by Randy Singer
Nero loved the theater. In that way, as in so many others, I could see the influence of Seneca in his life. Seneca had encouraged Nero to embrace music and the arts, de-emphasizing the games and their symbolism of military conquest. At Seneca’s urging, Nero had built theaters and gymnasiums. Romans followed the emperor’s lead and flocked to Greek sports like gymnastics and wrestling. Greek plays dominated the theaters.
But Seneca had created a monster. It was one thing to embrace music and theater. It was another to obsess over being the star.
Nero first performed on the lyre during the Juvenalia games, instituted in the fifth year of his reign to celebrate the first shaving of the emperor’s beard. Ever the center of attention, the young Caesar collected what he shaved and placed it in a golden container that was offered as a sacrifice to Jupiter.
At age twenty-two, Nero had competed as a citharede, playing the lyre and singing a ballad. When he finished his song, he knelt next to the other contestants in front of the judges. Naturally, he was awarded the wreath of victory. The crowd erupted into raucous applause.
From that moment, Nero focused more on his career as a citharede than he did on running the empire. He hired voice coaches and practiced singing every day. He seldom addressed a large gathering without an intermediary who would shout out his speech so that Nero could preserve his voice. When he got angry and erupted into a rage, Seneca would calm him down by reminding him that he might hurt his voice if he wasn’t careful.
“Nero is a performer at heart,” Seneca told me. “An emperor in an artist’s body. For Nero, the empire is a stage, and he has the leading role.”
Flavia and I had never seen Nero perform and had no desire to do so. But on the tenth day of October in the ninth year of his reign, we found ourselves among the patrons sitting in a glistening new nine-thousand-seat theater, waiting for the twenty-five-year-old emperor to take the stage.
Part of the deal I had struck for Seneca required that my mentor attend tonight’s performance and lavish praise on the emperor. Even for a narcissistic man like Nero, the requirement seemed strange. I was suspicious of what the emperor had in mind.
I stole a glance at Flavia as we waited for the featured performance. At fifty-five, my wife still had the graceful lines and piercing eyes that had mesmerized me thirty years ago. Her high cheekbones gave her an aura of sophistication and classic beauty. Tonight her hair was braided in a way that made me remember her days as a Vestal and my starry-eyed dreams of how we might one day be married.
Her face was not without wrinkles, and men no longer turned and stared when she passed. But her outer beauty was still the equal of women half her age, and nobody could come close to the beauty of her soul.
“He reminds me so much of Caligula,” Flavia said, leaning toward me as Nero took the stage. “Young. Spoiled. Lustful.”
“Who do you think is worse?” I asked. To me it seemed like a choice between the beasts and the cross.
“I knew Caligula better, so I hated him more,” Flavia said grimly. “But I think Nero is actually more dangerous.”
“Especially with Seneca out of the way.”
Flavia shrugged. She was no great supporter of Seneca since his defense of Nero after Agrippina’s death. “I don’t see how it could get any worse.”
Just wait, I wanted to say. But I had learned to give Flavia the last word.
On this night, Nero wore a long, flowing white robe patterned after the garb of his patron god, Apollo. He carried his lyre to the stage, and the place grew quiet with anticipation.
Unlike Caligula, Nero had the visage of a god. His jaw was chiseled, his hair curly and blond. His steel-blue eyes danced with mischief. He worked out in the gymnasium every day, and his body was lean and muscled. Those who flattered the emperor by comparing his looks to Apollo were not far off.
I had heard that Nero wrote his own poetry. On this night, he sang an original ballad that he claimed he had composed. His voice carried well, and though I hated the man as an emperor, his onstage presence was actually quite impressive. To everyone, that is, except Flavia.
“That’s horrid,” she whispered. “He never hits the right notes. Look at the way he twists his face in an effort to express feeling.” She frowned and shook her head.
