It appeared two hours after midnight on August 9 when Nero was already practicing going on one knee to await the verdict of the judges with the appropriate degree of humility. I was woken by shouting outside my window. I called down from my balcony to a knot of people who were craning their necks at something in the sky. "What is it?"
"A comet, don't you see it? North of Perseus, right on the edge of the Milky Way."
The mysterious visitor to the unchanging community of the stars was still faint, a mere hint of the majestic plume of light it was destined to become. All the same I broke out in a cold sweat. The last time a comet had appeared I'd been forced to poison the emperor.
Nero was in a state of feverish excitement. He was certain that Fate's messenger had come to applaud his first performance before the Roman plebs, the performance that was going to save it from its addiction to the savagery of the amphitheater. We were standing on a north-facing balcony when Balbillus arrived. "Well, what do you think Balbillus? It is a brilliant omen, isn't it?"
Balbillus had to clear his throat twice before he could get started. "Caesar, it is with great reluctance that I tell you this because I know what a disappointment it will be for you. Unfortunately the comet is not a good omen. It warns of dire consequences if you perform at your Neronia."
Nero's brow bunched. A long, awful silence followed during which one seemed to hear the distant tramping of his 28 legions. He let loose a growl so deep that it scraped the gravely sediment of his disapproval. "What?"
Balbillus blanched but his voice did not quaver, I had to hand that to him. I knew that he'd have done anything, well anything within the limits of his professional integrity, to tell Nero that the visitor blessed his performance. "Caesar, the comet threatens misfortune if you do not turn back from the path you are at present taking."
Nero's tone took on the histrionic flavor of the tragic stage, was even more unsettling because of it. "You are suggesting that my singing is unfortunate?"
"No Caesar, certainly not. But the comet's tail points at the constellation Cassiopeia which indicates that you must turn your back on something specific just as Cassiopeia is turned backwards in the stars."
"Cassiopeia? Kindly explain yourself."
"You will recall that Cassiopeia was the queen who boasted that she was more beautiful than Poseidon’s Nereids. Poseidon punished her by sending a sea dragon to ravage her kingdom. In the end she had to sacrifice her daughter Andromeda to the monster."
"Yes but Perseus saved Andromeda!"
"Indeed Caesar, but the comet points at Cassiopeia, not Perseus. You must turn away like her, the time is not ripe for you to perform in public."
Nero slapped his open hand on the table. The rings on his fingers made a frightful sound. "I'm destined to perform, I can feel it in my bones. You've been talking to Seneca and Burrus. You've allowed your personal disapproval of my music to cloud your judgment. Go back to your charts and find the truth. I'm going to get a second opinion. Epaphroditus bring me that diviner of yours, Thallus."
A messenger waited for me outside the audience chamber. Poppaea wanted to see me immediately.
It was barely light when I was shown into her quarters. Her face was still covered by the mask of white cream she slept with at night but she was beautiful all the same. "What did Balbillus say?"
"That the comet forbids Nero to perform at the Neronia. He's furious. He wants a second opinion from Thallus."
"Thallus is already on his way with the sacrificial animal. He will tell Nero that he foresaw the appearance of the comet in a dream and that a voice told him that he must read the auspices for a man dressed in purple."
"So Thallus is going to contradict Balbillus?"
"No he isn't. The comet is too far north of the Zodiac to influence the planets but Ptolemy also sees danger in Cassiopeia. Thallus will help us eliminate the cause of that danger."
"It's cause?"
"The leaders of the Claudians of course, surely you haven't forgotten your promise to help me put them out of the way? Rubellius Plautus and Faustus Cornelius Sulla. They both court Octavia secretly and she’s still empress, you’ll recall, whose dowry was the empire. You must make sure Nero realizes these are the enemies indicated by the comet. There can be no musical war until they are gone. They are the tallest heads of grain."
Obviously Nero had told her the Periander story. I went to Tigellinus. Although I loathed him, he was at least a parasite clever enough to be concerned about the survival of his host. "Plautus and Sulla, Poppaea wants me to help her eliminate them," I told him.
"Do as she says," he said without hesitation.
