The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  “But Caligula was still alive.”

  “Yes, living with Tiberius on Capri. She despised Caligula for being a worthless pervert. Turned out she was right. Caligula was assassinated because of his insane behavior, leaving Agrippina and Julia Livilla.”

  “That makes eight. What happened to the other daughter?”

  “Drusilla. Caligula’s favorite. When she died, no one knows why, he declared her a goddess. She was only twenty-two.”

  “And Julia Livilla?”

  “She lasted four years longer. Messalina had her killed soon after Claudius became emperor. She managed to persuade him that Livilla was trying to stir up trouble with Seneca, the philosopher, of all people, just like she and Agrippina and Tigellinus had stirred up trouble during Caligula’s reign. The victim was twenty-four and the murderess was sixteen. It was Messalina’s first great crime.”

  “Why did she do it?”

  “She was afraid of Livilla.”

  “And she wasn’t afraid of Livilla’s sister Agrippina?”

  “Agrippina fawned on her, just as Agrippina fawned on Claudius. She can be very charming if she wants to be. Besides there was Lucius. When Agrippina, Julia Livilla and Tigellinus were exiled and his father died, all in the same year, Lucius, only two at the time, was sent to live with Domitia Lepida, his father’s sister and of course Messalina’s mother. He stayed with them until he was four. He was a beautiful child. Messalina adored him. She used to dress him up like a doll. In spite of the eleven year age difference, they remained very close, which suited Agrippina perfectly. Somehow she knew Messalina was the key.”

  “The key to what?”

  Euodus shot me a glance that was as quick as a cat’s paw but he didn’t say anything.

  When Agrippina came out her seclusion the evening of the seventh day after Messalina’s death, she sent for me.

  “I thought she was in mourning,” I said to her messenger, a handsome boy who was about her son Lucius’s age.

  He scowled as if I’d said something monumentally stupid. “She was but she’s not any more. She saw the emperor an hour ago. Now she wants to see you.”

  When the boy showed me into her reception room she was sitting where I’d first seen her, between Isis and Kronos whose name the Romans spell as Chronos and call Saturn. “Stop doing that, you’ll get your clothes dirty, she said when I made my obeisance, face down on the floor. “I’m a Roman, not some Oriental potentate. Get up. We’re going visiting.

  “Usually he comes to me,” she said as she swept half a step ahead of me down one of the endless palace porticoes that led to the south wing of Tiberius’s old palace, ignoring the bows of everyone she passed. “But I want you to meet him in his laboratory.”

  The blue liveried janitor kept his eyes on the floor while he held open the door for us. Inside was a large waiting room fogged by incense and crowded with courtiers conversing in whispers. Everyone rose to their feet when we entered, raising their hands in greeting. Agrippina nodded at several of them, a short, choppy gesture. She even smiled once revealing the double canine tooth on the left side of her mouth, an unsettling feature I hadn’t noticed before.

  A tall, thin Egyptian with haunted eyes and a shaved head, also dressed in blue livery, swept to our side. “Hail domina,” he said once he’d made a deep bow. “My master is with a client but I will tell him that you are here.”

  “Do you know who that is?” Agrippina asked, pointing to a larger-than-life statue that stood besides to door the Egyptian had closed behind himself. It depicted a man perhaps fifty years old, intelligent and bold, who wore a pointed Phrygian cap on his head and wrapped in a mantle decorated with embroidered stars, the cloak of heaven. It had to be the astrologer who had foreseen his own peril and so had escaped Tiberius’s lobsters.

  “Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus, domina.”

  She seemed pleased that I knew. “Yes, a fellow Alexandrian. Brilliant just like his son. Our family is fortunate to have them. But then of course nothing happens by chance.”

  Seconds later the Egyptian emerged with a man in his fifties, red jovial face, prominent brows, hooked Roman nose. He was a senator, you could tell that by his red boots and the purple edge to his toga.