She had a point about the contorted facial expressions. Unlike the best citharedes, who allowed the music to carry the emotion, Nero felt obliged to help it along by squeezing his eyes shut as if in ecstasy or overplaying an expression to show his emotion.
He sang for thirty minutes and seemed to have the entire theater enthralled. His ballad ended with the suicide of its main character, and somehow Nero coaxed a tear that coincided with the last note. When he was done, the crowd sat reverently in stunned silence for a moment, reflecting on the sad nature of the song.
And then I was treated for the first time to the delirious praise of Nero’s famed Augustiani, a group of hundreds of freedmen paid to praise the emperor for his performances. They stood and cheered wildly, and within seconds the rest of the theater joined them. Nero acted pleasantly surprised by the warm reception and stood next to his lyre, bowing slightly at the waist. The cheers from his claque grew louder, and they began chanting Nero’s name.
Flavia and I stood as well and brought our hands together in what appeared to be clapping. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. I returned a knowing smile.
Five minutes turned into ten and then nearly fifteen before the crowd finally tired. Just as the noise was beginning to die down, one of the claque members raised his voice and shouted loud enough to be heard over the continued clapping.
“Beautiful Caesar, Apollo, Augustus, another Pythian! By yourself we swear, Caesar; no one can defeat you!”
When he finished shouting, the crowd roared again, and Nero patiently absorbed their praise and adoration. Even the seasoned veterans of the Praetorian Guard joined in the emotional response. Seneca was right there with them, in the front row, cheering enthusiastically.
“You would think that would be beneath the dignity of a man like Seneca,” Flavia said into my ear.
“You just don’t appreciate talent,” I said.
She elbowed me in the ribs as the crowd continued to cheer.
The real theater began an hour later. Professional actors performed Greek tragedies, most of which were familiar to the audience. But tonight, they were just the warm-up. The last tragedy starred Nero himself. It was the first time he had ever donned the mask of an actor and performed in public.
For his inaugural performance, Nero had chosen the tale of Orestes, one of the best-known and most complex Greek tragedies. Nero appeared in the costume of the Greek prince, but his mask was a duplicate of Nero’s own handsome features.
For the next hour, surrounded by a cast of professional actors, Nero played the title role of Orestes, the legendary Greek hero who slew his own mother to avenge the death of his father and to save his kingdom. After the slaying, Orestes was pursued by the Greek Furies, who were spurred on by the ghost of his mother. Orestes then became the defendant in a famous Greek murder trial at Athens and was acquitted by a single vote from a divided jury, the vote of the goddess Athena. The homicide was justifiable, the jury ruled, because Orestes had to save the kingdom from the treachery of his own mother.
Flavia and I watched in stunned silence and understood immediately what Nero was doing. In the court of public opinion, this was Nero’s defense for his murder of Agrippina.
The events of her death were well chronicled. When Nero became resentful of Agrippina’s attempts to control him, he had hatched a scheme that would have ended her life by shipwreck. But she survived the near-fatal experience at sea, so Nero dispatched his soldiers to club her to death. When they appeared where she was staying, Agrippina reportedly bared her womb and told them to strike her there because her womb should be cursed for giving birth to a creature as vile as Nero.
Most people, including me, believed that Seneca had been no part of t
his plot. But he had helped Nero rationalize Agrippina’s death to the Senate. He had concocted a story about a conspiracy against Nero headed by Agrippina, and the Senate had passed resolutions in celebration of the fact that the emperor’s life had been spared.
Now, five years later, Nero’s first public performance as an actor had a nefarious subscript. Yes, I killed my mother. But it was justifiable matricide, and Rome should thank me for it.
In the play, just as Orestes was preparing to slay his mother, she bared her breast and told her son to strike her there because she regretted that she had ever nourished him. A bare breast, a bare womb—everyone in the theater made the connection.
“I can’t believe Nero has the audacity to do this,” Flavia whispered.
When the play was finished, the Augustiani burst into wild applause, and the patrons joined them for a second time. Flavia and I stood, but we both refused to clap.