"Why? Because of Ptolemy? He tells her exactly what she wants to hear. Everybody knows that Plautus and Sulla are harmless as sheep. The Senate will be outraged if we banish them without cause."
Tigellinus stroked the flanks of a gilded bronze stallion that reared, nostrils flaring, striking with its front hooves, an exquisite new addition to his equestrian collection. He rolled his velvet eyes towards me. "Agrippina wasn't the only one to be appalled by the idea of a singing emperor you know. Unfortunately for them Plautus and Sulla are the figureheads of a very large, very powerful, very conservative faction which continues to believe as she did. If musical war stirs the conservative patricians to thoughts of revolution, either, or even both, could be hailed as emperor. Now I happen to be among those who feel that the temporary relegation of two gentlemen to the idiocy of rural life is preferable to the horrors of civil war. What do you think?"
I sent for Thallus.
Shortly after his reading a messenger left for Gaul confirming the restriction on Sulla's movements. Another went to the home of Rubellius Plautus with a note from Nero which suggested that in the interest of public order, which had been unsettled by the appearance of the comet, it would perhaps be better if he removed himself to the safety of his estates in Asia.
But Nero couldn't banish the comet that Thallus confirmed was a sign the time had not yet come for him to perform in public. So the Neronia that began on October 13 ended without his public performance. When he sang it was in private and the performance lacked its usual luster. The prizes that Tigellinus made sure were nevertheless showered on him only deepened his gloom.
The Swan Sings
April 21, 62 A.D. – July 8, 64 A.D.
A year passed. The following spring Tigellinus replaced Burrus (who finally died of his throat complaint) as Praetorian Prefect, another bad day for me. Shortly afterwards Seneca tendered his resignation. The old guard was gone and the future had arrived when Poppaea fell pregnant on April 21.
Nero and I were going over plans for the expansion of the lavish Greek gymnasium he'd built when she made her entrance, a vision in Monday green, the color of the Moon, and announced the fateful event.
In spite of the way the architects shifted their feet when they caught sight of her, Nero was so wrapped up in his dream of senators and knights wrestling and boxing like Achilles and Odysseus, that he didn't acknowledge her presence until she kissed him on the cheek. He'd actually begun to ask her to leave when he saw that there was something special in her eyes.
Her voice had an excited lilt to it. "I have something to tell you."
"It has to wait, I'm right in the middle of -"
"It can't. I can't keep it to myself a moment longer. You wouldn't want me to."
Realization dawned on Nero's face. "In that case..."
Poppaea glanced at the architects. "It's really quite confidential."
Nero waved them out. Neither emperor nor mistress seemed to notice me, half hidden as I was behind a pile of papers, so I stayed.
"Well?" asked Nero as Poppaea gazed at him, cheeks dimpled, relishing her precious secret.
She touched his face with the tips of her fingers. "You are going to be a father."
It was almost comical, the expression of joy that flooded Nero's face. "A son!"
Poppaea's smile was whimsical. "Perhaps, but certainly an heir
, for the man who marries Nero's daughter will be emperor."
"How long have you known?"
"Just a few days. My months are as regular as the Moon's. I'm undoubtedly with child."
Nero's eyes widened as the realization hit him. "But we're not married!"
This was the moment Poppaea had been preparing herself for. "We must get married, very soon."
Nero's sounded like someone experiencing the first full turn of a thumbscrew. "How can we, I'm not even divorced yet!"
"You must announce your divorce immediately."
Another turn of the screw. "I can't, there'll be riots. Octavia has her clients, her faction, the Claudians. The army adored Claudius, there'll be mutinies for certain. Faustus Cornelius Sulla or Rubellius Plautus will be hailed. I'll have a full scale civil war on my hands!"
"You have to eliminate both of them immediately. You should have done so when the comet warned you to do it for your music. Now you must do it for your child."
Nero whispered the appalling words. "Eliminate them?"
Poppaea could have been talking about garden cuttings. "Yes. Immediately."
Nero shook his head, almost as if he was awed by the realization. "First mother now you, turning me into a monster."
Poppaea risked wrinkles as she puckered her brow in an angry frown, something she almost never allowed herself to do. "By all means blame me if that makes you feel better."
