The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  Lucius opened it a chink. "Look, she's waiting. She's been waiting all day."

  Instead of reclining, Agrippina sat motionless in a chair, just the way she'd sat the morning they delivered me to her. Illuminating her was a candelabra which stood near her right shoulder. The candles flickered as a female slave, black as ebony, stirred the air with a huge peacock-feather fan. There was the sound of approaching footsteps. The door opened. A colonel of the guard entered. I recognized him instantly. He was the man who had helped Messalina stab herself. With him was a slave who carried a box.

  He saluted. "Hail Agrippina!"

  She indicated the little citron-wood table in front of her. "Here."

  "It's much decayed, domina," said the colonel. "The hot weather and contrary winds on the way back from Pandateria -"

  Agrippina brushed away his objections with the back of her hand. The slave placed the box on the table, opened it, lifted out a severed head by its long black hair. The face was blotched and slick with putrefaction. The eyes were pockets of milkish colored gelatin. A waft of air from the peacock fan carried with it the sickly-sweet stench of rotted flesh.

  Lucius gasped so loud that for a moment I was afraid we would be discovered. "Don't look at it, you'll be turned to stone," he whispered in a tiny voice. "It's Medusa."

  But Agrippina stared at it and so did I. "I told you to pack it in salt," she said.

  "We did, domina, but with the delay and the humid weather it came out looking like this."

  Her voice was as firm as a rock. "Closer," she said to the slave. "Open the mouth." The hair began to tear out of the rotted scalp as the slave struggled to obey.

  "The jaw is locked by rigor mortis, " said the colonel.

  Agrippina was beginning to sound impatient. "Lift the upper lip, I want to see her teeth." But the lips had solidified. She whispered, "Hold the chin." Leaning forward she forced the top lip upwards with her thumbs, baring the teeth. Her sigh of relief was audible, even behind the curtain. "It is her. Colonel, you will find that two of the upper teeth are capped with pearls. They are yours. Burn the rest."

  The head disappeared back into the box, the colonel and the slave out the door.

  Agrippina choked. "A basin, water... quickly…" .

  Lucius plucked at my robe. We stole away to the sound of her vomiting.

  Eleven months after Lollia's death, at fifty three minutes after noon on the February 25, the instant when the full Moon, still below the horizon, was precisely opposite the Sun, Claudius adopted Agrippina’s son and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus became Nero Claudius Drusus Caesar and his mother was granted the right to style herself Augusta. The boy was twelve years old.

  Agrippina was too political to appear triumphant. But there was an aura of somber glory about her as she worked her way through the guests celebrating in the palace garden. At her right walked her red headed son. At her left and half a step behind her, was her nomenclator, her name caller, who whispered names she might have forgotten. I kept half a step behind him, writing down names she wanted to remember. Towards sunset, when the gathering broke up, I was dismissed.

  Euodus lay in wait for me on my way to my room. "Come, I need to show you something."

  I followed him outside to a part of the garden, a low promontory, which faced the eastern facade of Caligula's palace. The Sun had just set and the February air was chill. "What are we doing?"

  Euodus was as taciturn as usual, talking in an undertone although no one was in sight. "Waiting of course."

  "Who for?"

  "For your present mistress and your master-to-be."

  "Agrippina and Lucius, I mean Nero?"

  "Yes."

  I said, "He went with her to her apartments for a private conversation. Afterwards they'll dine with Claudius. They won't be coming out again."

  Euodus glanced at the darkening sky. "Oh yes they will.”

  "How do you know?"

  "Agrippina will show him her planet."

  "I thought today was chosen for the adoption because the planets make important correspondences with Claudius's chart."

  "Yes, there are three. But there are six exact correspondences between today's planets and Agrippina's chart and two more which are within a degree or two of being exact."

  "So she chose the day for herself, not Claudius?"

  "Of course. For her and the boy. Today's Sun, which represents the adopted Nero's new father, Claudius of course, is in conjunction with Agrippina's Mars. That means he'll die by her hand."

