by John Hersey
STATIUS: Don’t be so bitter, dear fellow.
LUCAN: It’s too late for bitterness—or for forgiveness, or for idealism, or for conspiracy. My feelings mean nothing now. I think we had better get on with what has to be done…. Everything that matters in the household is in order.
STATIUS: Where is Polla?
LUCAN: She has gone off to visit Natalis’s wife at the Alban Lake. She is never here when I need her.
This complaint Lucan spoke petulantly, like a little boy, as if Polla were needed in connection with some petty household annoyance, or had left Lucan in the lurch on some distasteful duty of entertainment with which he did not wish to be bothered.
STATIUS: Do you want to say good-bye to…?
Statius left the query unfinished. He obviously meant freedmen, slaves, perhaps even friends. But Lucan shook his head.
LUCAN: I have no taste for setting an example.
This was a cold attitude which I found disgusting. Whether he felt love (forgiveness) or not, had he no feeling of any kind for any of the people in his house? Lucan reached for the carafe and poured himself yet another cup of wine.
STATIUS: We will need basins. And a cathedra.
In reply to this, Lucan spoke to us as if we were servants.
LUCAN: Get basins from the kitchen. Turn right at the door of this room and go straight to the end. There is a cathedra in the first room on the right.
Statius nodded to me, a gesture which had the effect of making me the servant, and I started for the kitchen, hoping I would not have to explain my presence to elderly slaves who loved Lucan, whatever he may have felt, or not felt, for them. As I left the room I heard this exchange:
STATIUS: We should have water heated for a bath.
LUCAN: We can dispense with that.
I found basins in the kitchen and took them to the writing room, then dragged the cathedra there.
With great fortitude—this was not at all the craven creature you interrogated, Tigellinus—Lucan allowed Statius to open his veins.
He sat for a time with his head leaning back and his eyes closed, as if he were searching out the meaning of his death in physical sensations—in what his senses told him about losing blood and life.
Then his eyes opened and he looked at me.
LUCAN: You are one of Nero’s policemen?
I nodded acknowledgment, smarting from his denial, at this important moment, of my identity. He had met me a hundred times at the palace, and it had used to annoy me there that I had had to be presented to him over and over, but finally he had “known” me and had used my name—over and over. But now, this blank word: policeman. I nodded.
LUCAN: Are you people pleased?
PAENUS: Pleased?
LUCAN: With your conspiracy?
PAENUS: Our conspiracy?
LUCAN: Your conspiracy. The one you imagined. Made out of shadows. There hasn’t been any conspiracy, you know, except the one you people invented. Nero. Tigellinus. Poppaea. You clumsy policemen. It has all been in your minds. You fabricated it. Now you’re destroying us to justify yourselves.
This made me furious, and I objected with a disrespectful vigor that very nearly left out of account the fact that Lucan was a dying man. I cited the testimony and confessions of many persons, including his own abject admissions, and I reminded him, with a thrust of cruelty which I could not suppress, that he had even accused his own mother of sharing in the plot.
LUCAN: Oh, yes, we’ve all fed Nero what he wanted. We’ve made things up to make him happy. We Romans are all Nero’s trained circus animals. We know how to amuse him. Life is like this—people playing their parts. People try to sense what others expect of them, they derive a picture of themselves from the clues they pick up from others, and then they are driven to oblige—sometimes without even knowing it. They tell themselves that the others’ picture of them is not the picture they themselves see. But they oblige. We have obliged…. But, do you know, in destroying us, you people are destroying Nero—destroying yourselves. Maybe this was what you secretly wanted when you invented the conspiracy. Maybe you are the real conspirators.
He laughed—a feeble laugh, which seemed to hurt him inside.
LUCAN: Yes, your conspiracy, the one you people manufactured—it has succeeded. Nero withered one part of himself when he killed his mother. But killing Seneca, killing me—he’ll never recover from this—what is your name?
PAENUS: Paenus.
LUCAN: Paenus. He’ll never, never recover.
