by John Hersey
I take your hand in mine. I touch the silver
Brooch at your shoulder that holds you imprisoned in silk,
And now, and now—the waves, the roar of the waves,
Time will not pause for you and me; the drumming
Of tides grinds rocks into sand, and does not end.
In the same haul, this letter from Lucan to Seneca. Mentions the feared crime. As to the means of acquisition of the poem and of this letter, some bad news within the letter itself—bad news in general about the conduct of our agents.
“Lucan to Seneca, greetings:
“Oh, Seca, I am so depressed and angry all the time. Only two or three years ago there was no better company in Rome than mine. I had my moods, but I could be a fountain of laughter, too. Don’t you remember? Your letter, rather than soothing the irritation I had felt toward you earlier, only made me feel heavy and in exile—cut off, that is, from an especially dear one and therefore somehow from everything dear.
“It was terrible that you felt a need to abase yourself before me. But worse than that, considering your letter as further comment on my question, ‘What is a writer’s responsibility?’, it seemed to say something very bleak to me—namely, that it is a writer’s responsibility to keep his nose clean.
“I see terrible things happening. I have been driven nearly out of my mind by an odious gala N. gave recently. You may have heard about it. The occasion was the opening of an artificial lake N. has had built in the natural basin between the Esquiline and Palatine hills, in the gardens of the Golden House. A sad marriage has taken place in our Rome, Seca, between superb taste and grossest vulgarity. A vessel had been built by Celer, who, as you know, has an eye, and this ship, which had nowhere to go, was a sweet toy for Neptune himself; it was towed around the pond, if you can believe it, by a great multitude of white swans harnessed in brilliant ribbons. What a conception! And what a scene this lovely ship became, shortly after midnight, of lasciviousness, of total abandonment of shame on the part of the leaders of Rome. Nero, Nero, to think that you were my best friend! All around the lake were booths, in which the noble ladies of the capital offered themselves for money to Senators, to knights, to other women, to Praetorian Guardsmen, to freedmen, and even to slaves into whose hands masters out of a jaded sense of mischief slipped the privileged sums these women were asking. And loathsome exhibitions—multiple couplings, a fifteen-year-old girl mounted by a large dog. I cannot bring myself to write you some of what I saw.
“But the sight that shocked me most, Seca, was that of a foot race of cripples for a prize of copulation with a noble Roman woman. Hunchbacks and dwarfs. One old soldier, both of whose legs had been cut off below the knees in battle, who raced on all fours and almost won. The faces of those poor creatures, Seca—devoid of any sense of their degradation, that was the worst of it. Glowing with hope, trembling with helpless fear. Those wounded beings had been totally corrupted by visions of a reward beyond their dreams. Ears deaf to the laughter of those who had corrupted them. I wake up at night tortured by the burning memory of those happy frightened faces at the starting line. They spoke to me, still speak to me, of the meaning of tyranny. Where consent is achieved through corruption and fear, the absolute power of Augustus inevitably becomes the absolute power of Nero.
“Absolute power can keep absolute power only by repression. The controls these days are so crude that they clank like actual fetters. I suppose a man like Tigellinus sincerely believes that he protects the Emperor by making everyone aware that disloyalty means gross punishment, by keeping the threats out in the open. But it is all so flagrant. The surveillance hangs in the air around one like a fishmarket stink. That hideous lopsided footpad Valerius clung to me like a grape to the stem at the gala at N.’s lake last month, and all the while he looked so like a small boy playing centurion, as if he really believed I was unaware of his watching me. The writings on my desk are being gone through almost every night. I know where every scroll and tablet lies when I leave my desk; my things are continually combed. The palace tried to bring foul pressure on Epicharis, of all people, before the gala, to be one of the “whores” there. Every time I go to see my friend Piso I am followed in the streets. I don’t care any more. I could teach these stupid secret policemen a bit of finesse—but perhaps they want to be seen, in order to remind.
“But I will tell you what they are on the point of doing, Seca. They are going to force us into what their diseased minds have imagined. We are innocent, if desperate. They need the guilt of others. They are going to drive us to it. I feel like a figure in someone else’s nightmare.
“This is why I need to know what a writer’s duty is. I know his duty is to his art—that he must stretch his gifts to the tearing point with every line he writes. But can there be a distinction, in times like these, between aesthetic achievement and vital action? You said that writers should stay away from power because they are forever wishing that reality could reach the level of art. I wonder, seeing reality so formless, so chaotic, so mad, whether this is not a reason why writers—artists in general—should not indeed approach very close to power through their works. To me the ideal of a work of art is that each man should be able, in contemplating it, to see himself as he really is. Thus art and reality meet. This is the great healing strength of art, this is the power of art, which is greater than the power of emperors. Emperors try to keep themselves in power with secret policemen and with arms, and still they are assassinated. Art’s power, which nothing can challenge, is the blinding light of recognition.
“I can write these words to you, Seca, and believe them, but I am still at a loss as to what a writer as a man should do—that is, what I should do in the actual situation in which I find myself. Somewhere in my relationship with Nero, and therefore with power, the puzzle lies for me.