  "Does Lucius ... Nero know?"

  "Of course not."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "So you may learn how implacable Fate is, and how infallible astrology."

  "Then you do believe in astrology?"

  Euodus seemed irritated by the question. "Of course. Only fools like Cicero who follow Carneades don’t."

  I knew of Cicero, the orator, of course. I’d forged copies of his letters for the Copy Master in Alexandria. But I’d never heard of Carneades.

  “Who’s Carneades?”

  “A Greek, I’m ashamed to say. He said there is no such thing as Fate. That men have something called free will. Can anything be more absurd?”

  I made a mental note to read up on Carneades. “When did he live?” I asked.

  “About two hundred years ago. Of course he’s been thoroughly discredited.”

  “Why is what he says absurd?”

  “Simple. Everything that happens is caused by what happened just before it and so on until the beginning of time. Where is the room for free will in that?”

  “But surely people are free to chose between good and evil. Otherwise why punish criminals?”

  “Men do evil because they are destined to do evil. They are punished because they are destined to be punished. Is that so hard to understand?”

  "Tigellinus believes in Fate as well?"

  "Everyone does nowadays. Fate has us trapped inside its circle, there is no escape. Why do you ask?"

  The free will idea clung to me, stubborn as a burr. "I was wondering if Fate can be manipulated."

  "That would be as impossible as changing the course of the planets. Not even the gods can do that. What is not fated to happen is impossible.”

  I thought this over for a while. “You’re saying that the planets somehow reach down and move us around like pieces in a board game?”

  “Oh no, it’s much more wonderful than that. All events that happen on earth, all events that happens in the heaven, are parts of the same divine machine which was set in motion during the first moment of time and will run until the end of the universe. That’s why by reading the ever-changing relationships between the planets we are also reading the ever-changing relationships between ourselves. We are one with the stars.”

  "So Agrippina isn’t manipulating Fate?"

  "Just the opposite. She’s in perfect harmony with Fate. Look!"

  A rim of fire knifed into the eastern sky, swelling rapidly into a vast orb, blotched and bloody like the yoke of a half-incubated egg: the full Moon.

  "That's her, Agrippina his mother," said Euodus, "now that she's risen she'll confer her benediction. He turned his back on the ghastly apparition. "See!"

  As the Moon swelled two figures appeared on a balcony that faced east, a woman and a boy. When I recognized them a delicious chill rippled through me flushing away the burr of doubt.

  For a lingering moment Agrippina gazed at the bloated Moon. Then she threw her arms around the boy who had been Lucius, kissing him on both cheeks and then on the mouth. "Nero, my lovely son!"

  "Nero," he said as if he were tasting the name. "Yes I do like it. I like the way the 'o' rolls off the tongue. Much more poetic than Lucius which sticks to it like glue. Nero Claudius Drusus Caesar. Thank you mother, I'm used to it already. In fact I'll be very annoyed if anyone ever calls me Lucius Ahenobarbus ever again."

  Hail Nero Caesar!

  June 9, 54 A.D. – October 13, 54 A.D

>   I discovered Nero’s interest in music a few days after Messalina’s death. “I want you to visit my son,” Agrippina had said after I’d read her extracts from an interview she’d just had with Pallas, Claudius’s financial secretary. Pallas hinted, quite broadly, at the amount of money she would need to spend to match the gifts the other contenders for Claudius’s bed were passing out to those who had the emperor’s ear. “Honorariums” he called them, although I saw nothing honorable about a bribe.

  According to Pallas, Lollia Paulina had already spent as much as the fifty million sesterces worth of emeralds and pearls she’d worn when she married Caligula and she could easily afford to spend ten times more than that. Agrippina was not exactly poor, her previous husband had left her well off, but she wasn’t in Lollia’s league, Pallas told her with surprising frankness.