As Lucan said this he pulled himself forward in his chair with his slowly bleeding arms, smearing blood on the chair, and he fixed me with a terrible, exaggerated scowl. It seemed as if he was laying a curse on us, Tigellinus. I became for a moment very frightened. Then I was quickly relieved as I thought: How true a man is to his character at the very end! What vanity! What an absurd idea that Nero would suffer more from executing Seneca and Lucan than from the death of his mother. The vanity of it! As if killing a writer were a greater crime than matricide!
Lucan settled back in the chair, seeming to have made a great effort, and for a time he closed his eyes. Then, eyes still closed:
LUCAN: My hands and feet are getting cold.
STATIUS: Courage, my friend.
He opened his eyes and began speaking slowly and haltingly, but in a strange steady flow, to no one in particular.
LUCAN: I remember the first time I saw Nero after he called me back from Greece. Seneca was with us. I was, let me see, nineteen, he was twenty-one…. I was fascinated by his huge neck. He and Seneca quarreled about something. Seneca was like a testy nursemaid, he had no fear of Nero’s power. Finally Nero got tired of the argument and began asking me about the contests in Greece. He wanted to know about all the arrangements. I said: It depends which festival…He said: Nobody can ever tell me anything straight. I’ll have to go there myself. Ai, Seneca, I had a dream last night. I was standing in front of a huge water-clock, it was the third hour, but I couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. Light and darkness were the same. What does that mean?…Seneca said it meant he was disrespectful of days and nights—that he went into the streets at night, dined at noon…. Nero snorted and said Seneca had a literal mind. He thought it meant that life is gray, gray. Then, I remember, he began talking about singing—he was just taking it up—something about high tones…. I said: It seems to me that what matters in a voice is conviction—truth…. And he said: How vain poets are!…Ah, I said, I was getting bold, it’s the sound you care about, not the meaning…. He gave me a sudden look that shot fear into me, his eyes were the little pig eyes of a charging wild boar—but his big lips smiled, and he said: Exactly. Yes. I do. The sound is all that matters.
Suddenly tears were coursing down Lucan’s pallid face. I felt a begrudging pity for this little rooster of a man, all alone at the end. Here he was with two strangers to whom he could by no means bare his heart—a physician, not really his friend but a friend of his dead uncle, and one of Nero’s policemen. His wife away. Not even any slaves standing by with servile comforts. I wondered if he was crying out of self-pity. Or weeping for Epicharis—that she-leopard, so much stronger than he? Or was he thinking of Seneca’s example? Or of Nero—a friendship squandered in prodigal bouts of vanity and envy?
But no! Nothing so human as any of that. Out came an unearthy groan, and:
LUCAN: My poem! Oh, Statius, I haven’t been able to work…. It’s all unfinished….
He feebly sobbed.
I was struck very hard, Tigellinus, and very unexpectedly, by a sense of the uselessness, the ridiculousness, of my profession. Oh, yes, there had been a conspiracy, no doubt of that. I suppose there had been real danger. But we had been running around all these months, stealing bits of this man’s privacy, that man’s loneliness, sniffing, sniffing—and for what? Do you kno
w something? I, “one of Nero’s policemen,” would like to be a poet. I hear your laughter. Laugh, Tigellinus. Laugh the laugh of a horse trader. I yearn for the life of a poet. As he wept I loved Lucan—I forgave him. Perhaps you will. Perhaps Himself will. Do you think we really are destroying ourselves?
Now Lucan stopped crying and began to recite a passage from his enormous poem. He was, at last, Cato. I remembered Curtius Marsus’s astonishment at the vibrant power of Lucan’s voice at the reading at Piso’s banquet. Now the voice was barely comprehensible, weak, hazy, somehow doubting; the faint delivery seemed to drench these lines, which must have been intended to be unequivocal, in an agonized ambiguity:
What should be asked? Whether I’d rather die
Free and armed, or swallow tyranny?
Whether prolonging a life has any meaning,
Or if years make a difference at all? Or whether a man,
If he be good, can be hurt by any blow?
