“Like Gallia?”
“And Verrius, and many other good people. But Augustus would have suspected it was me eventually. So I’m afraid your Red Eagle is dead,” he said with regret.
“Dead?” I asked him. “Or just flown away to Mauretania?” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I suspect it’s the latter.”
“There will be no more rebellion. No more daring acts of kindness,” he warned.
“You mean we won’t get to run through burning buildings?” I could see he wanted to laugh, but instead he watched me intently. “What? Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m not staring. I’m observing.”
I smiled through my tears. “And what do you observe?”
He brushed his lips against my ear. “A brave young woman who has always fought for what was right, even when it was unpopular. A woman who can’t return to the land of her birth, but is welcome to cross the seas and rebuild Alexandria in mine. And a woman who has suffered enough in Rome and deserves happiness for a change. Will you come to Mauretania and be my queen?”
He drew back to look at me, but I held him closer. “Yes.”
“Just yes?”
I nodded and pressed my lips against his.
AFTERWORD
Selene
Selene and Juba were married in 25 BC, and, true to his word, Augustus gave Selene a magnificent dowry. The union of Kleopatra Selene and Juba II became one of the greatest love stories ever to come out of imperial Rome, and for twenty years they reigned side by side in an extraordinary partnership that began on the voyage to Mauretania. When they reached their new kingdom, they settled in Iol, renaming it Caesarea in deference to the man who had made them king and queen. Once this public declaration of loyalty was made, however, Selene began rebuilding their capital in the image of the greatest city on earth: Alexandria. Before long, their court became known as a center for learning, and the images that archaeologists have discovered at Caesarea (such as a basalt statue of the Egyptian priest Petubastes IV, a bronze bust of Dionysus, and a statue of Tuthmosis I), speak loudest about Selene’s true loyalties.
While Selene erected monuments in honor of her Ptolemaic heritage, Juba charted the lands around his new kingdom. In the process he was credited as being the first person to “discover” the Canary Islands, naming them Insularia Canaria, or Islands of the Dogs, after the fierce canines that inhabited them. He also penned the treatise Libyka and discovered an important type of medicinal spurge, which even today is called Euphorbia regis-jubae. Pliny wrote that Juba was “more remembered for the quality of his scholarship even than for his reign,” while Plutarch considered him one of the “most gifted rulers of his time.” Two, or possibly three, children were born to Juba and Selene during their marriage. Their son Ptolemy inherited the throne.
Augustus
Despite his grave sickness, Augustus recovered and ruled for another thirty-nine years. Nearly everyone he loved passed on before him, including Terentilla, Agrippa, Maecenas, Octavia, and even Marcellus. At seventy-five, when it was clear that the end was approaching, he asked Livia to take his life by surprise. He wished to orchestrate his death just as he had orchestrated everything else. When Livia poisoned his food, Augustus died in AD 14. He left behind explicit instructions on how to govern Rome, even going so far as to describe the tax system in minute detail. His heir was Livia’s son, Tiberius.
Julia
Julia and Marcellus enjoyed their wedded bliss for only another two years. In 23 BC, Marcellus died suddenly, ending a brief life that would likely have seen him as emperor had he survived. He was buried in Augustus’s mausoleum, which can still be seen today in Rome. With no clear heir, Augustus ordered Agrippa’s immediate divorce from Octavia’s daughter Claudia, and the eighteen-year-old Julia was given to her father’s forty-two-year-old general and closest friend. Five children resulted from their marriage, but when Agrippa died in 12 BC, Julia became a widow again. This time, with fewer heirs to choose from, Augustus married Julia to her stepbrother Tiberius. But Julia rebelled, taking as her lover Selene’s half brother Antonius, the son of Marc Antony and Fulvia. When Augustus discovered this, he arrested his own daughter for adultery and treason. Antonius, like his father, was forced to commit suicide, and Julia was banished to the island of Pandataria. Only her mother accompanied her into exile, where they were forbidden from having visitors other than those specifically sent by her father. After five years, Julia was allowed to return to the mainland, though she was forbidden from entering Rome. Upon Augustus’s death, one of Tiberius’s first acts was to confine Julia to a single room in her house. She died of starvation.
Tiberius
Before becoming heir to the Roman Empire, Tiberius was ordered to marry Agrippa’s daughter Vipsania. Their marriage proved to be an actual love match, and for seven years they remained loyal partners, producing a son whom Tiberius named Drusus, after his own younger brother. But when Agrippa died in 12 BC, Augustus ordered Tiberius to divorce his pregnant wife and marry Julia. The shock caused the loss of Vipsania’s second child, but the divorce proceeded, and Tiberius never forgave Augustus. In the years to come, Tiberius haunted Vipsania’s doorstep, threatening her new husband, Gallus, with death. After several more encounters, Augustus forbade Tiberius from ever seeing Vipsania again. Upon becoming emperor, Tiberius declared Vipsania’s husband a public enemy, imprisoning him and killing him by starvation. After Julia’s death, he never remarried. Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have been crucified during the reign of Tiberius, which lasted twenty-three years.