  Although his consultation had obviously been cut short, he wreathed his face in smiles when he saw her. “Greetings Agrippina! Being unmarried suits you. I’ve never seen you more beautiful!”

  “Thank you consul Vitellius. But do tell me, are you still carrying Messalina’s shoe around with you?”

  Another torrent of smiles. “A family tradition. We Vitellii used to be cobblers and old habits die hard. The answer to your question is no. The shoe’s on the other foot now. I would much rather carry around one of yours!”

  “How gallant of you! I wish they’d told me it was you in there. I would have been happy to wait until you had finished.”

  “Oh, but we did!” He lowered his voice although it was still a resonant rumble. “Balbillus sees marriage in my stars. Can you believe it? At my age!”

  Agrippina smiled, but this time I was on the wrong side of her to see her unnerving eye tooth. “And happily married too!”

  The consul chortled. “That’s what I told him but he was quite insistent. I’d love you to take a look at my chart, if you have time. I owe it to my dear wife to at least get a second opinion.” He gave a broad wink. “Sometimes I think you’re a much better astrologer than he is!”

  “That will be a pleasure,” said Agrippina, already on her way through the door. “I look forward to it.”

  I’d seen Tiberius Claudius Balbillus many times in Alexandria, always at a distance, because for the past five years he’d combined his duties as imperial astrologer and friend of the emperor with being Director of Alexandria’s Museum and administrator of imperial buildings in Egypt.

  Son of Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus and Aka, princess of Commagene in Syria, he’d inherited his knighthood from his famous father. A slender, vital-looking forty-five, his black hair was cut short and he was clean shaven in the Roman manner. His laboratory was draped with twelve dark blue silk panels, three to each wall, on which the stars of the zodiac had been embroidered in silver cloth. Next to the table stood a huge lion-headed statue with its naked human torso entwined by a snake, holding keys in its hands, keys to the future. There he was again, Chronos, Lord of Time.

  Balbillus walked around his desk as we entered, smiling affectionately at Agrippina. He wore a tunic that was the same dark blue as the drapes on the walls. It was embroidered with the signs of the seven planets, also done in silver thread.

  He didn’t bow. “Ah splendid,” he said with the soothing voice of a physician, “so here he is at last!” He examined me with his quick eyes. “Handsome boy, although not as fierce looking as one would have expected.”

  “Yet but he’s the one,” Agrippina said. “He’s already proved that. Have you looked at his horoscope?”

  “Full of hidden meaning. He was born the year that the phoenix was sighted in Egypt, the first time in one thousand four hundred and sixty-one years. Did you know that?”

  Agrippina pursed her lips, a kissing movement. “Of course. That’s one of the reasons I knew he would be found in Egypt.”

  “Does he know his birth time?”

  “No. Tigellinus questioned him.”

  “Anyone else know?”

  “Someone called Phocion.

  A street corner fortuneteller. The boy says he cast his horoscope.”

  Balbillus looked at me again, that quick, clever glance. “And what did he find?” he asked me.

  I cleared my throat. “He said…” I couldn’t go on.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know I had a horoscope until then, lord. That’s the first time I heard. He said it predicted I would have something to do with the empire.”

  Balbillus smiled faintly. “You mean the Roman empire?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Really!” Balbillus’s eyes we
re back on Agrippina’s. “This Phocion of yours wasn’t such a quack after all. I’d like to speak with him, about his interpretation.”

  “That would be a little difficult,” she said. “He rowed his own boat over to the west, as I think you Egyptians say.”

  “You mean he killed himself?”

  “Yes.”

  The astrologer frowned. “Why?”

  “I don’t think he wanted to be questioned, not by Tigellinus.”

  I could have imagined it but I thought Balbillus shuddered. “I see.”

  Agrippina changed the subject by coquettishly tilting her head to one side. She could indeed be charming if it suited her. “Do tell me about poor Vitellius! He’s just told me you said he’s going to get married!”