  “Borrow the money,” Agrippina said grimly. “Lollia will pay me back.” And of course Lollia had because when her fortune was confiscated it went to the emperor and by that time Agrippina was empress.

  Agrippina said, “Tell him about Egypt and the Phoenix. He likes that story. He needs cheering up.”

  The dog in the mausoleum of Augustus, Basilicus on the horse, the rotting head with the pearl teeth. It was just as well that I didn’t know what Fate had in store for me or I wouldn’t have been in the mood to cheer up anyone.

  The boy was picking listlessly at a lyre when I was shown into his study. “Ah, Epaphroditus,” he said, barely looking up from his instrument. “Have you come to hear me perform?”

  “I didn’t know you played,” I said.

  “She taught me. Messalina. Loved the lyre, although of course she kept that to herself. Roman ladies are only allowed to spin you know. Would you like to hear her favorite tune?”

  Of course I said yes and he played me a Lydian melody, very sweet and rather sad. When it ended he pretended to wipe a tear out of his eye. “I do miss her so very much.”

  “Would you like to play something else?” I asked. “You really are very talented.”

  His face lit up immediately. “You’re not just saying that, are you?”

  “No, no of course not.”

  “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. A musician. The last thing I want to do is go around butchering people like everybody else in my family. Do you play?”

  “No dominus. I can write like lightning but I can’t even sing in tune.”

  He smiled and struck up a bright melody, very neatly for one of his age. “I like you. You’re funny. Just as well because mother says we’re going to get to know each other well. It’s in our stars. But you have to promise not to tell her about my playing. She doesn’t approve at all.”

  I promised not to tell and that’s how I became his accomplice, bribing his teachers not to report to Seneca, his tutor, that he was secretly taking music lessons when he was supposed to be studying philosophy and military history. Why? Because, although I admired the Romans in many ways, I didn't like them, mainly because of that repulsive cruel streak revealed by the “going away party” I’d watched with Euodus. I wanted Nero's heroes to be creative artists like mine, Greek painters, writers and musicians, not vainglorious soldiers. I knew he felt the same way.

  By the time the comet that heralded Claudius’s death appeared on the evening of June 9, Nero was an accomplished musician. He could play bagpipes, the organ, but his favorite instrument had become the kithara, the larger, louder, professional version of the lyre. But improved musical skill wasn’t the only change in his life. Four years had passed since Claudius adopted him. He was now sixteen and married to a girl – she wasn’t much more than a child – he despised. She was his stepsister Octavia, Messalina’s eldest child who shared none of her mother’s vices or virtues. It had been a dynastic marriage, of course, as it consolidated the Julian and the Claudian lines, but Nero would have nothing to do with her or she with him.

  Predictably Agrippina had been relentless with her astrological computations and so had everyone else. Claudius drank too much, was overweight, short of breath and often ill. It was likely that he would die soon. The question was when. Through her network of astrologers, Agrippina kept track of exactly what inquiries everyone with a claim to the succession was making. When she discovered that senator Lucius Scribonianus, a descendent of Pompey the Great, had asked an astrologer to compute the date of Claudius’s death, she caused such an uproar that the Senate was instructed to exile not only the senator but all astrologers from Italy. Balbillus, needless to say, was commanded to stay on as well as all the others who served as her informants.

  When the comet appeared, two years after their expulsion, most of the astrologers had drifted back into Rome. Predictions of Claudius’s death were commonplace, because everyone knew that comets presage the death of kings. Agrippina ignored their predictions. Although she did her best to hide it, I could tell by the glint in her black eyes and the rare spots of color on her cheeks that she was excited.

  I can confirm that Agrippina hadn't slept the previous night because I stayed up with her, taking notes, as she read a Greek translation of a Chaldaean tract that reported, with illustrations, previous visits of comets. She canceled her appointments for the next day, instead sat still as death, only her shadowy eyes moving as they wandered over the four charts on the table in front of her: Claudius's, Nero's and Rome's and her own. At sunset she and Balbillus went out onto west-facing balcony that gave an unobstructed view of the horizon. Dizzy from lack of sleep, I went with them to take notes.