“Could he be influenced, if I were still his friend? Or have we no hope of bringing him to his senses? You know him better than I. Is our headlong rush toward infamy—the descent into primeval slime that was so vividly exemplified by that race of the cripples—is this all to be laid at Nero’s feet? He has the power. Must we hold him responsible for what is happening to us? Or is he, too, being swept along as if by a current of the river of our time? Are we all responsible together? You know Nero better than anyone in Rome, Seca. Advise me. Help me, help me, before it is too late.
“Farewell.”
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
I have just been sniffing this shit of Lucan’s. Fugh! Very bad. You ought to be put to the sword, Paenus. If everything your agents and informers do is as transparent and clumsy as Lucan makes his surveillance seem, then we have built walls of muslin and made shields of eggshells to protect Himself. I hate to admit that this little peacock feather of a poet has frightened me, but he has. You will have to undertake a complete review of training methods. Do not panic and haul your wooden-thumbed agents off Lucan’s back. At the stage of recklessness he has reached, we cannot afford to take the risk of a pause of even a few days, or the worse risk of replacing wooden thumbs with leaden thumbs, which would very likely be the case. But Paenus, you have work to do.
November 26
To TIGELLINUS from FLACCUS VALENS, Praetor
Word has come to me from officials of the town of Farentum, which I feel I must pass on to you.
Farentum, as you probably know, is a prosperous colonial town in the Etruscan hills, a day’s forced march or two comfortable days’ journey from the capital. I have family in the town, and for this reason a delegation of officials, including a cousin of mine, came to me in great agitation today to tell of a strange incident that had disturbed them.
There is in Farentum a rather important temple, that of Fortune; at least, the citizens of the town regard it as important because of a series of omens and signs associated with it: For example, its altar was blackened by a bolt of lightnin
g last year on the day before the start of the great fire here. One day last week a priest of the temple noticed that a dagger, consecrated to the safety of public officials and suspended in its scabbard against a wall at one side of the main altar, had been stolen. The dagger has a straight steel two-edged blade the length of a man’s hand, and a handle made of laminations of olive wood bound with bronze and pricked with gold, with tiny shapes of wolves and deer. No one knows its history. The only persons who are permitted under normal circumstances in the area of the temple where the dagger hung are the priests. Extended questioning of them—no result. There is so much awe and fear associated with the altar that it seems (to the officials) certain that the theft was not the act of a citizen of Farentum. Farentum is off the main roads. No one recalls having seen strangers. I tell you of this incident because of the specific consecration of the dagger.
To FLACCUS VALENS, Praetor, from TIGELLINUS
Thank you for your valuable communication. But I am curious. Why did you, a newly installed Praetor, report to me about the theft of the dagger, instead of going through the normal channels to the Consuls?
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Urgent.
Alert every agent you have: Be on the lookout for a dagger stolen from the Temple of Fortune in Farentum, which must be recovered.
Description: steel blade, double-sharpened, length of a man’s hand; handle of layered olive wood, bronze-fastened, decorations of gold in small designs of wolf and stag.
Have all pawnshops and knife peddlers’ stalls searched discreetly, as if by customers. Have all agents who are assigned to “doubtfuls” be on special lookout.
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
You urge me to remain calm. Then you throw at me two commands that seem rattled in themselves and are certainly calculated to rattle me. First, remake the secret service from top to bottom. Second, marked “urgent,” search Rome for a provincial paring knife.
To TIGELLINUS from FLACCUS VALENS, Praetor
I wrote to you rather than the Consuls about the dagger because many people hate you.
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Stop your whining. Find the dagger. This is a particular dagger. It lusts for important flesh. Perhaps, Paenus, for yours. Then, you will ask, why should you find it? Because it may yearn for mine. Or for far more important flesh than yours or mine. Spare no pains.
To SILIUS NERVA and ATTICUS VESTINUS, Consuls, from TIGELLINUS
In my previous memoranda to you as new Consuls, I have outlined certain concerns of the Emperor under the headings of public safety, dealings with foreign ambassadors, conduct of public ceremonies, and procedure of the Senate. This letter concerns security of the Imperial Person, Office, Palace, and Treasury.
You are of course aware that an apparatus exists for the purpose of ensuring these aspects of security. I am sure you are also sensitive to the extremely delicate relationships between the civil structure, which you represent, the Praetorian Guard, which Faenus Rufus and I command, and the secret service, which the Emperor has put under my charge. The fact that the Emperor has entrusted this last care to a Co-Commander of the Praetorian Guard should make it clear to you that the secret service is essentially an instrument of the armed strength of the ruler.
Translating this clarification into procedure, you should instruct all civil authorities under your jurisdiction to refer information bearing on security directly to me rather than moving through their normal civil channels. I beg you to understand this as a wish of the Emperor and not an interference on my part with your regular chains of authority. I think you will be able to see that the risk of leaks and of delay would be very great if we were to depend upon normal channels for the transmission of dangerous information.
You have come to office, as I am sure you are aware, in a period of extreme sensitivity, from the point of view of Imperial security. The hysteria, public clamor, and variable sense of personal loss stemming from the fire have not abated, even though several months have now passed. It is clear that the utmost alertness is in order.