Nero looked at me, the appeal in his eyes almost pathetic. "Epaphroditus, what do you think?"
I thought that he had to get rid of Octavia sooner or later and that the lives of two idle patricians was a cheap price for peace. I also thought of musical war. "Caesar, you can't allow anyone to stand in the way of your destiny. You are the first man of a new age. A thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, men will still talk of Nero."
Poppaea's cheeks glowed as she warmed to my theme. "My love, you are the last son of Aeneas, the final hope of a glorious dynasty that goes back to Troy. Do not allow shallow pity to snap this precious thread of life that reaches back to the age of gods and heroes. For the sake of your ancestors, your unborn child and its children, for the sake of music, act now!"
Nero used his knuckles to wipe death out of his eyes.
I wrote out the warrants.
That evening there was a tap on the door. A figure entered without waiting for permission, definitely female, undressed in transparent gauze, blowing into the room like a cloud. She looked like one of the sculptor Lysippus's sylphs. "Greetings Epaphroditus," said Rachel, "as you see, once more I've been sent to you."
Because she lived in the palace with Poppaea's attendants, I saw Rachel quite often, usually at a distance, sometimes with other men, knights and senators Poppaea had lent her to. Jealousy made me angry, tempted me, sometimes, to take her roughly until reason reminded me that she had no control over her body. The only sign that she was aware of my existence was the expression of mild reproach she occasionally directed at me. On the few occasions that we talked, our conversation always seemed to follow the same lines: she'd bristle while I complimented her on her outfits or her hair style which were always on the cutting edge of fashion - Poppaea saw to that. She looked particularly regal in the elaborate, high-piled hairdo that Messalina had made popular. Then, as soon as I'd incensed her sufficiently, she'd denounce me for my base attachment to physical perfection when it was the perfection of the soul that mattered. My teasing wasn't pointless. It melted her reserve and brought a touch of emotion to her serene beauty.
One warm summer night when I’d drunk too much wine and the full Moon had burnished the trees with silver, I ran into her in the palace garden. By chance, at least I thought it was chance, she was alone. Perhaps she’d just completed an assignment with another guest. In my drunken state that excited me.
“Are you still only offering me your body?" I asked after squeezing a bottom that felt as firm as a melon.
The delicate nose rose half an inch and the wide eyes narrowed. "You know that perfectly well."
My temples hammered, drumming my concern for her inner feelings out of my mind. I drew her towards me and kissed her roughly. "Then that will have to do."
With a resigned sigh she pushed me away very gently as if I were a boisterous child. She turned her back on me and walked to a couch that had been placed in the deep shade of a nearby plane tree. A torch on an ornate bronze tripod burnt nearby, faintly illuminating it. Without looking at me she undid the jeweled clasp at her throat and shrugged the gauze off her shoulders. It was at the moment of nakedness that she glanced at me. In spite of what she'd said about not caring about her body it was clearly important to her that I did.
Her waist was narrow as a wasp’s, her breast were large and firm, her hips and legs perfectly contoured. Venus in the flesh. But what else would you expect from Poppaea?
In spite of all the wine, my throat was suddenly dry. “You’re lovely.”
"Your tunic," she said. I pulled it over my head. When I emerged from the moment of darkness her eyes were on my upended manhood. She reached out for it slowly, her right hand palm upwards, her nails scratching the underside of the shaft from the base to the tip. The sensation was exquisite.
Her breathing shortened to a pant, her eyes were glutinous pools of lust. "Come."
She took me into her mouth, swallowed me until her teeth nibbled my pubic hair. Passion overwhelmed me like panic. I threw her down on the couch. When I thrust myself into her viscous interior, she let out such a loud, primitive cry that I thought she’d bring the palace police running. Her vulva was extraordinary, more dexterous even than Claudius’s Indian girl in the way it opened for me when I drove inwards and closed tightly on me while I withdrew. It seemed she wanted to keep me inside her forever. Her nails tore at my back, she arched as we climaxed and screamed her ecstasy to heaven. Whatever her soul was, her body was all woman.
Afterwards she rearranged her clothes and combed her hair as gracefully as a pantomime but I had the curious sensation that she had become someone else.
