by Randy Singer
But word of Caligula’s parliamentary disease did not leak out.
Though my father pulled me from the school, I had already become notorious. I would be walking down the street and would notice others walking toward me, whispering to each other. I had no doubt what they were talking about.
“That’s the boy who got crucified. He’ll probably be scarred forever.”
Marcus was also yanked from the school formerly taught by Seneca, but unlike me, he followed the great teacher to a new school of rhetoric. My parents decided that I needed a fresh start outside Rome so the controversy could die down. They sold a field adjacent to the Tiber—a piece of land that had been in the family for decades—so they could send me to Greece, where I could complete my training in rhetoric and law.
“You are going to the school founded by Apollonius Molon in Rhodes,” my father told me one night. My heart leapt at the news. “It’s where Julius Caesar became a great orator and received his education in Roman law. It’s also—”
“Where Cicero studied,” I interrupted. “Cicero went to Rhodes as a stuttering boy and left as a rhetorical genius.”
Since the night of my crucifixion, I had wallowed in self-pity. Seneca had tried to teach me not to trust my emotions. But I couldn’t keep from feeling sorry for myself and angry that Caligula and his gang would go unpunished. I had heard my parents talking about sending me out of the country, and I hadn’t wanted to leave. But I had never expected this!
“When do I leave?” I asked.
“First thing in the morning.”
It took less than a week at the Molon School of Rhetoric for the novelty to wear off. This was going to be a lot of hard work! The Greeks believed in discipline of body, mind, and soul. Unlike Seneca, who seemed to have a halfhearted belief in Stoicism, the Greeks took their Stoicism seriously. Virtue, they claimed, was sufficient for happiness, and nothing except virtue was good.
At the Molon School, they frowned on the emotional and flowery rhetoric of the other great rhetorical institution—the Asiatic School. Our instructors sarcastically called the Asiatic teachers “the dancing masters.” We were told to hold our heads high, argue our points with confidence, appeal briefly to their emotions, and then sit down. They told us the same thing that Apollonius Molon had told Cicero more than a hundred years earlier: nothing dries more quickly than a tear.
At first I loved the rhetorical training but hated the grueling physical regimen. Yet after a few months, as my body transformed under the watchful care of my instructors, I came to appreciate the physical aspects as well.
In Rome, training in gymnastics was mostly reserved for young men preparing for military service. Not so with the Greeks. They believed in whipping every young man’s body into shape. They embraced gymnastics for its own virtues—self-discipline, the molding of the body, the pure joy of competition. My instructors believed that to be a great orator one must also be in peak physical condition.
We started each day before dawn with a large breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, rare meat, roasted grain, and goat’s milk. They had a saying at the school: eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a commoner, and dinner like a slave. After breakfast, we began our studies and voice exercises. We would often recite our passages by the sea so that we could develop volume and project our voices. Later in the morning, once the sun had risen and the heat became a factor, we recited the same passages while walking uphill so that we learned how to maintain our tone and volume even when short of breath.
The afternoons found us training in the gymnasium. I had studied gymnastics and wrestling in Rome, but my previous training paled in comparison to this. Every day brought a new form of competition. I became more than proficient at pancratium, the sport of hand-to-hand combat that combined boxing and wrestling. I often dreamed of using my newfound skills against Caligula or even Lucian. My frame was not large enough to beat the best students in the school, but I learned to hold my own against students my size.
In Rome, the sons of aristocrats loved being spectators, watching the slaves do battle in the arena or race the chariots. Romans exercised out of necessity, keeping their bodies in shape because that’s what self-disciplined Romans did. But the Greeks still believed in the body beautiful. At least at the Molon School, physical training was an obsession, and it was one I learned to enjoy.
The Molon School also improved my confidence. Here there was no shame in being the first to raise your hand and engage your tutor more pointedly than the others. It was at Rhodes, on the edge of the Aegean Sea, that I learned self-confidence and became a man.
It was there that I learned about the Greek gods. My favorite was Apollo, the god of music, oracles, sun, medicine, light, and knowledge. Apollo was the giver of prophecy and oratory. For example, Epimenides, a Greek herdsman, fell asleep for fifty-six years and woke with the gift of prophecy from Apollo. He later uttered the immortal words about Zeus: “In him we live and move and have our being.”
Unlike Epimenides, I didn’t get much sleep at Molon. But my shoulders slowly healed by the shores of the Aegean, with the exception of a sharp pain that would sometimes shoot across the front of my left shoulder when I tried to lift something heavy over my head.
Like Epimenides, I was awakened to my own gifts in the Molon School and at the temple of Apollo. My body and soul grew there, and I consider those years to be among the happiest of my life.
CHAPTER 6
IN THE SEVENTEENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF TIBERIUS JULIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS
I was twenty years old when I returned to Rome, ready to change the world. Fully trained in rhetoric and a master of laws, I dreamed of becoming an advocate in the Roman courts or perhaps a master teacher like Seneca.
But Rome was not the same city I remembered leaving. Or perhaps I had changed—it was hard to tell. Either way, the contrast between the beautiful island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea and the bustling and sweaty metropolis of Rome made me look at the city with fresh eyes.