Octavia
After the sudden and devastating death of Marcellus, Octavia retired from public life, spending her time quietly doing charity work and raising her grandchildren. Her daughter Antonia married the renowned charioteer Lucius Domitius. Although the marriage was a deeply unhappy one, it produced three children, one of whom, Antonia, would become the grandmother of Emperor Nero. Octavia’s youngest daughter, Tonia, married Livia’s son Drusus, and the two of them enjoyed a happy marriage for nearly seven years until Drusus died in a riding accident. Their children were the famous general Germanicus, the beautiful Livilla, and the future emperor Claudius.
HISTORICAL NOTE
LIKE OTHER historical novelists before me, I am deeply indebted to those who have spent countless years interpreting, researching, and writing on the world of ancient Rome. Those scholars have allowed me to depict, to the best of my abilities, what life was like more than two thousand years ago when the children of Marc Antony and Kleopatra were taken from Egypt and raised for several years on the Palatine. If Selene and Alexander seem incredibly precocious for their ages, that is because they were the extremely well-educated children of a queen considered to be one of the most learned women of her time. Like today’s child actors, they would have been raised in an adult world with adult expectations, and clearly Selene’s education was sufficient to see her made Queen of Mauretania.
Nearly all of the characters in the book represent real people whom Alexander and Selene actually met, and I based their personalities on what was written about them and preserved in the historical record. From Augustus’s love of the theater to Agrippa’s building of the Pantheon—where you can still see his name etched into the pediment today—I tried to ensure that the characters remained true to their historical selves. The major exception to this would be my invention of the Red Eagle. While the Red Eagle did not exist, there is evidence to suggest that Juba was deeply disgusted by the culture of slavery in Rome. After his arrival in Mauretania, slavery there slowly disappeared, and it’s not surprising that he would identify with those who had been enslaved, given the fate he might have suffered had it not been for his illustrious ancestry. Both of the slave trials in the novel were based on events that supposedly took place in ancient Rome, and I believe they help to illustrate just a few of the moral issues that arose from human bondage. Such trials also serve as a reminder of how frequently fact is stranger than fiction. Take, fo
r example, Pollio’s attempt to feed a slave to his eels, the escaped bull in the Forum Boarium that plummeted to its death from a second-story balcony, and Augustus’s obsessive note-taking: all are based on the historical record. Even Magister Verrius’s use of games in the ludus, the tribe of Telegenii who fought leopards in the arena; and Octavian’s carelessness in Alexander the Great’s mausoleum, which resulted in the corpse’s broken nose: all come from contemporary accounts. And even though we might think of some of the amenities in the novel as exclusively modern, the heated pools, elegantly shuttered windows, tourist guide books, and much else were present in Imperial Rome.
It is astounding to think of what the Romans accomplished more than two millennia ago when the average life expectancy was less than thirty years. Some of the most enduring buildings can be traced back to both Agrippa and Augustus: the famous Pantheon, the Basilica of Neptune, the Saepta Julia, the Forum Augusti, and many of the baths. Augustus and Agrippa furnished these places with their favorite statues, and just like many other Romans, they were avid collectors of antiquities, particularly anything that came from Greece. Contrary to what we see today in museums, nearly all of their marble statues were painted, many of them in garish colors such as bright red, turquoise, yellow, and orange. Though it’s strange to imagine people who lived two millennia ago collecting antiques, in many ways Roman society was startlingly similar to our own. The Romans were fond of the theater; they used handshakes for introductions; and many of the leading thinkers, such as Cicero, mocked prevalent superstitions and even belief in the gods. Children played with dice and puppets, while adults went to the races to place bets and meet friends. Everyday humor was notoriously crass. All across the city of Pompeii, graffiti preserve ancient Roman sarcasm. And when the emperor Vespasian knew he was dying, he told his sons wryly, “I think I’m becoming divine.”
There is a reason so many of us are drawn to ancient Rome, and I believe it’s because we recognize ourselves in these people who lived more than two thousand years ago. Consider the following quotes, some of which you might think were excerpts from modern-day writings:
A human body was washing ashore, tossing lightly up and down on the waves. I stood sadly waiting, gazing with wet eyes on the work of the faithless element, and soliloquized, “Somewhere or another, perhaps, a wife is looking forward to this poor fellow’s return, or a son, perhaps, or a father, all unsuspecting of storm and wreck; be sure, he has left someone behind, whom he kissed fondly at parting. This then is the end of human projects, this the accomplishment of men’s mighty schemes. Look how he now rides the waves!”
Petronius, Satyricon 115
I was happy to learn from people who had just visited you that you live on friendly terms with your slaves.… Some people say, “They’re just slaves.” But they are our fellow human beings! “They’re just slaves.” But they live with us! “They’re just slaves.” In fact, they are our fellow slaves, if you stop to consider that fate has as much control over us as it has over them.… I don’t want to engage in a lengthy discussion of the treatment of slaves, toward whom we are very arrogant, very cruel, and very abusive. However, this is my advice: “Treat those of lower social rank as you would wish to be treated by those of higher social rank.”
