Nevertheless I will send some words of counsel, a philosopher’s message of admonition and consolation. I call to you from great distances—from the far reaches of old age, from the quiet horizon of retirement, from the haze-dimmed hilltop of philosophy. Forgive me if I presume to know you better than you know yourself.

  “A writer—no, rather let me take you again by the shoulders and say: You, Lucan, dear Lucan—should not run away from life, but neither should you run at it quite so headlong. Your nerves are raw because of your inability to hold back. One week you rush to Baiae where you witness, perhaps even you may join, groups of revelers moving along the beach with the doubly strange gait of drunken walkers in sand, or where you will be invited on licentious sailing parties and rousting outdoor banquets in groves on the hills, with singing, lounging, and too much wit. The next week will find you in the city at the games, where in the morning they throw criminals or political prisoners to the bears and lions, and at noon desperate men are put in combat in the newest fashion of voluptuous brutality—with swords but with neither helmets nor shields to fend off death; in your ears ring the roars of the spectators demanding that the man who has just succeeded in butchering his fellow face another who will succeed in butchering him. You never exercise with the bladder ball or hop ball. You go to dinner parties where Senators kiss the hands of other men’s slaves, ‘delicates’ and ‘smooths,’ who have been kept beardless by having the hair plucked out and who have been trained to remain boys with graceful gestures even into manhood. You eat too fast. You steep yourself in hot baths alongside women who know no shame. You lose your temper daily. You associate with men who are glutted with power and who take the cross, the rack, the hook, and the stake for granted, and the pairs of chariots that tear human limbs apart by driving in opposite directions, and the vest interwoven and smeared with inflammable agents. And all the while you tell yourself that these experiences are the food on which your writing lives, and you converse with men who are extremely clever and who delight in stretching possibilities until they are torn just like men under torture: ‘ “Mouse” is a syllable; mice eat cheese; therefore syllables eat cheese.’

  “This life, dear nephew, is not a proper basis for writing. Thought is the only ground upon which writing can stand. You have no time for thought. You have no time even to read anything but what is in fashion. Look to Zeno, to Cleanthes, to Epicurus for counsel. Epicurus says something you should heed, my dearest nephew: ‘Ungoverned anger begets madness.’ Run until you are warm, take cold baths. Eat a piece of bread and some dried figs. Drink from a spring. Remember always that drunkenness is nothing but a condition of insanity purposely assumed. Turn your eyes away from the cruelty of powerful men. Do not deliberately provoke the anger of the most powerful man of all; no, put your helm over, steer away, just as the wise pilot avoids choppy currents and skirts around squalls.

  “Indeed, writers should never approach too close to power. They long to have reality approach the level of art, and they give impossible advice. Better to dream and write about the past, as you are doing in your Pharsalia.

  “Epicurus once again (it is strange, in my retirement I find myself turning more to Epicurus than to ‘our’ teachers): ‘Think about death.’ In saying this he bids us think about freedom. You know how Cato died; I am sure you will write superbly about his leap to freedom. Do you know how Scipio died, the father-in-law of Pompey? His ship was driven onto the lee shore of Africa by a headwind and he saw that it was going to fall into the hands of his enemies, so he stabbed himself, and when they asked where the commander was, he answered, ‘All is well with the commander.’ It was, for he had conquered more than an enemy, he had conquered death and escaped tyranny, and he was a free man.

  “Farewell.”

  “Lucan to Seneca, greetings:

  “Having hungered for your advice, I devoured your letter, but as soon as I had finished it I had to put a feather in the throat of my mind. I had to vomit out all that over-rich fat meat and heavy oil. You give me the urge to be a Suilius, to charge you with fatuous and self-serving inconsistencies. ‘Writers should never approach too close to power.’ This from you?

  “I do not wish to be free and dead. I wish to be free and alive. The same is true of you—why else have you pulled away to the solitude and security of Nomentum? I think your talk about dying bravely is bluster. You are as much afraid of the inevitable mystery as any other man. Eat figs, you say. I remember all too well the kind of table you knew how to set here in the city.

  “I want to be alive! I am a poet. I do not wish to run until my body is warm. I want to exercise not my muscles but my senses until they are hot, hot, hot. My anger is at the center of my sanity. It goes out through my mouth, and I am purged and in good health.

  “Who said my Pharsalia is about the past? Not I. A writer is not responsible to the past, he must answer to the future. And therefore he cannot pretend that the present does not exist.

  “I need better advice than you can give me, old man. Where can I turn? Where can I turn?…”

  The draft breaks off at this point. We will try to ascertain whether the letter has been, or is to be, completed and sent.

  The fragment of a letter by Lucan intended for a nameless woman has, as noted above, no name on it. Is it meant for Epicharis? We can only guess. If it is, Lucan’s feelings for her seem to go beyond “fondness.”

  (No salutation.)

  “We were interrupted, dear one, just as we began to open our hearts to each other. I will come again as soon as I can.

  “I have found the dyes you wanted, and some others, compact promises in little alabaster jars of the beauty those silks will finally have when your arms, your shoulders, your cheeks, your eyes bring the colors to life. I found soapwort and nut gall, salt of tartar and woad and madder, saffron and archil. I am still looking for reseda, which makes a good yellowish green. I will bring them all when I come. I dream of the day when your body sets free the meaning of the tints.

  Iridescent down the mist-green caverns

  Shimmers a trail from Apollo’s burning mantle.

  Pale! Pale! He begs for clouds to hide
his car,

  Seeing his sunset shamed by your subtler radiance.

  “Polla got on my nerves last night. She carries on about plans, plans….”

  October 9

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  I am humiliated by having to report to you that your instinct was right about young Curtius Marsus, he of the vagrant nose, the fledgling informant who gave us the account of the Piso dinner. He has been too free with his hopes for fame as a poet, to be achieved by other means than by mere writing. He has been overheard by a reliable agent telling Piso’s friend Natalis, “in confidence,” that you, Tigellinus, intended to persuade Himself to find a pretext to send Piso into exile in order to confiscate his estates, particularly the one at Baiae. Curtius must have made this up, but, as you will have to admit, his fantasy was all too plausible. I am sorry, because I had entertained some hopes of developing a useful source of solid information where it is hardest to get—from among writers.

  To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS

  Concerning Curtius Marsus: Get rid of him. Report the means of his disposal.

  October 10

  To TIGELLINUS from IPPOLITE, Imperial Household

  You may find it hard to believe, but beautiful rich young married women of sound reputation are now applying to me to be allowed to be “prostitutes” at your gala. I have made every effort to keep this matter secret, but our finest females apparently cannot refrain from acting as volunteer agents of your most pungent dreams. I am now in a position to say that we will assuredly have fifty of Rome’s proudest beauties for this game. One thing I am sure of: None of them intends to tell her husband. Come the evening, you will see some splendid chagrin. Some men will put a good face on their surprise—will pretend they have known all along; others will be complacent for another reason—will be delighted to take other men’s wives about whom they have been speculating for some time.