  There was an unsettling undertone of excitement in Agrippina’s loud whisper. "What do you think, Balbillus, Gemini or Cancer?"

  The astrologer's slender frame was draped in his official blue Asiatic robe, the one that was embroidered with the signs of the planets. During my six years on the Palatine I saw him often, either with Agrippina or walking down the marbled passages on his way to a consultation with Claudius, always with the same measured pace, one step per second, sixty steps per minute, the march of time. He'd learnt this meditative exercise from a Chaldaean magus, Euodus told me. It shielded him from gusts of emotional turbulence that, like ripples across the surface of a calm pond, disturbed the clarity of mental reflection.

  Balbillus stood still as a pillar as he gazed at the horizon behind which the Sun had already disappeared. His words were as measured as his walk and expressed the same unassailable gravity. "Gemini. The Sun is at seventeen degrees of Gemini. The comet is reported to be so bright and its tail is so long that its head can't be much further than five degrees away from the Sun or it would have been seen earlier. That would place it at twenty-two degrees."

  "An appearance in Gemini, what does that mean?"

  "Because of the twins Romulus and Remus, Gemini is a sign of the Zodiac favorable to Rome. However the sign is of secondary importance. Everything depends on where the tail points."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Augusta," he said, his voice grave with the wonder of it all, "as you know nothing happens by chance. Therefore the direction in which a comet's tail points must indicate something specific, something significant. If a comet's tail points at an evil star, an evil constellation or an evil planet, it's a harbinger of evil. On the other hand if it points at a benevolent constellation -"

  A voice called out in the thickening night. It was one of Balbillus's assistants, a young man whose eyes were so sharp he could make out the phases of Venus. "I see it dominus!"

  Agrippina's whisper was more like a shout. "Where?"

  "It will appear to us presently," Balbillus said.

  A gust of excitement blew the sleep out of my head. I raced outside. Suddenly there it was, just south of the spot where the Sun had set: a streak of milky light ten times the diameter of the full Moon.

  "I see it," said Balbillus.

  Agrippina already had. "It points south east. What does that mean?"

  "We must wait for the stars to appear."

  Minutes passed like hours as the leisurely S
un withdrew his rosy mantle from the western sky and uncovered the jewels of night. By far the brightest of these was the comet whose tail reached out towards a circle of four stars.

  It was the astrologer who recognized the constellation. "Hydra!"

  "What?"

  "It points at the head of Hydra the water snake."

  “What does that mean?"

  "I'm afraid that it isn't a good omen, Augusta. The head of the water snake is indicative of poisoning."

  With one word Agrippina said everything. "Claudius!"

  "It would seem so."

  "My son is not yet seventeen, far too young to succeed. Claudius must not die, I shall make sure of that. What else is indicated?"

  "When it appeared yesterday evening the comet was at twenty two degrees of Gemini. Placed in your son's chart -"

  "I know, directly in opposition to his Sun which stands for his father, his adoptive father. Claudius will therefore suspect me of plotting to poison him on Nero's behalf. He must have no cause. From now on I shall personally taste everything the emperor eats."

  With his head of white hair, refined features and powerful neck, Claudius looked like an emperor. He was also no fool (he'd written twenty volumes of history on the Etruscans and eight on the Carthagenians). Only when he walked or talked, because he limped and stuttered, was it possible to believe that he'd been the butt of Caligula's court. As I’ve mentioned he also drank too much especially after dinner which was why Agrippina chose this moment to declare that from now on she was going to sample everything he ate.

  Claudius didn't like the idea drunk or sober. "Nonsense, my dear. H-Halotus is a perfectly splendid taster, he won't even let me eat anything which gives me indigestion. After all, if I'm destined to be poisoned, there's absolutely no point in taking you with me. I'm not an Et-Etruscan you know!"