Seneca the Younger, in a letter to a friend
She who first began the practice of tearing out her tender progeny deserved to die in her own warfare. Can it be that, to be free of the flaw of stretchmarks, you have to scatter the tragic sands of carnage? … Why will you subject your womb to the weapons of abortion and give poisons to the unborn? … The tigress lurking in Armenia does no such thing, nor does the lioness dare to destroy her young. Yet tender girls do so—but not with impunity; often she who kills what is in her womb dies herself.
Ovid Amores
What’s come over you? Is it because I go to bed with the queen [Kleopatra]? Yes, she isn’t my wife, but it isn’t as if it’s something new, is it? Haven’t I been doing it for nine years now? And what about you? Is Livia really the only woman you go to bed with? I congratulate you, if at the time you read this letter you haven’t had Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia or the whole lot of them. Does it really matter where you insert your prick—or who the woman is?
Marc Antony, in a letter to Octavian that was preserved by the biographer Suetonius
In the Petronius quote, we recognize the very human fear of death and the sense of loss it creates for those who are left behind. In Seneca’s letter, we see that even though slavery had long been an institution, there were those who clearly felt uncomfortable with it. Ovid takes up the long-running abortion debate, while Marc Antony’s letter mocks Octavian for being a hypocrite where extramarital affairs were concerned. These sentiments now seem surprisingly modern, for we still live with the relics of their ancient world. The first newspaper is widely considered to have been Julius Caesar’s daily acta diurna, and the phrase Senatus Populusque Romanas, meaning “the Senate and the People of Rome,” is still used today. In fact, its initials, SPQR, can be seen throughout the city, on everything from billboards to manhole covers.
Yet even with such abundance before me, I did allow myself some deviations from the historical record. Because both of Octavia’s eldest daughters were named Claudia and both her youngest daughters were named Antonia, I changed two of their names for the sake of simplicity (to Marcella and Tonia). And while it was haruspices who examined the entrails of animals in order to determine favorable signs from the gods and fulguratores who interpreted lightning and thunder, I chose to call them both “augurs” so that I wouldn’t overwhelm the reader with too many foreign terms. Similarly, I have chosen to limit the use of Latin noun declensions for the sake of English reader simplicity.
Other changes I made included the invention of both Gallia and Lucius, who did not, so far as we know, exist, and a few of the dates within the novel, which were altered slightly. (Also, the month of August was known as Sextilis during the dates this novel takes place, and was only later renamed Augustus in Octavian’s honor.) I did not include the Roman habit of kicking instead of knocking on doors, and for the sake of storytelling, I had Queen Kleopatra act shocked upon hearing the news that Octavian had taken his uncle’s name, when in reality she must have known much earlier. And while I tried my best to remain anachronism-free, I admit to failure where some words, like books (which were really codices at that time), are concerned. Yet for the most part I attempted to remain as close as possible to proven history. After all, that’s why we read historical fiction—to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people’s lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.
GLOSSARY
akolouthos. Greek term for an acolyte or helper. The plural is akolouthoi.
Amphitruo. A popular sexual comedy written by Plautus.
atrium. An open area in the center of many Roman homes.
ave. A Latin phrase used by the Romans as a salutation and greeting, meaning hail.
bulla. An amulet worn around the neck by Roman children for protection against evil. A boy would wear his bulla until he became a Roman citizen during his toga virilis ceremony, while a girl would wear hers until the eve of her marriage.
calamistrum. A curling iron.
caryatid. A pillar or other architectural support sculpted into the shape of a female figure.
cavea. The semicircular seating area of a theater, arranged in tiers.
Cerberus. A three-headed mythological dog that guards the gates leaving Hades.
chiton. A long garment worn by both Greek men and women and held together at the shoulders by pins.
colei. Testicles.
Columna Lactaria. A column in Rome at which unwanted infants were abandoned, and where wet nurses or adopting parents might feed those who survived.
cunnus. The female genitalia.
diadem. A royal crown and symbol of authority.
dies natalis. Birthday.
dies nefastus. An unlucky day in the calendar, during which no official business could be conducted. The plural is dies nefasti.
Domina. Mistress. Used when the female subject of sentence is spoken of as a superior; also used to address a female superior.
Domine. Master. Used to address a male superior. The plural is Domini.
Dominus. Master. Used when the male subject of sentence is spoken of as superior.
equites. Knights, who were members of the lower aristocratic order.
Fasti. A Roman almanac, listing festival days and dies nefasti, among others.
filius nullius. “No one’s son” (a bastard).
fornices. Archways or vaults. Roman prostitutes’ habit of soliciting in archways leaves its trace in the word “fornicate.” The singular is fornix.
Forum Boarium. The cattle market.
Ganymede. A young homosexual, after the beautiful lover taken by Zeus in mythology.
Gaul/Gallic. Terms that refer to continental western Europe between the Rhine and the Pyrenees, inhabited by Celtic tribes. This area included what are now the Low Countries, France, Switzerland, and Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul).
gustatio. The appetizer or starter course of a meal. Often consisted of a light salad, lentils, or pickled vegetables.
himation. A Greek garment that was worn over a chiton and often used as a cloak.
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