"Thank you," I said.
Her eyes flashed with sudden anger. "For taking you a step closer to the fire? You have been given another taste of evil and I was the one who fed it to you with a spoon. Don't thank me, curse me."
A few weeks later Nero deprived the conservative Claudians of their imperial patroness by divorcing Octavia for sterility. Fourteen days later he married Poppaea. Less than a month later Octavia was helped to take her own life. She was part of the past and therefore had to go, Tigellinus and Poppaea persuaded Nero of that sad fact. I did nothing to contradict them.
On the evening I heard of her death, Octavia's large sad eyes seemed to be watching me from the dark corners of my living room. Not even Rachel’s arrival in a cloud of aphrodisiac musk could banish the ghost. She seemed to feel the same way as I did. Instead of making love we played checkers. She beat me with embarrassing ease.
Of course the Claudians did their best to make Octavia's death into a major political scandal. Not even naming the daughter that Poppaea gave birth to in January Claudia Augusta and declaring her a goddess disarmed their malice. Far from it. Four months later, when the infant died of a lung congestion and Nero was prostrate with grief, they spread the rumor that divine retribution would see to it that the next life he took would be his own.
Xenophon, Nero's physician, took the rumor seriously. "Like many men of creative genius," he told me, "the emperor has a disposition for sudden and extreme alternations of mood. Until he recovers from his melancholy he must be watched at all times."
"Impossible," I told him. "He insists on being alone. He refuses to allow even Poppaea to spend the night with him."
"Then you must make certain that he doesn't have access to anything with which he can harm himself, particularly ropes, razors and knives."
I'd already taken that precaution as far as the contents of his room were concerned. What hadn't occurred to me was that Nero's enemies might smuggle
him a dagger with his food. Since there wasn't a slave who couldn't be bought, I searched everything that went into his bedroom and slept on a mat outside his door in case he called for something after dark.
Near the middle of the seventh night after the infant's death I was awoken by the sound of his kithara that had been silent until then. After a few bars of a simple melody Nero began to sing, in a pathetic, broken voice, the familiar lines from Sophocles's play Orpheus and Eurydice, the lines we used to recite during a game I played with him when he was ten years old.
Musical interludes in plays were common, but never before had I heard anyone attempt to sing the dialog. I knew why Nero was doing so, he was out of his mind, but I remembered my part and sang it also, to humor him, following the rhythm of his kithara as best I could.
At first Nero's responses were hesitant as if even in his madness he couldn't believe that his plaintive wails were being answered in song. Quickly his confidence grew. It took some improvising such as a lengthening of the vowels to make up for the mismatch in poetic meter and musical beat, but soon we were both going at it, hammer and tongs, through the locked bedroom door. It was at the climax of our childish game, where Orpheus turned for that forbidden look at Eurydice, that Nero threw the door open.
He was stark naked, his hair was as tangled as a bush but his face was alive with excitement. "Epaphroditus, we've found it!" he roared. "The secret weapon of musical war! Fall to your knees, you Greeks, it is you who deserve to be conquered first!"
Since such an art form had never been conceived of, and therefore he had no models to build on, it took Nero nine months to perfect his first singing play, based on the tragic legend of Niobe, the mother of Tantalus. We were back in Baiae for the spring Minerva Festival when he performed it for the first time - in Naples, which is of course a Greek city. Tigellinus wanted an audience that could be guaranteed to give Nero a warm reception. I suggested the thousand sailors from the Alexandrian fleet that had just put in and suggested to the admiral that he instruct his men to applaud in the Alexandrian mode, carefully orchestrated sets of rhythmic clapping called “the buzzing”, “the tiles” and “the bricks”. Niobe was a stunning success. Led by the sailors, the audience clapped until their hands hurt. Their feet thundered on the floorboards. It sounded like an earthquake – people outside the theater said there indeed had been one – the earth is unstable in this region, brooded over by smoking Vesuvius. Nero had indeed discovered a powerful weapon and he intended to unleash it immediately on Greece. But he had composed so little! That was the thought that tormented him. The month that followed was a crush of statecraft until midday and composition and rehearsal until midnight.
The Nero Prediction Page 16