  Balbillus smiled showing small, neat teeth. “Agrippina you know I can’t go into -”

  “Of course you can! He’s insisting I read his horoscope. Says he wants a second opinion. Balbillus, everybody knows you’ve taught me all I know. You wouldn’t me to show you up, would you?”

  Balbillus smiled again. Shrugged. “Look at the alignment of his planets when the transient Moon enters his seventh house. As you’ll see, it predicts marriage.”

  “I already have,” Agrippina said with what came very close to being a laugh. “But are you sure it’s his marriage?” She glanced at me. Her face reminded me of the iron mask her son’s family was supposed to have worn. “Epaphroditus, you may wait for me outside.”

  After that interview with Balbillus she sent me out of her study very seldom. I was always there when clients came calling, keeping a shorthand record of the conversation, often hidden behind a curtain. The only time she had me leave was when Vitellius called on her a few days after she bumped into him outside Balbillus’s door. Although I don’t know what went on during that meeting, it was clear that when Vitellius came out he had one of Agrippina’s shoes tucked under his toga because the very next day he was singing her praises to the Senate, reminding senators that she had the blood of Julius Caesar in her veins, that her son was the grandson of Germanicus, that her morals were above suspicion. The emperor Claudius, like Atlas, carried the burden of world rule on his shoulders. The last thing he needed was domestic strife. Who best to crack down on palace intrigues that had already caused the emperor so much grief, than a woman born of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, a woman who, as the whole Senate knew, had an old fashioned Roman character as resilient as steel? Messalina had been manipulated by the palace freedman with disastrous results. Was there any man alive, expect of course for the emperor himself, who could manipulate Agrippina?

  Although the marriage of an uncle to his niece was against Roman custom, several influential senators quickly came around to Vitellius’s point of view and no one wanted to be left behind. Two and a half months later, on New Year’s day, Claudius married Agrippina and I became the personal secretary of the most powerful woman on earth.

  My good fortune surprised no one. By now everyone on the Palatine knew that Agrippina had chosen me as her personal secretary because of the brilliant promise of my horoscope. Suddenly everyone warmed to me, I became the darling of the court. Slaves gaped, whispering to each other in awe as I passed. Freedmen showered me with presents, grasping for access to my mistress. Women, some of them old enough to know better, offered themselves to me. I turned most of them down. None could compete with a swarthy Indian girl, recently retired from the emperor's bed, who taught me how to make love in one hundred positions.

  “What’s Claudius like in bed?” I asked her while we rested between bouts.

  She answered without hesitation. “Astonishing, for a man of his age. He has the lust of a goat. But he drools when he gets angry, spitting all over the place. He also drools when he gets excited by a woman, all over her, it’s disgusting but at least it’s imperial drool!” She reached down to my exhausted member with her slender hand. “Are you nearly ready? Just the thought of the emperor has got me itching for more.”

  It took a few minutes’ attention from her clever tongue and capacious throat, but very soon I was. This was the life of a prince. Phocion’s shade no longer haunted my dreams. If it weren’t for Euodus I would have forgotten about Tigellinus as well.

  Of course no one believed in my essential luckiness more fervently than Agrippina which was why she kept me at her side, jotting down the notes she dictated to me and recording her conversations with the droves of clients who called on her to discuss matters that were sometimes very confidential. I don't know if she interpreted my horoscope on a daily basis but she couldn't have paid more attention to hers. Every two hours, on the hour, when the Moon had moved another degree forward through the Zodiac, her lips fluttered in an inaudible murmur as she read the next entry in her star diary.

  This was a document that she'd drawn up herself to keep track of the motion of the planets around her chart so that she could tell precisely what Fate had in store for her every moment of every day.