Nero ripped off his mask and beamed at the cheering crowd. It was said that his mother’s death had haunted him and caused him nightmares for years. Perhaps this was his way of exorcising those ghosts.
But the greatest horror of the night was still to come. After the applause had died down, the last word belonged to Seneca. This was the venue we had agreed upon for Seneca to announce his resignation. And now I understood full well why Nero had insisted that Seneca praise his performance as part of it.
After Nero’s nauseating debut, I wondered if my mentor would refuse to do his part.
To my disappointment, Seneca took the stage, looking stooped and frail. He sounded embarrassed as he announced his resignation and what a privilege it had been to serve under Nero. He stole a few furtive glances at the emperor and paused as he surveyed the assembled patrons. His gaze landed for a moment on me and Flavia, as if he was apologizing in advance for what he was about to say.
“Take nothing away, Fates,” Seneca said, his voice now loud and sure. “Let the duration of all human life be surpassed by the one who is like Apollo in looks and grace and the equal of Apollo in voice and song. He will guarantee an era of prosperity to the weary and break the silence of the laws. Like the morning star as he rises, scattering the stars in flight, like the gleaming sun as he gazes on the world, such a Caesar is now at hand, such a Nero shall Rome now gaze upon. His radiant face blazes with gentle brilliance, and his shapely neck with flowing hair.”
This brought another round of wild cheering, which Flavia and I again refused to join. “I’d like to wring his shapely neck,” she whispered. “As far as I’m concerned, he and Seneca deserve each other.”
On the way home, I found myself defending Seneca. He was to be pitied, I told Flavia, not condemned. He was a victim of his lifelong pursuit of power and luxury. He had bargained away his soul, one compromise at a time, until he no longer controlled his own fate. Heaping praise on the emperor was now part of the deal, his only way out. He hadn’t known that Nero would be performing a tragedy about killing his mother.
Flavia was having none of it. “‘Take nothing away, Fates,’” she said, her voice mocking and snide. “‘Like the morning star, such a Caesar is now at hand. His radiant face blazes with gentle brilliance, and his shapely neck with flowing hair.’”
She was right, of course. And even as we spoke, I promised myself that I would never fall into the same trap as Seneca. Power and influence were empty promises. Like drinking the salt water of the Mediterranean, they only made you thirsty for more.
Flavia grunted her displeasure at the thought of my mentor’s performance. “Remember your question about which Caesar was worse?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ve decided Seneca is worse than either of them. Men who know better but still help rulers get away with murder are the most deplorable men of all.”
CHAPTER 73
I hadn’t heard from Pilate’s wife in years, so the letter came as a total surprise. Procula said she was doing well and had finally found peace with the events that had transpired in Judea and afterward in Rome. She had also found forgiveness.
A few months ago I met with a prisoner named Paul of Tarsus, an apostle in the movement called the Way.
After listening to him and learning about the miracles he has performed, I have become convinced of something so astonishing that I hesitate to even write it down. Jesus, the man called Christus, whom Pilate ordered crucified, came back to life three days later! He was seen by hundreds of witnesses, Theophilus, and his Spirit is what allows men like Paul to perform miracles.
I would love to talk to you about this when you have an opportunity, but I also have a request. Paul is in need of his own miracle now. He has been accused of propagating an illegal religion and of sedition against Rome. As a Roman citizen, he has appealed to Caesar.
Paul has been under house arrest for over a year, and he needs an advocate worthy of the cause. Needless to say, my thoughts immediately turned to you. I know that you are no longer actively taking cases, but I was hoping that you might consider making an exception. I have been baptized into the Way. I have experienced what I can only describe as a freedom and forgiveness I have never before known. I am willing to pay you whatever it takes to retain your services.
Forgive me for being so forward. Please give my respect and love to Flavia.