Does Fortune drop her threats at the sight of courage?
Is it not enough to try to do what’s right?
Does fame fatten on virtue? We know the answers:
Jove cannot plant them deeper in our hearts.
But I thought: He is saying: We do not know the answers. He had delved in extremity under the surface of the poem, into a richness of meaning that even he may not have known was there. And now, in what happened next, I glimpsed some sort of desperate inner search, in these last moments, for other new and fluid meanings in all that he had done.
Lucan was weak. With his head leaning against the seat back he asked Statius in a whisper for an orange. Statius fetched one from a bowl of fruit on a side table, and first kneading it hard to loosen the juices within the skin, he then took a clean scalpel and with skillful thrusts cut a small hole in one end, and jabbed within, further to set free the juices. He then held the hole to Lucan’s mouth.
At once Lucan began to suck, with the desperate, blind, ravenous strength of a newborn baby at its mother’s breast. It was as if an infantile life force were at work—a refusal of chaos and darkness, a desire for energy, nourishment, health, new growth. I felt very strongly the presence in Lucan’s weak frame of his poem, the deep, deep drive in him for completion. In the very moment when the last fatal drams of blood were taking their leave from his veins, he wanted more time. Most of his body was utterly slack, but that sucking mouth worked at the fruit with the full power of the muses. Those lips would gladly swallow tyranny for the hours, the days, the whatever time the work would take. What did Lucan care about conspiracy?
The lips moved long after it was clear that no more sweetness was left in the fruit. Then Statius gently removed the globe of life. The lips still moved, and a mumbling sound came from them.
The mumbling went on and on. It had a steady, slow, pulsing flow. In his withdrawal into the farthest reaches of the double mirrors, the poet was giving us a final, passionate reading of infinite layers of meaning. We could not make out the words, but we could see the pale, pale shadows of deep emotions flicker briefly on the face. It seemed that he must be unconscious, yet the rhythms, soundless now, went on and on. The poem was all that was left alive in him.
There was a stillness. Statius, waiting in decent respect for a long time, finally pronounced Lucan dead. One saw the salt on the poet’s face where the tears had dried.
May 1
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
I cannot adequately describe to you the transformation of Himself since he read your account of the execution of Lucan. He is up and about, confident, has a look of a man who has just had a glowing report from his bailiff. He gives commands with assurance. He is, by the way, very pleased with you. Do not be astonished by a promotion.
Ai, Paenus, we can afford at last to congratulate ourselves. We have broken the back of this repulsive, many-legged monster.
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
Please desist. At this moment congratulations make me sick to my stomach.
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
Come, come. Your last message was not worthy of so talented a policeman.
To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS
I have found a way to cheer you up: a series of delightful commands.
Sentences of death to Tullius Severus (another whom I trusted too much!), Quintianus the pederast, Scaevinus who may now close his sleepy eyes in a good rest.
Assign pretty (but very small) Aegean islands to Novius Priscus, Glitius Gallus, Annius Pollo, Verginius Flavus, Musonius Rufus, Cluvidienus Quietus, Julius Agrippa, Blitius Catulinus, Petronius Priscus, Julius Altinus.
Acquitted: Natalis (so great was his help in the interrogations—Scaevinus, by comparison, was too languid and insolent to all equally, including Himself and Myself!); Cervarius Proculus, for his aid in convicting Rufus; the Tribunes Gavius Silvanus and Statius Proximus.
To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
I see from the tone of your messages that you, too, have come out of your recent funk. You have adopted a charming designation for your dignified person, reminiscent of a designation you have long used for one somewhat more elevated: You now call yourself “Myself.” Felicitations. I hope you do not suffer from vertigo.
To ABASCANTUS, Imperial Treasury, from TIGELLINUS
Himself commands:
A donative to the troops: Two thousand sesterces to each common soldier, with a supplement of a measure of free corn equal to the standard market-price ration.