  I soon discovered that there was nothing unusual about Agrippina's obsession with astrology. I was often amazed at the sight of a room full of fashionable women who were gambling with dice suspend their play at the sound of the hour-caller's trumpet, one blast for each hour, while they checked the very latest alignment of their planets. None was more devoted to this practice than Lollia Paulina who'd been empress once already, Caligula's. Still young, immensely wealthy, as ambitious as she was beautiful, Lollia had been only narrowly defeated by Agrippina in the contest for Claudius's hand, a defeat which everyone knew could at any time be reversed.

  Accustomed to being ignored by Agrippina when she was in company, except when she wanted me to take a note, I was surprised when she said to Lollia, "Have you met Epaphroditus my new secretary?"

  Lollia flashed me a glance that was sharp as a razor. "No, but of course I've heard how you flushed him out of Alexandria because of his wonderful stars. What do they predict, do tell!"

  Agrippina gave her a thin smile. "My wish list, of course. Intelligence, diligence, initiative, complete discretion. He can be trusted with anything, no matter how confidential it is."

  Lollia's eyes glittered as brightly as the king’s ransom of emeralds and pears that festooned her from head to toe. "First find the stars and then the person. How perfectly ingenious of you!"

  Agrippina knew that I met Euodus every evening at the Circus. Once she’d even reminded me that I was late. The day after my first meeting with Lollia the freedman didn't, as usual, ask me immediately what I had to report.

  "Tomorrow you will be asked to go to into the city,” Euodus said. “You’ll go alone. A man named Basilicus will approach you. He'll have proof that you're in the business of selling smoke, do you know what that is?"

  It was a hint of imperial favor, usually imaginary. It was also gossip, scraps of information about the emperor's current whims, with whom he had dinner the previous evening, who seemed to have his ear and who didn't. Everybody from chambermaids to imperial secretaries sold smoke. Smoke was what I passed on to Tigellinus via Euodus.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  "Good. Basilicus will ask you to do something for him that will frighten you. Appear to be reluctant until he threatens you. Then promise to do exactly what he wants."

  "Are those Tigellinus's instructions?" I asked.

  Euodus gave me his quick mischievous glance but said nothing.

  The next morning Agrippina had me do another run down to the Argiletum, the booksellers' center just north of the Forum, for copies of tracts by Berossus, the Chaldaean priest who had broken his vow of secrecy and taught astrology to the Greeks on Cos three hundred years ago.

  “The Athenians erected a golden tongued statue in his memory,” she told me, “because of his divine prophecies.”

  Always, when I left the palace on an errand, two bodyguards went with me. I was a very valuable piece of property. Today the burly slaves weren’t waiting for me at the gate and as instructed I didn’t ask for them. But I
wasn’t alone. The eyes of the watchers followed me. If they weren’t imaginary, the symptom of a peculiar mental disturbance, who were they? You have been chosen. Mark the Lion’s words. Were my watchers Christians? Again that thought. Just last month Claudius had expelled their leaders from Rome because they’d caused a riot during the Jewish Passover holiday by insisting that Jews should be commemorating the martyrdom of Christ the Messiah instead of the night they were spared from some ancient plague in Egypt. Understandably the Jews took violent exception to the idea that their all-powerful Messiah could be snuffed out like a common criminal and it didn’t help much when the Christians assured them he was about to make a glorious reappearance. The riot had special significance for me. I recognized the name of one of the expelled Christians. He was Mark the Lion.

  I found a dusty Berossus compendium in a shop that specialized in astrological tracts and put it on Agrippina’s account. As I emerged a man fell into step with me, a Syrian, well oiled and reeking of scent.

  "Good afternoon Epaphroditus," he said, very cordially. "My name's Basilicus, I need to talk to you about smoke."

  I played my part. "I'm afraid I don't have anything interesting at present."

  A hand as strong as a bear trap closed on my arm. "You're being far too modest. I hear from a reliable source that the information you sell comes from someone very close to the emperor. Very close indeed."

  I tried to pluck my arm free. "What exactly are you looking for?" I asked.

  "Nothing much. Just more smoke, well something a little more substantial than that. Agrippina's star diary."