Thirty years earlier, I might have said yes. But that was when I dreamed of becoming Rome’s greatest advocate. I was wiser now. Flavia and I had fought one emperor and barely escaped with our lives. Now we were spending our energy on the next generation. The students I taught today would be the leaders of Rome tomorrow. It was the only hope we had left.
It had been more than fifteen years since I had tried a major case. Times had changed. Styles had changed. Even my stamina and energy were not what they used to be.
I sat down and began writing my reply. Halfway through, I decided that I should at least discuss it with Flavia first.
At dinner, Flavia had her own objections to Procula’s bold request. Followers of this new sect had already created a stir in Rome. Flavia saw them as a threat to Rome’s combination of emperor worship and obeisance to the Roman and Greek gods.
“Look at the repercussions from allowing the Jews to worship their own God,” she pointed out. “They have never become a part of the Roman culture. I cannot imagine you helping to authorize another religious sect that would further weaken public devotion to the gods we’ve spent our entire lifetimes serving.”
What Flavia said made sense, but Mansuetus had a different take. “What if the man’s innocent? And, Mother, are the Roman gods not strong enough to defend themselves?”
Flavia gave me a look as if I had somehow instigated the question. I knew what she was thinking. He’s too much like his father.
“If he’s innocent, he needs an advocate who actually believes in his cause,” I said.
“Maybe he just needs somebody who won’t let him rot in prison,” Mansuetus countered.
“What difference would it make in front of Nero?” Flavia asked, ganging up on our son. “Even the best advocate wouldn’t stand a chance in front of the emperor. He’s more concerned with practicing for his next citharede competition than meting out proper justice.”
I nodded. “She’s right.”
“That’s all the more reason you should do it,” Mansuetus argued. “The toughest cases need the best advocates. Isn’t that what Cicero said? Isn’t that what you taught me?”
I made a face. How do you explain the real world to a fifteen-year-old?
“I’ve heard all the stories about what a great advocate you were, but I’ve never seen you try a case,” Mansuetus continued. “What happened to the man who took on a crazed emperor to save a Vestal Virgin’s life?”
“That’s no way to talk to your father,” Flavia said sharply.
“It’s all right,” I responded. This was exactly what I had taught my son—ask the hard questions. Challenge things. Besides, there was truth in what he was saying.
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��I’ll talk to your mother about it after dinner,” I said. I used my fatherly tone of voice, the one that signaled an end to the conversation.
I could tell from looking at him that Mansuetus still had a hundred other reasons why I should investigate Paul’s case. He had been taught respect, so he held his tongue, but the flash in his eyes betrayed his real feelings. He was a young man. He was itching for a battle. He wanted to see me take a stand for the principles I had been teaching him.
He ate the rest of his meal in silence.
Later that night, Flavia and I talked. The idea of representing Paul had started to intrigue me. I will always consider that conversation with Flavia to be one of my greatest oratorical triumphs. Flavia eventually agreed that I should at least meet with Paul and hear his story. I decided I would take Mansuetus with me.
But Flavia also made me promise that I wouldn’t take the case if it would be impossible to win. We both knew that once I signed on for a client, I was committed to do whatever it took to prove his innocence. That might mean incurring the wrath of Caesar and putting my family at risk.
“We don’t even know this man,” Flavia said. “Why should we put our lives on the line for him?”
“Let’s just take it one step at a time,” I suggested.
I didn’t tell her that I was now looking forward to the meeting. Throughout my life, the Fates had not always been good to me. But perhaps here, in a twisted way, they were giving me a chance to right a wrong. If Paul had been a leader of some other religious sect, I never would have given the case a second thought. But he wasn’t. He was a leader of the Way, the followers of a man I had helped put on a cross during Passover week thirty years ago.
The Nazarene had haunted my thoughts since that day. He had inspired my best work as an advocate. His trial had exposed a weakness in my moral fiber that still made me ashamed when I thought about it.
I was glad I could pin some of the blame on Mansuetus for suggesting this meeting. But in truth, I was more than a little curious. I was anxious to hear what Paul had to say.