To the SENATORS of ROME from TIGELLINUS
Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, Emperor, requires your presence at an extraordinary session of the Senate at the Capitol, at the seventh hour on May the fifth, at which he will address you on the recent deliverance of the Principate. Military Triumphal Honors to be awarded to Sofonius Tigellinus.
May 2
To SULPICIUS CASTOR, Sculptor by Appointment, from TIGELLINUS
Himself commands that you carve a full-length statue of me to be placed in the Forum, subsequent to Military Triumphal Honors to be awarded me in a few days. He also commands a bust, which will be displayed in the palace. Arrange appointments for sittings.
To CELER, Office of Planning and Construction, from TIGELLINUS
For an alfresco banquet in celebration of the suppression of the recent conspiracy, design and construct in the gardens of the Golden House various pavilions, belvederes, gazebos, and galleries. Use materials of the brightest colors. Be provided with many lanterns with tinted lights. Prepare a sanded ring about twenty paces in diameter, with six stakes with chains, as for the tethering of wild animals. We will also need a large cage on wheels, of the sort used for the most dangerous beasts; as well as a single tiger skin in excellent condition.
You have one week.
To IPPOLITE, Imperial Household, from TIGELLINUS
In utmost confidence.
Another delicate mission of the sort for which you have such sweet talent, Ippolite. This is a fancy of Himself himself, so requires especial tact and judgment. The idea is this (he is feeling mischievous): He wishes to chain to half a dozen stakes four beautiful young—and, it goes without saying, noble, rich, and naked—Roman women; one beautiful young (noble, etc.) man; and a female sheep that has come in season. It is his intention to cover his own bare body with the skin of a tiger, be released from a cage in the presence of guests, descend on these chained creatures, enjoy them one after another in various ways—and then allow his “wife,” the eunuch Sporus, to drive him back in the cage in a display of mock jealousy. It is your task to enlist the four women and one man. Get Canus to provide the sheep.
I am afraid you have only one week.
May 4
To TIGELLINUS from P
AENUS, Tribune of Secret Police
I do not seem to have heard anything more about a promotion.
May 5
To the SENATE and PEOPLE of ROME, from TIGELLINUS, Commander, Praetorian Guard, by order of NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR DRUSUS GERMANICUS, EMPEROR:
A PROCLAMATION
Let there be observed, in gratitude for the deliverance of the Person of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, Emperor, a suspension of all commerce and labor for a period of one week of unrestrained thanksgiving.
Let the benign month of April henceforth be named Neroneus.
Let there be special honors to the Sun in the ancient temple at the Circus Maximus—the great Sun who revealed by his brilliant power the secrets of those who would have used the Circus for their purposes.
Let Ceres be praised with additional chariot races in that same Circus—times to be announced.
Let a Temple of Safety be erected in the town of Farentum, whence was stolen the dagger that was to have been used for the imperatricide.
Let this dagger be inscribed, To Jupiter the Avenger, and let it be hung in the temple of the Capitol.
Let there be rejoicing in Rome. Let there be rejoicing in Rome. Let there be rejoicing in Rome.
AFTERWORD
It will have been especially clear to anyone who knows the time of the Roman Empire that this book has been intended as entertainment, not as history. I have gone to the obvious sources and have departed from them, too. One of the many glories of Tacitus is that under his sure hands time becomes something like a viscous amber fluid—clear, slow-moving, shot with iridescent glints and strange refractions; and Suetonius cares less for chronology than for kicks. Thus I seemed to have some scope in ordering things, and I have let myself use it. I have taken several casual liberties with the standard accounts—for a random example, the attribution to Lucan of a satirical line of verse that Suetonius ascribed to Persius. Rather more drastic is the assignment to Lucan, rather than to Natalis and Scaevinus, of the first important revelations of the plot. In giving such a large role to the secret police, I have anticipated the Agentes in Rebus of somewhat later years. To spare the reader even more confusion than he was bound to have as he encountered Roman names, I have changed two: the character here called Severus represents the Senecio of history; Valerius stands for Vatinius. Otherwise we would have had, on top of all the rest, Seneca and Senecio and Vestinus and Vatinius to keep straight.