I append to this general statement two relatively minor yet rather important matters:
The first, Vestinus, concerns your bodyguard. While the Emperor, like everyone else, admires the clever drills of your handsome young slaves, he does not regard it as seemly, now that you have been sworn as Consul, that a high public official should be seen at the Capitol or in the Forum with a private, as distinguished from a regularly provided, bodyguard. I am sure that you will understand my conveying this to you in a memorandum addressed jointly to the Consuls, rather than in a private note to you, as expressive of a principle rather than as a personal matter.
And second, confidentially, I have had indications of an ambiguous attitude on the part of the Praetor Flaccus Valens. Would you kindly give me your estimate of his reliability?
November 28
To TIGELLINUS from SILIUS NERVA, Consul
Answering your esteemed memorandum:
1. The Emperor’s command, as to channels for security, noted and acted on.
2. I write on behalf of Vestinus. You have cut him to the bone. His bodyguard is so close to the center of his total persona that stripping him of it would be like stripping him of his toga and asking him to preside over the Senate in his undertunic. This is a cruel order. Surely those effeminate young men are a threat to no one. I urge you to urge the Emperor to relent on this point.
3. Flaccus Valens is ambitious. This means that at every move he will keep an alternate path open. But do not worry yourself about him. He is stupid.
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Begin surveillance of Flaccus Valens, Praetor. He has a reputation for stupidity. This means that you must use one of your shrewdest and most intelligent agents. Men with a reputation of being stupid are often the most elusive. Have you noticed that?
To SILIUS NERVA, Consul, from TIGELLINUS
As a comment on your plea on behalf of Vestinus and his little dance of guards, the Emperor was pleased to shrug his shoulders. I would suggest that you tell your colleague about that shrug. Let him understand it any way he wants.
December 3
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
And now, Tigellinus, I am excited. We have our first intercept of Cleonicus, Seneca’s freedman and courier, yielding a covert exchange with Lucan, both parts of which I send forward in full.
You will measure Seneca’s trust in Cleonicus by his abandonment of the most fundamental precautions in this deeply compromising letter.
As for Lucan’s end of the business, he has come, as you noted earlier, to a stage of recklessness that certainly puts us on our mettle. Thanks to the cooperation of Cleonicus, I need no longer depend on the agent in Lucan’s household whose methods Lucan criticized. I attribute Lucan’s awareness that he was being watched to his rampant vanity and irascibility; he is a touchy instrument. Have you ever noticed his eyes when a loud noise is heard nearby? One suddenly sees a glittering, searing look of suspicion; it is as if there were vials of molten brass in his eyeballs. This is not to deny the need for new training in the service; it is only to suggest that Lucan is a cat in human skin. I would like permission to reward this very agent whom Lucan found so disturbing. After all, he did give us much valuable material. I would like to keep him on the job, for there may be more.
But to the treasures from Cleonicus:
“Seneca to Lucan, greetings:
“This is bad news, my dear Lucan, that you send me from the capital. Two correspondents besides yourself who were present at this appalling entertainment of Nero’s have written me about it, and I gather that this gala surpassed all his previous follies in its debauchery and wasteful magnificence. I assume that that su
preme vulgarian Tigellinus was the dark genius of these revels, but Nero, alas, was at the heart of them. The splendor of Imperial displays is nothing new to me. I remember a naval battle Claudius staged on Lake Fucinus, twelve years ago, when the tunnel through the mountain between Fucinus and the river Liris had been finished—four-banked galleys, marines on decked vessels, Praetorian cavalry on a huge raft, nineteen thousand men out on the water really trying to kill each other, or at least trying to slaughter a large number of condemned criminals among them; an enormous mass of people from Rome and from the whole countryside on the banks all around, right up to the tops of the mountains that formed a great theater for the battle. I sat next to Nero that day. He was wearing a Praetorian cloak; he was a handsome, slender youth of fifteen, not long adopted by Claudius; my pupil, a quite different person from the creature we see today. But that sort of display, bloody as it was, had a theme at least of valor, of pride, of Rome’s magnificence. This new, squalid debauch of Nero’s, designed not to delight the mass of the people but only to glut the eyes and swell the stomachs and ease the groins of a handful of the inner circle—and coming so soon after the horrible fire that reduced so many wretched Romans to rags—this had no theme, except perhaps the false new theme, corrupting the Epicurean ideal, that indulgence in sensuous pleasure somehow opens out the mind.
“You ask me, and I ask myself: Can we hold Nero personally responsible for what is happening to dear Rome?
“He has the power, as you say. We have developed a misconception of power. The institutions of war and slavery subtly pervade all our human relationships; and we have come to this: The aim of power is to keep power. The only real and lasting power, it should be clear, is that of character, that which obliges others to follow because of admiration and love. Augustus knew this. I tried to teach Nero this. There was a time when I really believed he could surpass noble Augustus. Look at him now. Uffa! Look, and try to control your nausea. He has had, to our sorrow, other teachers besides your Seca.