Unlike the relative quiet of Greece, Rome was a cacophony of sounds that made it hard to concentrate during the day or sleep at night. Shopkeepers hawked their goods, beggars recited their incantations, construction workers hammered at all hours, pupils repeated their singsong lyrics as they learned to read in the open-air balconies, and all night long there was shouting from the baths and the creaking and clamor of heavy wagons and carts on the cobblestone streets. I leased a small flat on a narrow street, and my transition back to city life was a sleepless one. The poets said, “God made the country, and man made the cities.” Even a glorious city like Rome showed how inferior an architect man had turned out to be.
But for all its drawbacks, Rome was still the capital of the civilized world, and for someone with ambition and dreams, there was no better place to start a career.
During my first week back, I spent my leisure time in the Forum. I marveled at how the citizens of Rome had lost the awe of their own architectural wonders. Merchants set up their stalls in front of the marvelous temples or around the steps of the basilicas. Games played on the marble porticoes sometimes required scratching boundaries or scores into the pillars or steps. In the shadow of the greatest architectural feats of the world, there was no wide-eyed wonder—just the constant hum of thousands of Romans trying to make a living.
Yet I had been away long enough that I walked these same streets with a newfound appreciation for the history and influence of the place.
On one of those days I climbed the steps of the Rostra, a platform about eighty feet long and eleven feet high, adorned with bronze rams pillaged from the bows of the great ships captured in war. It was here that emperors made their pronouncements and politicians argued their cases. Here great eulogies had been delivered. Here the bloody, decapitated heads of conquered kings had been displayed.
I stood in the middle of the platform, ignored by the people scrambling below me. I imagined myself addressing the citizens on a matter of grave importance, employing the same skills that
Cicero had exhibited years earlier, skills I had learned in the same school. I was struck by the fact that this one spot might be the most influential place on the face of the earth, that the greatest orators ever known to mankind had stood right here and looked out at these same buildings and changed the course of history. Someday, if the Fates were willing, I would do the same.
But first I needed a job. And for that, I had no greater prospect than my upcoming meeting with Seneca.
During my six years in Greece, my former teacher had navigated his way into far greater prominence than when I had left. He had also assured me, in letters we had exchanged, that he still had a soft spot for one of his most conscientious erstwhile students.
“You look well!” Seneca said, grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a squeeze.
“As do you,” I replied. We both knew I was taking a bit of liberty with the truth. He looked roughly the same as before, except he had put on a few more pounds. His curly hair had retreated farther up his long forehead, and he now sported a double chin and noticeably more wrinkles.
We stood in the center of his house, in a splendid rectangular atrium with marble columns and an elaborate fountain. The floor consisted of slabs of colored marble tiles arranged in geometric patterns and polished to highlight the grain. Near the fountain, Seneca proudly displayed purple marble imported from Egypt, worth more per slab than my entire flat. Expensive paintings lined the walls, and statues adorned the pillars.
I followed Seneca down a long hall and up several steps to the office where he transacted business. The room overlooked a large courtyard, exquisitely manicured. All this for a man who espoused Stoicism and decried the luxuries of life.
We spent the first few hours discussing the training I had received in Rhodes, and it felt like old times. Seneca peppered me with questions, and I was reminded that even at my quickest, I was no match for my former teacher. We lamented the moral decline of Rome and the increasingly bloodthirsty ways of its people. When the conversation transitioned from philosophy to politics, Seneca lowered his voice, and his words became measured.
“Time has erased most memories of your little incident with Caligula, but his family is still paranoid about people finding out about his physical ailments. They fear it might impact his opportunity to become emperor.” We were sipping wine, and I sensed that Seneca was about to tell me the real reason I had been summoned. “Agrippina and the house of Germanicus are, unfortunately, as influential as ever.” Another sip as he eyed me over his wineglass. “It’s a treacherous path to power these days, especially for those of us living in Rome. Much easier to climb the ranks in the provinces and return to Rome at a more opportune time.”
The words made my stomach clench, and my dreams suddenly seemed more distant. Perhaps I was naive, but I hadn’t thought my fight with Caligula six years earlier would still stalk me.
“What do you know about Judea?” Seneca asked.
Judea? “I know the Jewish people are strong-willed and hard to govern,” I said. “I know that Pontius Pilate is hardly equal to the task.”
Seneca gave me the type of wry smile that normally preceded something unpleasant. I dreaded what was coming next.
“Which is precisely why he needs a true genius to serve as his assessore,” Seneca said.
It took me a few seconds to process the implications. An assessore was the chief legal adviser to a prefect like Pilate. It was a position typically reserved for men with greater experience and contacts than I had. In that respect, it would be a huge opportunity. But Judea was always on the edge of outright rebellion, and Pilate had a knack for infuriating the Jews. Serving as his assessore would be fraught with danger, the possibilities for failure limitless. Yet how could I tell my benefactor no?
Seneca leaned forward, perhaps reading my thoughts. “Sejanus does not trust the family of Germanicus,” he said. This was good news. Sejanus was the man Tiberius Caesar had left in charge of running the empire while Tiberius lived on the island of Capri.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Seneca promised. “You spend three years in Judea, and after that I will help you establish a law practice in the heart of Rome. By then the family of Caligula should no longer be a threat.”
We spent several more minutes discussing the potential assignment, and Seneca explained how he could wield his influence to make it happen. I never said yes, but that didn’t deter Seneca. By the time he was slapping my back on my way out, it was assumed that Pilate would have a new assessore within a few months.
“What happened to the old one?” I asked.
Seneca flicked a wrist as if shooing away a fly. “That’s of no importance. Besides, it’s easier to follow someone who has been a failure than someone who has been a resounding success.”
As we grasped wrists at the portico, Seneca sprang another surprise. “There is one other matter I could use your help with before you leave,” he said. “It involves a meeting with Flavia, one of the Vestals, immediately after the Fordicidia ceremonies two days from now. We have an audience with her in the Forum following the sacrifice.”
Seneca said this as if it were an afterthought, but a private audience with a Vestal Virgin was no small thing. I tried to contain my enthusiasm like a good Stoic.
“May I ask what this is about?”
He gave me a patronizing smile, the way he had done so often when I asked one of my thousands of questions as his student. “You may ask,” he said, “but I cannot tell.”
And with that comment, Seneca patted me on the shoulder and sent me on my way.
CHAPTER 7
Hundreds of years before I was born, Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, saw his empire devastated by famine. He knew that Tellus, the goddess of the earth, was angry and had to be appeased. Uncertain of what he must do to save his empire, the king prayed and was given the solution in a dream:
By the death of cattle, Tellus must be placated. Two cows, that is. Let a single heifer yield two lives for the rites.
Pompilius solved the riddle by instituting the sacrifice of a pregnant cow—a single heifer yielding two lives—and the Festival of Fordicidia was born. The sacrifice of the pregnant heifer assured the fertility of the grain already planted and growing in the womb of Mother Earth. The unborn calf was a mediating being—alive but not yet born, innocent but sacrificed. The ritual, like most Roman religious rituals, spawned days of celebration and entertainment.
On the morning of Fordicidia, I met Seneca at the round temple of Vesta, joining thousands who crowded the streets to watch the ceremony. As usual, not many from Rome’s ruling class were in attendance. The true worshipers in Rome were the common people, not the artists or the intellectuals or the magistrates. Cicero once said that Rome had one religion for the poet, another for the philosopher, and another for the statesman. He was only partly right. The statesmen, it seemed to me, had no religion at all and used religion only to control the people. Poets and philosophers loved to write about religion but seldom practiced it. Only common citizens and soldiers on the battlefield truly believed in the power of omens and portents and the rites of purification and sacrifice.
Seneca made no secret of his disdain for all this foolishness. “Do you want to propitiate the gods?” he once asked me. “A true worshiper of the gods is he who acts like them.”
My own beliefs had been influenced heavily by the skepticism of the Greeks. Better not to believe in anything at all than to cringe before a god who is worse than the worst of men.
But here we were, Seneca and I, being jostled about by a mob laced with bloodthirsty adrenaline, straining to see the show unfolding on the great marble portico outside the temple of Vesta.
For the occasion, the temple servants had built a huge circular wooden platform, elevated by eight giant posts. An enormous black heifer stood at the top, anchored by chains attached to an iron collar around her neck and bolted to the platform. Muscle-bound slaves dressed in tunics did their best to keep the heifer calm. Other
slaves, thinner and more agile, all wearing ghoulish masks, danced around the outside of the platform to the beat of drums. They gestured wildly, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.
As the music rose and the slaves danced more lasciviously, I became increasingly uncomfortable. The Greeks never acted like this.
To the left of the platform, dressed in flowing red garments, was Sejanus, the man in charge during Tiberius’s absence. He was a severe-looking man whose face bore the weathered vestiges of military campaigns. For today, Sejanus was Pontifex Maximus.
The man appeared to take no interest in the proceedings. He surveyed the onlookers, barely acknowledging the dancers as they took their gyrations to a new level of vulgarity. Women had now joined the sensual dance, but Sejanus stood stone-faced as if above it all, just waiting for it to end.
Under the platform, a beautiful young woman knelt with her chin held high and her hands open in front of her. She seemed lost in a trance, worshiping. Her long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, shimmering in contrast to her pure-white robe. “That’s Flavia,” Seneca told me.
At that moment, most eyes were not on Flavia but were focused on the top of the platform, where the matron of the Vestals, a woman named Calpurnia, had just appeared. Calpurnia had recently turned thirty and was seven years away from completing her service.
“She takes her role very seriously,” Seneca whispered as if it were an ignoble thing. He regarded the whole affair as a charade. “I doubt she’ll ever marry.”
Calpurnia was a slight woman with red hair plaited and fastened by jeweled tortoiseshell combs and pins of ivory. I was sure she had spent hours preparing for this moment. Like Sejanus, she seemed unmoved by the dancers, staring toward the horizon over the heads of the crowd.